Lady Antebellum: Own the Night | Music Review

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Lady Antebellum
Own the Night
*½

by Jonathan Keefe on September 11, 2011
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Few artists ever score a hit as big as Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now," a terrific testament to drunk-dials that catapulted the pop-country trio to superstar status and made their sophomore album, Need You Now, a multiplatinum seller and, far more inexplicably, a critics and awards darling. Lady A's heightened profile has bolstered expectations for their third album, and Own the Night might register as a disappointment had its predecessor actually offered more than one brilliant single surrounded by an hour's worth of nothing. A deeply boring album in both form and content, Own the Night is an Emperor's New Clothes situation: Without anything close to the quality of "Need You Now," Own the Night confirms that the trio has absolutely nothing to offer but a vaguely racist name and music by and for dull people.

That only two of the album's songs, "Love I've Found in You" and "Cold as Stone," scan as country music in any meaningful way isn't Own the Night's problem: It's that Lady A and producer Paul Worley have crafted an album that pays tribute to the halcyon days of early-'90s soft rock, when Michael Bolton, Gloria Estefan, and Richard Marx were in heavy rotation in all of in dentist offices across America. The album's title suggests youthful indiscretions and freewheeling excitement that the trio and Worley fail to evoke; not even the AARP demo would take issue with the album's chintzy drum loops, tasteful-to-a-fault orchestral swells, and gentle piano riffs. Amy Grant's Heart in Motion shouldn't be a frame of reference for any album's production, but the studio-slick cheese of "Somewhere Love Remains" and the gauzy "When You Were Mine" couldn't possibly be more aggressively middlebrow.

What's more troubling is that the album's vanilla production is perfectly matched to Lady Antebellum's songwriting. They have literally nothing novel to say, nor do they do it with any panache or distinct point of view. "Wanted You More" only assembles a series of familiar turns of phrase and threadbare images before building to a refrain ("I guess I wanted you more/Looking back, now I'm sure") that ignores natural cadence in favor of forcing its rhyme. The opening lines of "When You Were Mine" are laughably simplistic ("Words spoken/My heart, open/No I've never had butterflies like this"), highlighting just how good Taylor Swift really is at this kind of wistful reminiscence. And "Cold as Stone" turns on a couple of mixed metaphors ("I wish I didn't have this heart/Then I wouldn't know the sting of the rain"), while "As You Turn Away" spells out its narrative in the most literal-minded terms.

Middling lead single "Just a Kiss" makes predictable references to being caught up in both a moment and a smile, and it's so rote that the chorus accidentally stumbles into a bit of auto-critique when Hilary Scott and Charles Kelley sing, "I don't want to mess this thing up/I don't want to push too hard." They're sticking to the blandly pleasant, cliché-driven songwriting of Need You Now, not taking a single risk. Any hired-gun songwriter could have penned these songs on commission, and they wouldn't give any less insight into who Scott, Kelley, and Dave Haywood actually are as artists.

In the past, the trio has been able to elevate their unremarkable songwriting with spirited performances, but that isn't the case on Own the Night. On "Singing Me Home," Kelley references how the girl riding shotgun with him is "singing just a little off key," and he should be used to that, given how poor Scott's sense of pitch proves to be over the course of the album. While her slightly off-pitch performance worked in the booze-fueled context of "Need You Now," it's a serious liability here. Kelley still relies too heavily on mealy-mouthed articulation to approximate "soul," but he's a far better singer than Scott. Still, the things Lady Antebellum do well on Own the Night are few and far between, and it's just indefensible for an act of their commercial and critical stature to be so across-the-board amateurish and anonymous.

Label: Capitol
Release Date: September 13, 2011

Comments

denvercash77 on September 12, 2011, 11:21 PM

So Jonathan, you thought their single "Need You Now" was good or no? Since I saw in your review for their album that you liked it but then in Slant Magazine's 2011 Grammy Awards: Winner Predictions when predicting ROTY, you wrote, "The money shot in what looks to be the likely Oscar winner, The King's Speech, is a bevy of f-bombs, but I don't see it playing to Cee-Lo's favor here, even if his single is easily the standout in a deeply boring field." So did you like Need You Now or did you think it was a "deeply boring" song? Just wondering. I don't care for the band at all, but I do like that song.

14pizerg on September 13, 2011, 12:19 AM

"Need You Now" was really good, but not great and this album just sucks balls. It is a great album to put you asleep, but I am just listening to clips on iTunes and @ am on the edge of crashing.

Jonathan Keefe on September 13, 2011, 09:28 AM

"Need You Now" is a good single, yes. But it was also an incredibly safe, predictable choice for the Record of the Year Grammy, even in a field of safe, predictable choices save for Cee-Lo.

denvercash77 on September 13, 2011, 10:06 AM

It was a very predictable/safe choice for Record/Song of the Year. But in your opinion, did you feel it was deserving?

Jonathan Keefe on September 13, 2011, 12:38 PM

When I referred to the Grammy nominees as "a deeply boring field," I meant that they were mainly the kind of safe, predictable choices NARAS is known for, not that the singles themselves were deeply boring.

I would have voted for Cee-Lo, with Lady A as a distant second or third choice. Better and worse singles have won Record of the Year, and "Need You Now" was on my ballot for the Nashville Scene's country music critics' poll.

lyrafowlpotter on September 13, 2011, 11:57 PM

You know, this describes EXACTLY how I have always felt about Lady A. lol From the moment I heard "Run to You". I don't mind pop music, when its good, and i don't even mind country pop when its good, but having listened to most of their catalogue, I've found most of it to be very dull. Though I do like the current single "Own the Night", can't say why, but it feels a little less boring to me then the rest of their singles. At any rate, I think people tend to like what is inoffensive and as far away from reality as possible. It is sad to say, but its true, the music industry in general forces genuine creativity out of people for a more forced creativity. But so it goes, this is why I am sick of music in general lately.

geno722 on September 19, 2011, 06:20 PM

Honestly, Mr. Keefe, I had to go read some of your reviews of other artists in a few genres before inputting here. I'll be the first to say that Lady Antebellum isn't a "true country" act, and the name is maybe a bit goofy. Isn't the whole idea that music progresses, and that some of the most fun listeners (and musicians!!) have is when genres collide? I get the fact that country purists better stick to old Hank and George, and probably turn off their local "Froggy" or "Kix" station. Personally, I think this is a GREAT record, maybe one or two "fluff" tracks but for the most part, cleverly written, nicely produced, and despite an admitted "slickness" it winds up being as "emotional" as anything I've ever heard by anybody, in any genre. Now, that's just me, and the beauty of America is that snobs like you have the right to your opinion, just like a 37-year music industry veteran like myself has a right to mine. Good grief, if you were that disposed to hate the record, or the group, or the vibe they have as a whole, why put yourself through the pain of having to sit all the way through it? I'll paraphrase some advice I once got from my father (about a bad, mean, unpleasant teacher): "those who can do, do, those who can't, write about those who can do."

oak178 on October 26, 2011, 05:40 PM

^^^^ hahahah i love it geno. I've been a huge lady a fan ever since they released love dont live here and i really enjoyed this record. Clearly Jonathan realized how much his life sucked right before he wrote this and took it out lady. What did you do, listen to the album with earmuffs on write the review before it was finished? Its obvious you knew what you wanted to write before you even gave it a listen. If this album is so horribly bad, what are a few that you consider top notch?