Review: Gary Allan’s Ruthless Is a Mercilessly Sexist Exercise in Mediocrity

Of the 33 songwriters who contributed to Gary Allan’s 10th studio album, Ruthless, only four are women—and it shows. Emblematic of Nashville’s worst tendencies, the album is a casually sexist exercise in mediocrity that wobbles between the banal and the cringeworthy, a singular and significant misstep in the country singer’s well-regarded discography. The album is filled with countless references to women’s appearances, from their physical looks—legs (long), lips (pink), eyes (baby blue), and clothes (“that red dress”)—to their more ethereal qualities (looking “like love” and “like heaven”). Even female movements are filtered through this lens, as they spin around, slide on over, and mess up the bedsheets.

In fact, not a single word uttered throughout Ruthless frames women outside of the context of the male gaze. On “‘Till It Felt Like You,” Allan goes on a date with “a long-legged beauty” who’s “hotter than an Alabama July” at the prodding of a buddy who urges him not to pass up a shot with such a looker. On “Trouble Knows Trouble,” Allan is the one doing the prodding, trying to move the night along by suggesting that he and his date “just get on with it” before admitting the truth we already know: “Those sheets in a tangled mess are gonna tell the whole story.” It’s the whole story, of course, because there’s no substance to the relationships sketched on the album, as the majority of them revolve around sex—a type of easy, disposable sex that’s born solely from a combination of physical attraction and proximity.

Ruthless, though, doesn’t stop with mere objectification, as it’s also replete with more insidious portrayals of women. Where the songs aren’t explicitly about their appearance, they depict women as a vice on “Temptation”—despite the fact that it’s the narrator’s own inability to move on from a breakup that keeps him tethered to the past—or cruel and cold-hearted for simply daring to be out with her friends at the same bar as her ex on the title track.

The songs on Ruthless are short, smooth, and blend in just a hint of the ’90s country vibe that’s currently trendy. It’s a aesthetic that would sound right at home on country radio, but it lacks any of the swing, honky-tonk rattle, or Bakersfield flavor that characterizes much of Allan’s earlier work. His gritty baritone has lent gravitas to a weighty catalog filled with unusually forthright material, including Tough All Over, the gut-wrenching album he recorded in the aftermath of his wife’s suicide, and Get Off on the Pain, which is less raw but unique for its unapologetic masochism. But there’s nothing of the sort on Ruthless, which finds the singer opting for songs without so much as a hint of his characteristic verve or edginess.