Country rating: 0/10
Pop Rating: 2/10
New music from Thomas Rhett, just what I’ve been waiting for. To be fair, almost anything could be better than the God-awful experience that was Tangled UP, an exercise in being everything but country while simultaneously insulting as many other genres of music as possible with the shit music it produced. Well, “Craving You” is better than that, if only marginally. It’s not completely terrible as a pop song, but I dare you to show me one shred of country influence in this song. Sonically, it’s sort of like Keith Urban’s “The Fighter,” as it has an 80’s pop sound. Lyrically, it’s yet another song about love and sex being compared to alcohol and drugs, so even if it’s not blatantly horrific, it’s bland and forgettable even as a pop song. You would think the inclusion of Maren Morris might make it at least bearable, and in the few lines she gets, her vocal ability does put that of Thomas Rhett to shame, but that’s probably why she doesn’t get more lines–and oh yeah, she’s female–so basically, her part in this amounts to nothing more than that of a glorified backup singer. It’s not featuring her, it’s more like “with a cameo appearance by Maren Morris.” But let’s slap a female name in the credits and that way, when this thing becomes a #1 hit, the programmers and industry executives can point to this as a step forward for women and feel better about themselves.
The best things I can say about it are that it’s better than his previous album and that it doesn’t immediately strike me as being ripped off. Of course, if it were ripped off, it might be better; we all know Thomas Rhett’s original output is far worse than when he destroys the work of other talented artists, “Vacation” being the horrendous exception…but I digress. IN short, it’s a bad pop song being sent to country radio because it couldn’t survive in the genre where it belongs, and with a few insignificant lines for a token female to make the whole thing seem like progress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooFnUCUI8Vg&t=107s