"If My Heart Had Windows"; "Forever and Ever, Amen"; "You're Still the One"; "It's Your Love"; "I Could Not Ask for More" - Country music is one genre that boasts some of the greatest love songs ever heard. Unfortunately, Steel Magnolia's current single has no place among the aforementioned classics.
Joshua Scott Jones and Meaghan Linsey have talent coming out their ears - there's no denying that. Their rich and soulful vocals won over the judges on CMT's Can You Duet, and they won the show's second season as a result. The problem with Steel Magnolia is that they tend to go for style over substance. Though their performances are almost always entertaining, we have yet to hear them release a song with truly impressive lyrics. They try to go for the romance with their current single "Just By Being You (Halo and Wings)," but this song is hardly worth the efforts of such a talented duo.
Being the heartless and tactless critic that I am, I took off my halo and wings a long time ago. Here's the problem: "Halo and Wings" sounds like a plagiarizing of a Hallmark card. It's chalked full of romantic-sounding platitudes: 'Let's run away together!' 'I love you just the way you are!' 'You don't have to be invincible!' 'You don't have to be perfect!' 'Just say my name!' The song message can be summed up as one desperate plea: "Play me on the radio! I'm inoffensive!"
If Josh and Meaghan were bent on recording this song, it should have been album filler, because it is a weak choice for a radio single. It may become a hit anyway, but only because Steel Magnolia is still riding the wave of "Keep On Lovin' You." The only thing this song has potential for is to be one more cheesy love song that everybody loves to hate. And that's assuming that anybody even remembers this song fifteen years from now.
STEEL MAGNOLIA'S SCORE: 5
(Scores are given on a scale of 1 to 10)
