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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Rascal Flatts, "I Won't Let Go"

I kind of saw this coming.  Sure, Rascal Flatts gave us one of the best singles of 2010 with "Why Wait," but now they're sinking back into their usual routine of depressing me.

Admittedly, this single could have been much worse.  Gary LeVox gives a restrained vocal delivery, and though the production gets a bit louder toward the end, it never totally erupts into bombastic self-indulgence (which has been a problem in the past for Rascal Flatts).  Their performance is solid, and the harmonies are there, so at least "I Won't Let Go" is easy on the ears.

To the boys' credit, they certainly do sound like they believe in this song.  But that doesn't quite overcome the fact that the said song is basically a giant cliche-pile.  Lyrics such as "I will stand by you/ I will help you through/ When you've done all you can do..." are awfully generic.  It's hard to tell what's even going on in whatever story this song is attempting to tell.  We have little insight into what the difficult struggle is that these characters are going through, and it's hard to even guess who's singing to whom.

It is definitely well-sung.  But this is still just another bland and interchangeable love song, and there's not enough to recommend it over all the other bland and interchangeable love songs on country radio.  But radio plays it, and their fans buy it, so why would the Flatts care that nobody is going to remember these songs after the chart run ends?

THE FLATTS' SCORE:  5
(Scores are given on a scale of 1 to 10)