Rating:
Genre:
Country
Release Date: 07/25/2006
A Nashville
country rebel in the mold of
Travis Tritt -- in other words, a defanged and marketing-driven pretty boy whose punkin head
David Allan Coe or
Waylon Jennings would smash a beer bottle over just on general principle --
Jake Owen makes his debut with the utterly formulaic
Startin' with Me. Opening tracks
"Bad in Me" and
"Yee Haw" try so desperately hard to establish
Owen's image as a bad-ass hellraiser that they finally become comical, and not the knowingly self-mocking
Big & Rich kind of comical, either. Every note on
Startin' with Me is as perfectly placed as
Owen's artfully mussed hair in the reg'lar joe glamour shot on the front cover.
Owen and producer
Jimmy Ritchey carefully check off all the
country radio clichés: Drinking
ballad? Check! Cry for the good Lord's deliverance? You betcha! Leering misogyny disguised as praise for the female of the species? Got yer
"Something About a Woman" right here, pal! Naturally, something so perfectly contrived can't help but be at least modestly successful on a commercial level.
~Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
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