Tuesday, August 9, 2016

SR: No "Fix" please - make Chris Lane disappear!

Chris Lane - Obviously celebrating his first #1 - Instagram
There are so many definitions in the dictionary that explain what fix is or may be, but it needs an addendum:

"Fix" - (song) - worst ditty to hit the top of the Country Airplay Charts by Billboard magazine and by IHeartMedia's mediabase in the summer of 2016.

During the tracking period to reach the top spot, the song got over 8100 spins, reaching and leaving an almost 56 million weekly audience impression. And you wonder why this country is in such a mess.

So it's time for celebration:
- a new artist, Chris Lane
- first charted single (others beforehand didn't scratch the top 40)
- new record label: Big Loud Records
- seasoned songwriters and producer

STOP - let's shine a light behind the curtain and we suddenly realize that we just stepped in a big fresh stinky turd.
- behind the record label, Big Loud Records is the Big Loud Mountain team that also handles douche-bags Florida Georgia Line, even though they put their shit out on Republic Records. Add to this, the president of Big Loud Records, Clay Honeycutt and that's where the incest begins
- Honeycutt was for over 15 years a "yes man" (not my words but his colleagues in comments on trade website AllAccess) in the IHeartMedia (formerly known as Clear Channel Communications) operations. So he leaves the sinking ship, IHeart is struggling to get rid of $6 Billion in debt, and becomes the president of a record label after being in command for over a decade over more than 850 radio stations.
- the single that didn't chart in the Top Forty was "Broken Windshield View" a rather lame bro-country song, even though co-written by David Lee Murphy ("Dust On The Bottle"). During the production of an initial EP, producer Joey Moi discovered that Lane actually has a falsetto mode when singing and voilĂ , they found a new niche for the 31 year old singer from North Carolina and started re-vamping him.
- all revamped as a blue-eyed wanna-be R&B singer, his producer Moi passed him "Fix" to record.
- "Fix" could actually fly in a decent R&B arrangement, written by Abe Stoklasa (see his performance to prove my point for a decent production), Sarah Buxton and Jesse Frasure, latter being also responsible for that horrendous "High Class" single done by Eric Paslay,
- Producer Joey Moi, who won a CMA Award as a producer for Florida Georgia Line's "Cruise," the Single of the Year in 2013  pretty much stays true to his ear-numbing, over-top one dimensional productions. He may have caught Lane's falsetto but the whole production is missing depth, it's just a plain cacophony. It's bad enough that he is associated with Nickelback, Daughtry and the above mentioned Douche-Bags, but this guy gotta go home back north to Canada before he produces an other turd.

A quick listen through his new album "GIRL PROBLEMS" that was released last Friday, does not reveal anything promising. I will review the whole album later, when I have recovered from "Fix."

And a note to radio stations - if you force feed us this song 94 ! times in a week, like IHeartMedia owned KBEB-FM in Sacramento (92.5 FM) did, please don't start to wonder why we're all wandering away to streaming media and our own programming.

(★)/★★★★★ (½/5)



Sources: http://iamchrislane.com/, AllAccess, Billboard

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