<h3>Blake Shelton Releases New Single &#8220;Sure Be Cool If You Did&#8221;: Review.</h3>
<p>It was shrouded in secrecy and only announced a week or so prior to release, but <strong>January 1st</strong> saw <strong><a title="Blake Shelton" href="https://stubhub.prf.hn/click/camref:1100ljXyr/pubref:WPSBlakeS/ar:CMNBAutoLink/destination:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.stubhub.com%2Fblake-shelton-tickets%2F">Blake Shelton</a></strong> release his brand new single, &#8220;<strong><em>Sure Be Cool If You Did</em></strong>&#8220;. This follows the huge success of his 2011 album &#8220;<em>Red River Blue</em>&#8220;, with the charting &#8220;<em>Honey Bee</em>&#8220;, &#8220;<em>God Gave Me You</em>&#8220;, &#8220;<em>Drink On It</em>&#8220;, and &#8220;<em>Over</em>&#8220;, all of which reached #1 on the <a href="http://www.billboard.com/charts/country-songs#/charts/country-songs">Billboard Country Charts</a>. To add to that, his 2012 Christmas album, <em>Cheers, It’s Christmas</em> reached #8 on the Billboard 200 and has so far sold around half a million copies, not bad for a Holiday album that’s only been around a couple of months! So<br />
after all this success and personally enjoying <em>Red River Blue</em> immensely, I had high expectations for Blake’s new single to start 2013 off with a bang. And it did start off with a bang, if you consider a bang to be not as loud as you thought and trailing off a little at the end. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a solid track, but it’s sincerely lacking where I think for someone who is so talented and successful.</p>
<h4>Not So Country.</h4>
<p>The song errs on the side of country pop, with smooth strings and a nice solid guitar and drums<br />
unit that is equally smoothed over. This is accompanied by finger snaps, little acoustic guitar licks,<br />
a chorus and echo effect on his vocals during the second verse, and lead guitar dropping in every<br />
now and then to play the riff. That and the occasional note of steel guitar are the only things which<br />
really make me think COUNTRY country, but that’s not really my issue with this because the country<br />
charts these days are full of songs that don’t sound as typically country (it’s just a measure of this<br />
era in country music). </p>
<h4>A Little Too Safe.</h4>
<p>Mainly, I feel that the song is very safe. It’s a nice track, the line ‘<em>and<br />
you’re standing in the neon, looking like a high I wanna be on</em>’ is one of my favorite parts of the song<br />
for no other reason than it sounds nice the way they’ve constructed it, lyrically and musically. It&#8217;s similar to &#8220;<em>God Gave Me You</em>&#8220;. It’s very smooth, polished, pop with guitars and a touch of twang which was fine in &#8220;<em>God Gave Me You</em>&#8221; because that was a really catchy, lovely song with a<br />
great chorus. This new song is equally as sweet but there’s just something missing for me.</p>
<h4>Just A Little Boring.</h4>
<p>It’s not the lyrics, which tell the story of someone falling in love with a girl in a bar, and saying that<br />
she doesn’t have to stay, or carry on, but it’d sure be cool if she did. That kind of “I’m a man, I’m so<br />
casual&#8230; PLEASE COME HOME WITH ME” that I’ve definitely heard before. It depicts how a real man<br />
would say it pretty well, and I like that attention to detail. “<em>Got me falling apart with my heart talking<br />
out of my head</em>” is a nice interesting metaphor too. Despite all its niceness, this song doesn’t<br />
grab me, it doesn’t make me feel, it doesn’t punch me in the face or hurl me around a room. It’s one<br />
of those songs that I enjoy at the time and that a few months down the line I forget about it because<br />
I’m bored. And that’s kind of what it is. It’s a little boring.</p>
<p>So if I find it a little boring, there is bound to be someone else out there feeling the same (<em>there’s<br />
<a href="http://tasteofcountry.com/blake-shelton-sure-be-cool-if-you-did/">another country blog</a> in particular that does, and a quick scout of online forums tells me something<br />
similar</em>). Though I love <a title="Blake Shelton" href="https://stubhub.prf.hn/click/camref:1100ljXyr/pubref:WPSBlakeS/ar:CMNBAutoLink/destination:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.stubhub.com%2Fblake-shelton-tickets%2F">Blake Shelton</a>, this simply doesn’t do a lot for me, it’s not enough to keep<br />
me going for years on end, continuously returning to it time after time. Country music has to always<br />
produce music like that, because otherwise there’s no point to it. It has to be timeless, it can’t just<br />
be for the hit parade because that’s when we know it’s finally sold out to pop music, beyond all the<br />
issues in instrumentation etc.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that’s what Blake has done, but I’m saying we have to be careful. I do hope this song<br />
does well, and that the reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year pulls out all the stops for his<br />
new album this year. The song is expected to be on iTunes later this month, so look out for it.</p>
<h4>Vickye is a guest contributor! Find her on Twitter: @planmymistake or her own site: www.forthecountryrecord.tumblr.com!</h4>