Clint Black
Country star Clint Black's fifth album offers the expected virtues: plenty of deft musicianship and a nice mix of styles, from the stately lament of "Untanglin' My Mind" (co-written with Merle Haggard) to the sprightly "You Walked By." But it also showcases his shortcomings as a songwriter. While the best country songs bristle with a real-world immediacy—you don't just go to the store in your car thinking about a girl, you head for Sears in your Ford moaning over Connie in El Paso—Black's lyrics here plod along with cliches (it would take, yes, wild horses to drag him away from a loved one) in a fog of utter vagueness. Colorless writing like this belongs on an album called Wan Emotion. (RCA)
Your Reaction
