The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #293

#293: "Like Red on a Rose" (2007) - Alan Jackson


Pretty simple, this one is. Lyrically, there’s not much depth (unless you’re a high-school English teacher wanting to use this song as an example for a lesson on identifying similes), as Jackson uses trite comparisons to tell his woman how much he loves her. Musically, the song’s structured around the typical, country/soul format: two verses, chorus, verse, chorus, guitar solo, chorus, fade. The song’s engineer and producer, though, should be applauded for the starkness they create in the arrangement of the various instruments. At different times throughout the song, a different instrument (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, drums, piano, organ—and the producer should be commended for getting the sweet, melancholy sound he gets from that organ) is spotlighted, giving the song a minor-key, late-night soul; the moments of spare emptiness (to be quickly filled, and as quickly emptied again) leaving us momentarily not just lonely but alone, facing the void with no one to hold our hand, no one to comfort us—until the chorus comes, where all the instruments come back in to give us a big ol’ hug, and the clichéd lyrics—with the help of the production, the arrangement, the instrumentation, and Jackson’s voice—suddenly don’t seem so trite anymore.

And although the production and engineering of this song is as expert, imaginative, and artistic as in any record on this list, this record wouldn’t work as successfully as it does without Jackson’s voice. Of those recording artists still producing hit songs, Alan Jackson has been mainstream country music’s finest vocalist of the past twenty years. He debuted at the tail end of Nashville’s neo-traditionalist movement (yeah, go ahead and explain the “neo-traditionalist” oxymoron to me; I’d like to hear it), with other artists such as Randy Travis, Clint Black, Garth Brooks, and Trisha Yearwood. Travis had the great, deep, reverberating baritone, but his good records have been few between the past ten years. Clint Black was by far the best lyricist of the group (and as good as any lyricist in any subgenre of popular music) for his first three records, but then his imagination seemed to have run dry, as well now as his career. Brooks was, of course, the unlikely superstar; he wasn’t the lyricist Black was, he didn’t have a voice anywhere near as good as Travis’s, and he weighed as much as the two together, but he was the only one from the group that was able to cross over to the pop music market and score high-charting records there as well. Yearwood had perhaps the most expressive voice of them all, and she—or someone from her production/management team—was expert in song selection; sadly, Music Row is a man’s market (don’t believe me? How bout this for evidence: 2006 was the first year in twenty in which a woman had the number one single of the year), and Yearwood’s career didn’t flourish like it should have (though she produced excellent record after excellent record).

And then there was Alan Jackson. His records were always well-written (with Jackson writing or co-writing a good percentage of them), he was always in fine voice, and his career was as stable as any musician’s can be. He—much like George Strait—never jumped on a trend, never changed his style. He stayed the course, having records near the top of the chart one year, the middle of the charts the other, and if an off-year would occur, he’d turn the tour knob up to eleven, using the shotgun effect (which works much more often than it doesn’t, hoping the sheer number of sites he played will excite enough listeners that his next record will contain a few hits) to elongate his career.

And then, came September 11, 2001. Jackson—within the span of just a few days—recorded and released a song to commemorate the event (Jackson’s 9/11 record was the first 9/11 record released, though a bevy of them were released soon after his). That song, “Where Were You,” isn’t on this list, not because I don’t appreciate the intention and sentiment of the song, but because Jackson didn’t take the song to a personal level (and he easily could have); it was too generic to be effective. “Like Red on a Rose,” though, seems to strike something deep in Jackson. I don’t know if it’s the years and the touring, or if it’s just this song, but Jackson’s voice—whose baritone has always been, if not of the clearest quality (that belongs to Randy Travis), then of the deepest soul—has deepened a bit, grown a bit more coarse. It wavers just a bit, too, and it’s those vocal qualities that make this song work the way it does, for we believe Jackson’s sentiments because he’s vulnerable, here (much more so than ever before), but his voice still has the strength we need to hear from someone when we’re out there, alone, facing the void.