I’ve already written a bit about Sugarland on this blog, both in reviewing their latest album and appreciating how good lead singer Jennifer Nettles looks wearing a hat and suspenders, so it’s about time I showed them some love in the Song of the Day series.
The album Love On the Inside is my happiest surprise so far this year. I picked it up because I’d read a lot of good things about it, and about the group in general, but I didn’t expect to love it half as much as I do.
I believe it works because it’s a marriage of the great folksy songwriting that made Billy Pilgrim’s debut so great (Pilgrim member Kristian Bush is half of Sugarland) and the superstar voice and presence of Nettles. She’s brazen, sexy and down-to-earth, with a set of pipes any American Idol contestant would kill for. She’s like an unpretentious Bono fronting a country rock band.
Every track on Love On the Inside is great. I’ve chosen this one because… ok, I’ll be honest… because it’s the only embeddable video from the album that I could find on YouTube. I love the piano, I love how Bush joins in on vocals in the outro and of course I love everything about Jennifer Nettles.
Note: Somebody has dropped this song over the video for an older Sugarland song, so it looks like the sync is off but it’s actually two completely different tracks. Fits pretty well, though.
Meet Me In Montauk 
Boy, you really are becoming a big country music fan! Not my cup of tea, but now I know what to get you for your birthday: a cowboy hat and chaps.:)
We need to dig down and discover the root of Dana’s country music aversion… a childhood trauma perhaps?
I have to say that her voice cuts through me like a hatchet (NOT a scalpel!) and I think she becomes more nasally/twangy with each song released (read pretentious)… Maybe I’m just disturbed by their first hit – “Baby Girl” so much that I can’t get past it. 😉 The lyric “don’t forget what your knees are for” really made me queasy.
I’m glad you’ve found music that makes you happy – I’d been wondering who liked that voice!! Yeeeeeeehaw!
Wow, Heather. What about her voice could possibly cut through you like a hatchet? I actually enjoy this song, and I’ve enjoyed the others I’ve heard from the new album. I think the therapist Clay is springing for to investigate Dana’s hatred of country music ought to devote a session to your extreme hatred for Jennifer Nettles while he’s at it. Meanwhile, I’m about to go investigate this “Baby Girl.”
I’m not sure any major therapy is needed. Just because I was locked in a dark room as a child year old and forced to repeatedly listen to Achy Breaky Heart doesn’t necessarily mean anything. But seriously, I don’t really hate country music. It just isn’t a sytle to which i gravitate. And, even within country, I recognize different styles, some of which I like more than others. I’ll take bluegrass and folk related country over the slower twangy country for example.