The entire three minutes and 53 seconds of the title track – “Red, White and Blue Night in Georgia” – are so powerful, from Melissa Jones’ delivery to the delicate subject matter.
She does an excellent job giving a voice to the military wife’s experience of waiting for her spouse to return home. Other songs have addressed the same topic, but this one may be among the best. The soldier, at the beginning of the song, comes home from the U.S. Army in 1999 and starts life at home with a wife and a child. He stays in the Army reserves. But then, 9-11-01 changes everything, and the Iraq War begins in 2003.
This changes everything for the couple, and all of the lyrics – written by Constance Mottle, Don Goodman and Jon Conley – are amazing, but the chorus is especially powerful – “It’s Midnight in Savannah, morning in Iraq, then I’m on my knees begging the Lord to please bring you safely, every lonely, lonely sleepless night that I spend waiting for you is a Red, White and Blue Night in Georgia.”
Due to the quality, emotion and gravity of the title track, the other nine songs seem to pale in comparison. And that’s not a knock against the rest of the album, but just evidence of the title track’s powerful appeal. The rest of the album is stacked with ballads such as “Somewhere Over You” about a positive outlook after a failed relationship and “Talk Me Out Of Him”, which recalls Patty Loveless’ “A Thousand Times A Day”.
It compares quitting a relationship to things like smoking, indulging in sweets and shopping sprees. “Tell Me Another Lie” is another quality ballad and the only song written by Melissa Jones on this disc.
Jones goes retro with “How I Love That Man”, a ballad that relies more on an old pop sound, i.e. 1940’s, instead of being a steel guitar-laced country weeper. “Who’s Crying Now?” is kind of another way of asking the same question that Toby Keith did with “How Do You Like Me Now?” With the serious nature of the title track and some of the other ballads, it’s interesting to see Jones show her funny bone with the album-closing “The Perfect Man”, a song about a “girl’s night out” where they dream up the perfect man. And the group finds a humorous way to work Kenny Chesney into that equation.
“Red, White And Blue Night In Georgia” is a nice album that is framed around an exceptional title track. It’s an album that hints at the power that songs have on our lives and it’s something many more artists should pay attention to.
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