Produced by Carson Chamberlain – who makes some of the best sounding records in Nashville – and Billy himself, Enjoy Yourself is a 10 track collection of songs that already features a chart-topping laid-back traditional country-leaning hit single in “Pretty Good at Drinkin’ Beer.” It’s not meant to be rocket science but this song did work extremely well as part of a summertime party playlist or road trip mix. Billy shows off his smooth, sexy side on the album lead-off “All Day Long” a song that was co-written by Ben Hayslip and Reprise Nashville artists Frankie Ballard and Dallas Davidson. It’s a sweet song about a couple who love to enjoy a little romance in the evening so that it makes them wanna ‘miss [each other] all day long.”
Nashville based singer-songwriter Dave Barnes wrote the progressive “Until You.” Performed basically the same way that Barnes did (with a little steel guitar added for color) the song certainly feels like a radio hit (at least much as it did on Barnes own two previous recordings in 2004 and 2008). It is, in fact, one of my favorite pop songs and while it’s not ‘country’ in the sense that Jamey Johnson or even Blake Shelton are country, it fits right in with what mainstream country radio plays and I’m pretty darn confident that this song will not only be a single but a hugely successful one with a shot at cross-over appeal.
Scotty Emerick and Harley Allen are a pair of successful songwriters/artists in their own right and on the great “Like My Dog,” we head back towards the ‘old school’ theme of a man singing about his dog. This is a song that finds a man asking his girlfriend or wife why she can’t love him more like his dog, which is unconditionally. It’s a cute way about getting such a message across and like “Until You,” can see radio eating this song up. There are three more songs on the album that feature Scotty Emerick as a co-writer with the Dale Dodson/Dean Dillon co-write “Perfect Day” and the title track “Enjoy Yourself” (co-written with Bob DiPeiro and John Scott Sherrill) work as great escapist tunes to take you on a pair of three minute vacations in your mind while “Bad Day of Fishin’” is the final Scotty Emerick co-write and the lone track on this record to feature a co-write from Billy himself. John Scott Sherrill is the other co-writer of the laid-back slice-of-life song that proclaims what fishermen always say: “A bad day of fishin’ beats a good day of anything else.”
Enjoy Yourself is a mostly jovial affair (take a listen to the sprightly “Love Done Gone”) that really feels like a tight collection of escapist, feel-good music. It’s the music that firmly fits the mood and place that Billy Currington is in in his own life and there is perhaps no more aptly descriptive title for an album than Enjoy Yourself, which is exactly what I did while listening to the album and something I have a feeling you’ll do too.
You can support Billy Currington by purchasing this album at Amazon | iTunes.
If you perfer your music to be more than ones and zeroes you can purchase this album at Amazon.
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