Tyler Hubbard - Strong

“Wreck my plans, rock my world, be my brown-eyed, blue-jean girl.”

This line – no, this morsel of poetry – can be heard in the opening track of Tyler Hubbard’s latest album. Titled ‘Wish You Would,’ the song and its lyrics – down to each simple adjective and use of the infantilizing word “girl” – have the markers of a quintessential bro-country banger, something Hubbard popularized a decade ago as one-half of the hitmaking duo Florida Georgia Line.

Now, with his sophomore solo effort, Strong, the artist is taking us right back to that chrome-plated era of country music, but we're not so sure that's a period we're ready to revisit.

The album feels immediately dated from the first few notes, trapped in that 2010s countryscape where the lifted trucks roamed free and the Busch Light flowed aplenty. From top to bottom, listeners are subjected to an overproduced collection of anthems and ballads featuring another mix of mindless bops, like the utter cringe fest ‘Park’, and mediocre hits, like the painfully predictable ‘Night Like That’. Throw in a song that namedrops summer (‘Summer Talkin’’) and one more that mentions a nondescript small-town (‘American Mellencamp’), and it’s an album that would have rivaled anything by Luke Bryan or Jason Aldean ten years ago.

However, there are moments of Strong that feel personal to Hubbard, therefore compelling. It’s difficult to find fault with the passion evident throughout the release, especially in reminiscent tracks like the wishful ‘Take Me Back’ and nostalgic ‘’73 Beetle’. There are moments, though, when the sentimentality feels surface level – like in ‘Back Then Right Now’ and ‘Turn’, two tunes about simpler times that quickly become paeans to tailgates and long tan legs – every meaningful word overturned by a put-on twang.

At face value, Strong harbors moments of hope, glimmers of effortless fun and easily earned nostalgia that will likely produce a summer hit or two, but it leaves much to be desired from a country record in 2024.

There was once a time and place for an album like Strong – a time and place that Hubbard himself once dominated – but with current country trends erring towards thought-provoking prose and stripped-back production, we’re just not sure that pickup trucks and “blue-jean girls” really cut it anymore.

5/10

Tyler Hubbard’s 2024 project, Strong, is available everywhere now via UMG.

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