Drops: Luke Bryan's 'Tailgates & Tanlines'

Sometimes the pursuit of success gets so confusing.

Take promising singer-songwriter Luke Bryan as an example. In a weird marketing twist, the worst song on his new "Tailgates & Tanlines" (Capitol Nashville) album will likely end up being its biggest hit.

"Country Girl (Shake It for Me)" applies Nashville style to hip-hop come-ons and the result isn't just oddly off-putting ("Shake it for the young bucks sitting in the honky-tonk, for the rednecks rocking to the break of dawn," he says), it doesn't fit with the rest of Bryan's pretty good album. "Country Girl" is a page right out of the Kenny Chesney playbook -- remember "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy"? -- but it kind of backfires here.

Bryan would be better off drawing attention to his touching piece of empathetic storytelling, "You Don't Know Jack," in which he documents all the problems that would drive a man to drink. He would set himself apart from the country-guy pack by playing up the bluesy "Muckalee Creek Water," in which he talks about a South Georgia slice of heaven and declares, "If this was all I had, I'd be living good. . . . Let the stock market do what it's gonna do."

Bryan can sell ballads like "I Know You're Gonna Be There" and "I Knew You That Way," and he should know that those songs would sell "Tailgates & Tanlines" far better for far longer.

'Tailgates & Tanlines'

GRADE B

BOTTOM LINE Angling to be the next Kenny Chesney