Good Things

Ultimately uninteresting.

I have a love/hate relationship with pop-country. I do think there are good artists and good songs that pervade the genre, but I also know that it's overrun with pandering cash grabs and lazy as fuck songwriting. Dan + Shay kinda fall in the middle. These Tennessee country darlings (Dan actually is from Pittsburgh PA funny side note) come off as a sweeter Florida Georgia Line with more pop flavors than folk and country, but still have enough twang and acoustic guitars to fit comfortably in the pop-country genre.

The album starts with Good Things, which is a mid tempo sunny song with a pleasant vibe and some sweet lyrics. The instrumentation is lush and sparkling, a decent song to start off the album. The rest of the tracks here are mostly inoffensive, but I will say hearing these kinds of tracks like You and Glad You Exist is refreshing from the typical Bro-Country toxicity that usually pervades love songs or songs about girls in general. There are a few questionably hokey tracks, and I feel that vocally these guys have near identical registers and inflections so it's hard to tell them apart. In fact they end up sounding more like Gary LeVox of Rascal Flatts just layered on top of himself than two distinct singers. Which was distracting for me.

The only other song I outright dislike is their single 10,000 hours (which waited for the penultimate track thankfully). I've said it before about this song, but lyrically it makes no sense and the addition of Bieber as a third vocalist is a head scratcher, but his presence isn't the worst part (or even anywhere near being bad, he actually does well imo). It's just a vapid plug into the pop charts and nothing more, and honestly probably should have stayed off this record, but I can see why they probably wanted to include it to push sales and streams.

The album ends with a sleepy ballad, and ba-bam that's the record.

It wasn't horribly offensive, and the runtime is tight enough that it didn't feel too long, it was just mainly forgettable. It didn't move me one way or the other too far, so a middle of the road rating is what it gets. If you enjoy this kind of thing, and Dan + Shay just get you going, then by all means pick up Good Things. You could probably do better though.