CHRIS CAGLE > My Life’s Been a Country Song

There’s an interesting record lurking beneath the callowness of Chris Cagle’s My Life’s Been a Country Song. Ian Hunter would remove his sunglasses to write something as stately and well-turned as “Keep Me from Loving You,” which casts Cagle as an underachiever on the make.Label: Capitol Nashville
[Rating: 3 Stars]

There’s an interesting record lurking beneath the callowness of Chris Cagle’s My Life’s Been a Country Song. Ian Hunter would remove his sunglasses to write something as stately and well-turned as “Keep Me from Loving You,” which casts Cagle as an underachiever on the make. “You made As and Bs, I was Cs and Ds,” he sings. “What Kinda Gone” parses the end of a romance, while the up tempo “Little Sundress” throws in a guitar figure straight out of Peter Townshend’s “Baba O’Riley” and plants Cagle at the beach, where he admires a “golden Tropicana tan.” My Life’s Been a Country Song is a little shallow, but Scott Hendricks’ production adds mandolin and organ to what’s essentially a pop record. This is an accomplished piece of commercial formalism-if his life’s been a song, he’s spent a lot of it at a shopping mall.