Whatever else Bruce Springsteen imagined his legacy might be, he can’t have predicted it would be to inspire a generation of soppy country-rock songwriters who have dumbed down his blue-collar poetry, diluted it with Everydude self-pity and sobbed all the way to the bank.
But that seems to be the formula that has propelled Zach Bryan and, especially, Luke Combs to global fame and, in the latter’s case, two nights at Slane. The lesson is that the more average you make something, the greater its appeal – a grim moral but one that has turned Combs into one the most popular songwriters of his generation.
His latest album, The Way I Am, is the worst sort of all-American troubadour parody, a grab bag of Everyman cliches mixed into the sorriest country-rock schmaltz. The best songwriters know when they’re in danger of going over the top, but enough is apparently never enough for the North Carolinian, whose tiresome new LP runs down the clock with a patience-testing 22 tracks.
That’s a lot of music, but none of the songs appears to have much to say beyond the fact that Combs sees himself as an ordinary dude wrestling with man-of-the-street issues. He is haunted by a memory of an ex on Miss You Here and looks back on the moment in which he became a man on A Man Was Born (a process involving drinking, fighting and acquiring his first car). Inevitably there is a tune called Wish Upon a Whiskey (which actually features some of his most vivid lyrics: “Jack Daniel’s, black label / Empty diningroom table”).
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Heartland rock isn’t the only influence. Combs also draws on the lighter side of country: forget about his inaugural punch-up; here’s a songwriter whose life was transformed forever when he heard Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus for the first time. Guitars twang, steel pedals do whatever steel pedals do and Combs fires off his lyrics with the gruff ease of someone who could sing Achy Breaky Heart in his sleep – and may have in fact done just that.
Yet you can see why he has broken big beyond the country-rock mother lode. As well as veering, lyrically, in a Springsteenesque direction – albeit minus the empathy, wit, insight or social commentary – his breakout was a more or less straight-down-the-line cover of Fast Car, Tracy Chapman’s coffeehouse classic, the one moment so far in his career where he managed to keep his bro-next-door persona in check and actually sing from the heart.
Combs’s street smarts have extended to touring choices that have seen him share festival bills with such noted country figures as Backstreet Boys and Good Charlotte. In other words, he understands that his future lies beyond country rock while he’s mindful that he wants to keep the audience that came up with him on side.
All of those boxes are ticked with devastating efficiency across a project that features a memorable duet with Alison Krauss, in Ever Mine, but otherwise ruthlessly walks the line between mainstream-rock album and crooning-from-the-heart country epic.
Combs knows what he’s good at, and The Way I Am will undoubtedly add to his appeal in advance of his Slane concerts in July. But as a project in its own right it’s as soulless as the inner workings of an AI bot, a hollowed-out parade of country caricatures and American-loner stereotypes that, long before the final track, exhaust any goodwill the newcomer might have.
Ultimately, he comes across an artist who has turned himself into a brand and whose music feels about as authentic as a cowboy hat bought at the airport duty-free.
