Scotty McCreery's 'Rise and Fall' redefines his love of country music's traditions
"You have to work hard in the dark to shine in the light."
That statement made by the late NBA legend Kobe Bryant encapsulates why "American Idol" winner and newly inducted Grand Ole Opry cast member Scotty McCreery's just-released sixth album, "Rise and Fall," is the best of his career.
In conversation with The Tennessean, the North Carolina native discusses the values that have strengthened his resolve to emerge at the genre's pinnacle after surviving its upswings and downturns.
McCreery's star-making timelessness resurrects itself
McCreery was 17 when he auditioned for "Idol," performing Josh Turner's "Your Man." The moment introduced him to country music's universe. After winning the show, he sold 2 million albums and 3 million singles before country's mainstream fell in love with hip-hop and rock's most braggadocios values and boisterous sounds.
For the better part of the first five years of his career, McCreery was almost perpetually framed under the gaze of a teenage moment where his exceptional talents reigned supreme.
In 2016, he made a happenstance appearance at the Grand Ole Opry while searching for a new label home and performed "Five More Minutes," a song about the loss of his grandfather. The moment went viral. two years later and now signed to Thirty Tigers, he began a run of five consecutive No. 1 singles ("Five More Minutes" included) on country radio.
'Rise and Fall'
McCreery's gift as a country traditionalist melds well with his age — 30, married, with a child, and now comfortably able to sit on his back porch writing songs in the North Carolina mountains.
America's emergence from the COVID-19 quarantine and society's desire to embrace intimate, reflective moments have blended with McCreery's ability to fly under the radar just enough to emerge familiar, but truly older and wiser.
To wit, his latest hit, "Cab in a Solo," has become his fastest-rising song to reach No. 1.
The song is the latest example of how McCreery, now fully matured into his 17-year-old tenor-baritone, has added over a decade of songwriting experience in country music's mainstream to become a well-rounded genre star.
He's at a place where he's beyond "chasing trends and sounds." Instead, he's making records whose success is not judged by their charting position but by what feels "good and fun" as measured by his own standards.
Why was 'Cab in a Solo' a No. 1 hit?
When talking with McCreery about his standards, they are now defined by being invited to the Grand Ole Opry by Garth Brooks, inducted by Josh Turner, and inspired by the careers of Country Music Hall of Famers Randy Travis, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton and Ronnie Milsap.
Being more completely dialed in than ever to those notions yielding critical and chart-topping success is important.
"Rise and Fall" excels because, akin to artists like Milsap, the record is comprised of autobiographical stories and those that highlight McCreery's evolving work as a song stylist.
Listen to "Cab in a Solo" and McCreery sings about watching two shadows steal a kiss while he is dejectedly sitting in his pickup truck alone and drinking an expensive, 25-year-old Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon from a red Solo cup.
"Drinking a cab in Solo, solo in the cab of my truck" hits because there are many metaphors in the song, country music's culture and life's emotional journey joining forces.
Cutting the rarest and thinnest tightrope of emotion between Milsap's "Stranger in My House" and Toby Keith's "Red Solo Cup" sends the song on a slowly inebriating journey to the gut of heartbreak.
"Country music's all about hooks that make you want to sit down and write the rest of the song," says McCreery.
Embracing career-redefining success
"No Country for Old Men" stamps McCreery deeper into how well he, as a now-seasoned songwriter, can hone his art into mirroring the work of artists as diverse as Patsy Cline and Johnny Paycheck.
For the performer, his deepest embrace yet of the country industry's legacies arrives from a place of natural effortlessness that highlights his "old soul" and desire to, as artists of yesteryear often did, create sounds that expand into America's timeless and most defining musical traditions.
"Porch" feels like an Appalachian-mountain, late-afternoon and Yeti cooler-accompanied guitar pull. It continues his tethering to classic country sounds. The same goes for "Slow Dance for Me," which feels like a night where a fiddle and steel-guitar-aided country slow jam like Conway Twitty's "Slow Hand" or Keith Whitley's "When You Say Nothing at All" gets played after the kids are put to bed.
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McCreery's sixth album finds him 15 years into a career he will have for the rest of his life.
The performer has finally embraced the totality of what he dreams, being realized, encapsulates.
"Playing music for five or 50,000 country music fans allows me to remember what it was like when I was obsessed with talking to my family and friends about our favorite country artists and burning CDs of their music for each other. Making the kind of music that people who love — or are learning to love — country music can stand on (as an authentic representation of the genre) is necessary more than ever.
"I will be 80, singing 'Five More Minutes' and 'Cab in a Solo' at the Grand Ole Opry. It's a humbling moment of pride for me to have discovered where I stand in country music's past, present and future," continues McCreery.
"These days, I'm thankful that I can write songs that express how good I'm feeling and how much fun I'm having. I hope the people appreciate that."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: 'American Idol' winner Scotty McCreery releases 'Rise and Fall'
