While everybody loves a bit of Dwight Yoakam now and again, European audiences have never taken to the wonky world of country music with quite as much gusto as our Stateside (kissin’) cousins. Sure, lash-batting honeys like Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift have ensured mainstream country will remain a gazillion dollar industry in the US for years to come, but the rest of us seem to manage perfectly well without.
California girl Colbie Caillat is an example of this asymmetrical country pop phenomenon. She’s sold two and a half million albums and ten million singles in the US, but we’re likely to mistake her for a third season cast member of The OC. In 2010, she won a Grammy for ‘Lucky’, a duet with Jason Mraz, which was barely heard on this side of the pond.
It’s with good reason that I mention curly chart-topper Taylor Swift in the same breath as Caillat – when America’s favourite overachiever heard Colbie’s debut release, she invited her to sing on her second album, a natural move given that both women possess an affinity for a dreamy lyric, a jolting melody and some gently-strummed guitar. Caillat is Swift’s West Cost equivalent – her older, flirtier, more beachswept counterpart – and if this prompts you to ask, ‘Who the fudge needs another Taylor Swift?’, remember that America does. In fact, America would happily welcome another dozen Swifts in varying shades of prom dresses with open arms.
One one hand, Caillat’s summery tunes are inarguably uplifting. On the other, it’s the kind of thing my Mam would like, so I’m biologically obliged to hate it. 26-year-old Colbie’s vocals are hardly remarkable (she purrs along like a de-sexed Katy Perry), but there’s none of the overwrought honky tonk gnawing that often goes hand-in-hand with the genre. The seamlessly upbeat ‘I Do’ is a whole lot of fun, and unlike the Lady Antebellums and the Sugarlands of this world, Caillat’s sentiment is always bearable. Sometimes, it’s even refreshing (“All I want is my dream life to be my real life”). Rapper Common’s inexplicable cameo on ‘Favourite Song’ is uncharacteristically breezy and although I still can’t imagine who dreamed up this bizarre collaboration, it somehow works. Everything else, aside from cheery single ‘Brighter Than The Sun’, is justifiably dismissible as schmaltz.
Like Swift, Caillat has ventured far from the hackneyed country music blueprint, making her girlish soft pop easy on the ear and very, very marketable. Best of all, she’s kept the bible-bashing at bay. That’s the clincher. If it’s a choice between Colbie Caillat and Carrie ‘Jesus, Take The Wheel’ Underwood, we’ll have the Californian, please.