Review: Nashville Outlaws: A Tribute To Motley Crue

It would seem, according to a recent browsing of the Top 40 Country chart, that Country music is woefully one-note at the moment. I lay the blame squarely on a trashy trend known as "Bro Country", a wincingly awful hybrid blending Country with elements of Hip Hop, Hard Rock, and Pop. The performers are basically a bunch of indistinguishable douchey guys, whose choices in chain-walleted apparel are often one step away from Ed Hardy, singing about trucks, truck beds, headlights, rolled-down windows, painted-on jeans, Daisy Dukes, plenty of alcohol, moonlit makeouts, and sex on river beds beside old red dirt roads. Female singers have not been exempt from trying out their version of this anomaly, and though they are squarely in the minority, it's not an improvement. When your song lyric is basically a check list, it's not songwriting, it's Bro Country.

There’s also a pervasive trend of addressing females as "Girl", like it's an attractive thing to say to women who presumably have names, and it's not even close to the same way The Temptations sang "My Girl". Bro Country dudes are yelling out "Gurrl!" in a manner that Tarzan might if he knuckled his way into a honky tonk. Now, granted, Country music has a long history of stock subjects, as noted by Steve Goodman and John Prine in their classic song "You Never Even Called Me By My Name", which included Mom, being drunk, prison, rain, pickup trucks and trains. So it might seem that not much has changed, but it has. It's gotten a lot more cliched and dumbed down.

Witness if you will, Exhibit A. I know for sure that Hank didn't do it this way.

Over the years, there's been a ton of assorted tribute albums saluting individual bands and artists, as well as entire genres of music. They can vary in quality from being heartfelt and sublime, to feeling like it was slapped together with total disregard for any connection to truth. This past week saw the release of such a tribute album, and it's one that gives rise to the hope that Bro Country may have finally jumped the shark, as it inevitably will.

There's something about real cowboys that differentiates them from just another guy wearing a hat. Come to think of it, the same thing applies to bikers. There are two things that I've learned about real cowboys and real bikers. First, you cannot simply put on the clothes and be one of them. You have to earn it. The other thing is that both of those groups of people are willing to spend large sums of money on having a good time. That part may apply somewhat to the Bro Country lifestyle, but the first part negates all of it. Fake is fake, and that's the core of the problem I have with this disturbingly bogus tribute album. Perhaps because of all the cliches that Bro Country has adopted, there's a sense of falseness about it, like there's really nothing there underneath all the pretense.

"Nashville Outlaws: A Tribute to Motley Crue" is as false and contrived a project as I could ever imagine. There is absolutely nothing even remotely "outlaw" about any of the participants. Rascal Flatts? Leann Rimes? Former "Hootie", Darius Rucker? Cassadee Pope, from the TV talent show, The Voice? Even The Mavericks, who aren't a bad band at all, sound embarrassed to be there. Someone must have promised them "exposure".

Going by the roster, this project appears to be a total fabrication from the record companies' hellhole of a marketing department. Heck, even the music conglomerate that put this out is called Big Machine. They appear to own Nashville at the moment, as well as most of the artists on this album; to the point where it amounts to being a label sampler, so that should tell you something.

Also, the word "outlaw" apparently means not a damn thing anymore. Waylon, Cash, and Hank Sr. would be rolling in their crypts with laughter, making jokes about "I remember my first beer". Any current performers who truly are on the outer fringe of not only Country music, but other genres as well, should distance themselves from the term "outlaw" as quickly as possible, if this is what it has come to mean. That definitely includes our co-conspirators and subjects of this musical travesty, Motley Crue themselves!

I would wager with confidence that back in the 80's and 90's, absolutely none of the performers on this album would have anything to do with the likes of Motley Crue, who provided good reason to lock up your daughters, your wife, your liquor and prescriptions, the dog, and probably any livestock too. In their day, The Crue were outlaws; Les Enfants Terribles for real. Now they're just tired old survivors who are in the midst of one final tour, which a friend of mine referred to as a new version of "Weekend At Bernie's". Also, they're inexplicably allowing Alice Cooper to open for them. Alice may be an old survivor himself, but he ain't tired, and is reportedly blowing Motley Crue right off their own stage, night after night. Can you imagine your band having to follow Alice Cooper? That's insane. Who made that decision?

Truly, the album title should be your first clue to the deception. Anyone who knows anything at all about how tightly controlled and highly conservative the Nashville music business machine is, knows that "Nashville Outlaws" is as contradictory a term as jumbo shrimp. Maybe that's their out; they're telling us right up front that it's a sham.

Normally at this point in an article, I would provide a streaming track or two for your listening enjoyment. That means that I would have to buy the music myself, either hard copy or digital, because that's the right thing to do. In this unique case, I am publicly refusing to spend even one thin dime on this stupid release, and I highly recommend that you, dear reader, follow suit. The album might be good for a grim chuckle, but that's no reason to justify it with any monetary response. If you must subject your ears to this cacophony, here's a link to Amazon, where you can check it out for yourselves. There's also a video, if you have the stomach for it.

I can't recall the last time a collection of cover songs got under my skin like this one has. Unless this really is your sort of thing, you should avoid this album to the point where it won't even sell in the cutout bins, which is the fate it richly deserves. Shame on all involved parties for foisting this mess on the unsuspecting public.