New staff in tow, we counted down the 40 best singles and 20 best albums of the year over at Country Universe, ending with Taylor Swift”s freshly produced “Mean” and the Pistol Annies” searing Hell on Heels, respectively.
My personal favorite single of the year –which came in at #5– feels more like a country song than it sounds like one. Check out my write-up for “Colder Weather”below, as well as a video of the Zac Brown Band performing a powerful acoustic version with some famous pals a few months ago.
“Colder Weather,” Zac Brown Band
A piano, a wanderer’s tale and killer vocals are the bones of this song– none of which are unique to country music. And yet, “Colder Weather” pleads like the best country songs, hurts like the loneliest of country stories. It serves as an elegant reminder that while casinotives country music is sometimes marked by a fiddly sparkle, it can also turn up in the form of pure emotion – and how Brown emotes. His performance is both soulful and skillful, embodying the rambler’s spectrum of emotions with chilling accuracy – longing, regret, defeat, hunger –, right down to the final line that rings hauntingly hollow: “It’s a shame about the weather / But I know soon we’ll be together / And I can’t wait til then.”