Triple Shot of… ‘Beginning of Things’
One of my favorite things about being a music fan is that every person has their own unique circumstances that draw them to the music they enjoy. My experience with Charlie Worsham and his music is that he opened for Kip Moore on his acoustic tour a few years back. He played a combination of songs from his debut record as well as this one, The Beginning of Things. Ever since, I’ve been hooked! This is why openers are so important for a live music experience, because you get to be exposed to brand new artists that you may never have found out about in any other way.
The Low Down
Overall, for those who don’t know Worsham, he’s been a steady presence in Nashville for the last decade. He’s one of the most respected guys in the business and has wrote songs with and played on records for the likes of Eric Church, Kip Moore, Dierks Bentley, Luke Combs, and many, many more. This record is the second in Worsham’s discography and it’s one of my most underrated albums of the 2010’s.
While Worsham is more known for his collaborations with others on their projects, The Beginning of Things is a project that helped Worsham to grow his own supporting cast. From the producers Frank Lidell and Eric Masse (Miranda Lambert’s pre-Wildcard records) to many well known songwriters like Ryan Tyndell, Luke Dick, Shane McAnally, Jeremy Spillman, and Brett Cobb, this album packs a ton of punch in the collaboration department. The production across the board is pretty fantastic, and Charlie’s quick wit and humor translates well in a lot of moments on this record. The details in the writing also keeps the stories fresh and different than anything else put out into the mainstream in country music in 2017. So let’s go into my three picks off this record!
“Please People Please”
The first of three picks, and the first real song of Beginning of Things, “Please People Please” is the perfect start to this record. After a more mainstream debut record with Rubberband in 2013, and a minor radio hit with “Could it Be”, Worsham found himself kind of lost in the Nashville cycle. After 4 years in between records, Worsham forged his own path and “Please People Please” shows that going forward, he’s going to do things unapologetically his way from now on because you can’t make everybody happy.
The song has the double entendre of the word ‘please’, where he’s pleading with them, saying “Please, stop being people pleasers” as well as saying that you can’t ‘please’ everybody that you’re trying to.
The energy is the song is different from what we had typically seen from Worsham and the hurrying nature of the track gives the appearance of a guy who’s been through the ringer trying to make everybody happy except himself. It’s a good life lesson for all the people pleasers out there. Also, the guitar picking into the bridge is one of my favorite instrumental moments on this record.
Favorite Lyric: “Even Jesus was preachin' on the mountainside/Tryna teach us about love, we went and crucified him/It only goes to show, someone's always gotta take offence”
“Old Time’s Sake”
Something that country music is not lacking in is ‘songs about guy meeting a girl at a bar’. “Old Time’s Sake” is a song about just that, but a better take than your typical ‘flirty glance across the bar’ hook up later that night track. In this spin, the narrator acknowledges that cliché and turns it around to say, “Hey, lets do it differently this time” by not hooking up immediately like people used to (for old time’s sake"). It’s another nice turn of phrase in the songwriting that I adore.
Sonically, the sparse acoustic driven track is extremely pretty sounding and works. It feels like you’re watching a movie of the story that’s unfolding. It is also probably the best vocal moments from Worsham on this project. It’s sang so tenderly that it just clicks with the rest of the song and makes you hope that the narrator (and who is he going out with ) comes out with a good, honest, and healthy relationship. But maybe that’s just the hopeless romantic in me, haha.
Favorite Lyric: “If I had a nickel/For every George Dickel/Silver-tongued promise/Made in this bar/We'd be sittin' and sippin'/On somethin' expensive/Makin' a killin' off desperate hearts”
“Take Me Home”
This is the song that really made me look into Worsham’s music, after he played it for us while opening up for Kip Moore in that Akron, OH show years ago. It’s everything you could ask for in a Charlie Worsham song. It’s perhaps the anti-thesis to “Old Time’s Sake” as the narrator is in a bar and had far too many of whatever he was drinking. It’s a humorous take that let’s Worsham have some fun lyrically. The narrator as drunk as he is, is mixing up his words and trying to get through the night at his favorite local drinking establishment. It’s full of verbal miscues, including (but not limited to) getting all his words jumbled up, hitting on women (unsuccessfully), and ridiculous questions you can only ask when you’re in a drunker state of mind.
All in all, it’s a really fun song that plays off of purposely messing up the words coming out of a drunk person’s mouth. The non-seriousness of it adds a certain charm to the record.
Favorite Lyric: “Well if a drunk mans says what a sober man thinks/Then right now I think I'm thinkin' out loud a lot”
So this is the first installment of my ‘Triple Shot of…"‘ series. It’s fun going back through some of my favorite records and seeing what made me enjoy them in the first place. Also might give me the chance to go listen to other albums that I hadn’t gotten a chance to listen to and report back, without having to discuss the whole record. I really love highlighting the best tracks a record has to offer!
I linked the album below, and as always if you have any requests for future installments, hit me up on Twitter!
