At least his roughly 1 mio. followers on Instagram are delighted, that he didn't let them wait too long for the release of one of the most anticipated albums of the new year. After all it was already back on October 10, 2022 that Hardy had announced his second studio album by letting everybody know: "It's going to be a half country and a half rock album." On the very same day he put out the unusual title cut for the project: 'the mockingbird & THE CROW.
As of January 20, 2023 the new project has finally been released! With a total of 17 songs it is actually not only in size, but also by it's theme a double album, the focal point of which is made up by the title cut. It represents the watershed between the first half of country and the second part of rock songs, while itself also consisting out of 2 parts, just like the project which got it's name from it. Written together with Brett Tyler and Jordan Schmidt the song is an undisputed highlight of Hardy's career so far.
In the first, potentially autobiographical half of the track, Hardy comes to grips with his own beginnings in a heteronomous music industry that dictates his personal as well as his artistic approaches.
like Friday nights and headlights on some backroad red dirt
and how Mississippi's homе.
I've always been a mockingbird,
that shirt, this hat,
don't forget to smile,
kiss the ring once in a while.
Don't say those words,
put down your finger,
throw in a slow love song or two.
Then at half time, the midtempo country biography song -in it's original version 7 minutes long according to Hardy- transitions into a brash rock song, refusing to be something it/he isn't, by ostentatiously rising the middle finger. Yet not taking himself too seriously, by replying with coarse voice to the warnings of the industry that things don't work like that: Well, tell that to twenty five thousand rednecks with my dumb face on their T-shirt!
It is not difficult to see, that Hardy likes to be outspoken. And at the same time never lets somebody else put words in his mouth, since he has been a songwriter on each song he has released so far. Not a given in Nashville, the city with the highest distribution density of professional songwriters in the world no doubt. That's why one will miss out on an important part of the artist Hardy when disregarding his song lyrics.
Indeed they do not tell much fundamentally new. But the way they do, is what does! Typically by applying new angles to old topics. Such as in the song 'Jack', when the substance itself gets personified and hence brings a completely new perspective to the issue of alcohol addiction.
A concept that Hardy also brings to the first song ('beer') of the new project. The songwriter statement he puts forth with it is, that beer is not a problematic beverage, but can rather be a lifelong, true friend, one can share memories with, such as when you brought one of me out to her old man, 'fore you asked to put that rock on her hand. In other words, a sonically and lyrically much tamer version of 'Jack', the latter of which resides on the rock-side of the album.
With the excellent 'happy', Hardy goes one step further. On this reflective song he is not only the sole songwriter, but this time a feeling gets the treatment of personification. As the title indicates, it is the feeling of being happy in life. And it gives the artist not only a chance to ponder why we frequently make our own lives more difficult than needed, but also an opportunity to appeal for more positivity in the world out there.
Happy don't like alcohol, bitterness or cruel at all,
but when he hears love sing through the wall, well, Happy sings along.
waiting on a humble epiphany that your grass might be greener
and Happy's never liked the view of "I ain't good enough" Avenue
'Cause you can bet if you don't like you, you don't like Happy neither.
Likewise well done is the song 'screen', which asks, why more and more people forget to really live - by gazing on the screen of a mobile or tv-set, instead of opening up to the other screen [door] by watching a sunset or thunderstorm from the porch.
Keep it in your pocket at the rock show.
Just give it a try,
every battery does but your memory will never die.
'drink one for me' delivers another unexptected perspective. Because the song does not talk about a friends' meeting that one cannot join and therefore asks them to have a drink on his behalf, as one might expect. Instead it reminds one of the song 'Give Heaven Some Hell' from Hardys first album. For the voice in 'drink one for me' comes from heavens above, from someone who wishes life to go on for those left behind. And without being too somber, the bridge even adds a wink of positive humor:
'cause I didn't know that last beer
was the last beer of my life.
He said, "They'll be fine without you.
Just give them a couple years."
But if there's one way to keep my memory alive,
till the day y'all meet me here it's:
"I ain't talking politics", Hardy sings on 'red', featuring Morgan Wallen. A song which at first sight seems to be just that, by placing the color of the republican party center stage. But as it turns out the color only functions as a hook for small-town topics, such as the color of the home team, the bricks of the town hall and the can color of the favorite beer in town.
Yet, a subtle ambiguity remains, just as with any good country song lyric - and Hardy sure knows well how to play this card. An effect that is really not all unintentional, as he admits in an interview with tennessean.com: "There's a ton of small-town [stereotypes] that we blended with a nod to
politics, but we wrap the thing in conversation about people who fight
for our country. Then, in the chorus, we mention that 'we all bleed
red.'" Hence emphasizing underlying common ground, that brings together all people regardless of political leanings.
Already on the way into the Top-10 of the radio (Billboard Country Airplay) chart is the current murder ballad single and duet with Lainey Wilson 'wait in the truck'.
There is no doubt, that track number 10 ('Sold Out') kicks off the rock part of the project. Released already back in March of 2022, Hardy showcases himself on it as a proud redneck and country til I'm dead, emphasized by unmistakeable metal-riffs taking no prisoners.
The redneck-image is one that he has repeatedly focussed on, reaching back to 2018, when one of his first songs by the title of 'REDNECKER got released, with its name coming from an unexpected word play: My town’s smaller than your town, and my truck's louder than your truck, you might think that you're redneck, but I'm rednecker than you!
It sounds exaggerated and cliché, when Hardy names an entire song on the new album after a Springfield rifle cartridge ('.30-06'). In it he tells the story of not minding, that his wife is getting rid of his gun at the pawn shop, because he has more than one backup hidden at home anyways. However in the end there is obviously enough importance in the topic, that he dedicates a whole other banger to buck shooting: 'KILL SH!T TILL I DIE'.
The more melodic 'I AIN'T IN THE COUNTRY NO MORE' tells of a first trip to the big city with its ashpalt, dirt and homeless folks, quietly suggesting -without explicitly saying it- what most other country songs constantly do: how much better life in the country is.The first part of the chorus of the 'RADIO SONG' sounds sonically and lyrically like a typical commercial country radio hit. However only until the moment, when Jeremy McKinnon of the Post-Hardcore-Band
A Day To Remember joins in. That's when the wheat gets sorted from the chaff.
"I'm a rеdneck, there's a shotgun in my shotgun sеat, 'cause if it flies, it dies, yeah, the redneck life is the only life for me", sings Hardy in the final 'REDNECK SONG', written with Andy Albert, Nick Donley and Zach Abend. Verse by verse it describes hillbilly truisms as one would probably expect from a true redneck-song. Not until admitting in the very last verse: And to you I might never not be just a stereotype ...
'the mockingbird & THE CROW', produced by Joey Moi, is an unusual album, that sticks all the way through to its concept of musical duality. It starts off with a cover shot, that is made up by two different Hardy pictures and it ends with the spelling of all country songs in lower case letters and using loud upper cases for the rock songs. Both genres on the proejct move in their respective well beaten paths and yet are able to create something new, whenever the meet crossroads or run into each other.
"In 2015, I was playing a songwriter round with a tip jar on the front of the stage. Nobody who played on that stage that night had a hit. We just played original songs, and we might’ve made $10 in tips. But one person wrote ‘QUIT’ on a napkin, and they put it in that tip jar", Hardy remembered, when receiving the Academy of Country Music (ACM) award for Songwriter of the Year last September. "Tonight, that ‘QUIT’ napkin will be sitting right beside this (expletive)."
That's why 'the mockingbird & THE CROW' is first and foremost a signature project for Hardy as a songwriter. In other words, an artist who is not only capable of attracting attention with his music, but even more so with a choice of words in his lyrics, that too often leave the listener in limbo, whether the ambiguity comes by chance or is yet intentional after all.
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