The term ballad does not really appear in his musical vocabulary. At least until now. For about 10 years he has been constantly delivering top-10 hits and his third studio album from 2016 could serve as an image brochure to explain, what Tim Hicks is all about. Because it is not only titled 'Shake These Walls', but also contains tracks such as 'Let's Just Drink', 'Forever Rebels' and 'Don't Make It a Love Song'.
Right from the beginning his trademark were rock guitars, pounding drums and arena-ready choruses, which helped him become one of the commercially most successful artists in the Canadian country music genre. A success which reflected in plenty of award nominations, gold- and platinum certifications, 18 top-10 and 2 number-1 hits in Canada.
A success-story which came to a screeching halt during the pandemic. "I was in England getting ready to play The O2 arena, and when Uncle Justin said all Canadians must come home, I turned to my guitar player and said, he’s talking about us," Tim Hicks told the halifaxpresents.com in an interview. "We had a lot of momentum that had culminated at that moment, and then it was all taken away instantly."
But when things started getting back to normal in 2022, Tim Hicks not only returned to Canadian stages with a new tour (aptly titled Zero To Sixty Tour), but also caught up on his C2C-Festival performance in the UK last March. Apart from that, he made use of the time at hand to ponder his next musical steps.
When he released his fifth full-length studio album in September of 2022 and proudly called it his most well-rounded project to date, he had to face the question, why he believed so. His simple answer was: "Because we had time."
Apart from 6 new tracks the album titled "Talk To Time" also contains 4 songs released over the past one and a half years. Among them 'Whiskey Does', a top-10 single, which for the first time may be referred to as a real ballad. In particular the Reimagined Version, which can be found as some sort of extra at the end of the project. Written by Tim Hicks together with Deric Ruttan and Monty Criswell, the song is not -as one might probably suspect- about a whiskey-accompanied party, but surprisingly about a bad relationship.
"I think everyone’s been in a relationship at some point in their life that’s maybe not the best relationship for you, but there’s something there that keeps you going back to the well to ‘try again.’ This time the singer decides his love interest does all the same things to him as whiskey does and he’s decided to choose the whiskey over the toxic relationship," Tim Hicks describes the theme of the song to canadianbeats.ca.
Get me drunk when you kiss my lips,
get me lost in the burn and all that smooth?
Hey, you wanna make me late for work?
Make me forget how bad love hurts?
whiskey does that too,
Yeah, whiskey does that too!
yeah, whiskey might not love me, but neither do you.
The video for the song gets a sequel with the video for the follow-up single 'Dodge Out Of Hell', sonically once again a powerful uptempo-track which has the Tim Hicks trademark stamped all over it. However, if one takes the time to lend an ear to the lyrics, one will discover a deeper topic hidden underneath its shiny surface. One that deals with alcohol abuse, domestic violence and a dramatic getaway from the respective relationship. And only then, one will also realize that the title is not a reference to the truck.
'Dodge Out Of Hell' lets Tim Hicks stay true to his style, while adding a new and deeper element to it, and which in the end lets the song climb all the way to number 10 on the Canadian Billboard Country Charts.
Hе's always gettin' lit, it's her turn to light it up.
Droppin' matches on thе mattress she threw gasoline on,
by the time he stumbles in, she'll be fifty miles gone .
On February 23, 2023 Tim Hicks eventually released the title track of the project along with a video as his current single. 'Talk To Time' clearly is the highlight of the album. A song which is not only catchy, but the lyrics of which also tell a thoughtful story about life and its evanescence.
It is the first single without Tim Hicks contributing as a songwriter, which initially caused some scepticism on the artists' side, even though songwriters Josh Osborne, Ross Copperman and Shane McAnally belong to the commercially most successful ones in Nashville.
"It was written by heavyweight guys down in Nashville, and I don’t
even know how it came to me other than my manager sent me a link to some
songs and said I should check them out," he says in a conversation with halifaxpresents.com. "And when I heard the
demo, I remember saying that it was a great song, but not for me
because it was a little bit more pop country than I would typically put
out as I like to ride the rock line."
But when everybody told him, that the song would be recorded by someone else, if he didn't take the chance himself, he eventually was convinced. In the end the song became the title track for the album. The exceptionally well written piece reminisces 3 stages of life (childhood, early adulthood and the painfull memory of a broken relationship). Eventually we can only pose the question, why there is no mercy in time ...
I'd say, "Why you always flyin'?"
You say you're on my side,
but you ain't no friend of mine.
You don't do second chances,
I blame it all on you,
but it's me who's losin' track.
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