Search - Trisha Yearwood :: Jasper County (Featuring Duet With Garth Brooks)

"Seeing " Jasper County

T. Yap | Sydney, NSW, Australia | 02/09/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Prime Cuts: Love Will Always Win (Duet with Garth Brooks), Tryin' to Love You, Georgia Rain



Instead of reinventing her wheel, Yearwood returns to her mother milk that brought her first to fame. Reuniting with original producer Garth Fundis, there's an incumbent sound that brings to mind her earlier "Hearts in Armor" days, with its share of soaring ballads, thick Delta blues, swaggering rockers and stately propulsive pop tunes. Despite, her meticulous attempts to record and re-record until this CD sheens with satisfaction taking an unprecedented four years in the making, "Jasper County" has not live up to its commercial hype. After making up to a modest number 15, lead single "Georgia Rain" has slip out of the charts obliviously, while the followup "Tryin' to Love You" only hovers around the top 50s. Being as enterprising as she is (after all she's married to the king of marketing Garth Brooks), "Jasper Country" gets another lease of life boasting one bonus track "Love Will Always Win," a duet with hubby Garth Brooks.



Without a doubt, the killer fare here are the ballads with "Love Will Always Win" being the stagger. A full-blown love ballad about the formidable power of love, "Love Will Always Win" finds the couple scintillatingly interweaving soaring declarations with soft whispers of heartfelt devotions. This is a definite event of the year record. Another gem is keyboard-led "Georgia Rain"-a painstaking memoir of a lost love told with such acerbic details as though they were lifted straight out of a person's diary. Such a bitter-sweet texture gets a reprise again on the Bill Boyd and Beth Neilsen Chapman penned "Tryin' to Love You" (first recorded by Chapman before). "Tryin' to Love You," an acoustic ballad about with the protagonist trapped in the entanglements of love that has reached its dead end, is soul searching and heart grabbing.



While "Who Inverted the Wheel" is a bluesy ballad with a wrinkle of the sassiness of Yearwood's top 5 hit "Wrong Side of Memphis." This time again finding our protagonist bemoaning the fact that if wheels, asphalt and cars were not invented, her paramour would not have left. Rocking with a large dose of country soul is "Sweet Love," this Craig Wiseman/Tia Sellers composition is perhaps this CD's most commercial uptempo track. Though the rest of the songs are a tilted towards being lyrically rich exploring the intricate sides of love, many of which are short-changed in terms of their melodies. Not that they are bad, but don't expect another "She's in Love with the Boy," "XXXs and OOOs" or "I Wanna Go Too Far."



Like her peers Lorrie Morgan and Sara Evans, Yearwood will not settle for those non-descript bland "I-heard-it-all-before" type of love songs. Rather, when she sings the Georgian rain, you can smell the first scent of the summer down pour, you can see feel the passion of a long-lost love and you can feel yourself being transported into Jasper County where you'll fall in love again with a lady who is not circumscribed in her outpourings of her emotions. In short, this is life, this is the real thing."

Love Will Always Win

Jake Z | Canada | 02/07/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a re-release of Trisha Yearwood's 2005 album JASPER COUNTY, her first album in 4 years. It features a brand new duet with husband Garth Brooks entitled "Love Will Always Win", which was previously recorded by Faith Hill on an import album in 1998/1999. It's a pleasant duet sure to please. The rest of the cd is great. The first single "Georgia Rain" is classic Yearwood, so is the second single "Trying To Love You". Both sported beautiful videos, but "Trying to Love You" failed to catch on at radio, and they gave up on the song in favor of the new duet with Garth. The rest of the songs are a mixture of ballads, uptempos, and more. The ballads are especially nice, like "Try Me" with Ronnie Dunn from Brooks & Dunn, "Standing Out In A Crowd", "Gimme The Good Stuff". She does a cover of Anthony Smith's "Who Invented The Wheel", which opens up the cd, and another highlight is "River of You", both which show her tremendous voice and have a bluesy sound. Other songs include the uptempos "It's Alright", "Pistol", and "Baby Don't You Let Go", and the bluesy "Sweet Love". A great cd from one of the best female vocalists in country music!"