Dwight's Used Records
The second CD that was pulled out of the 266 CD pile was Dwight Yoakam’s album titled Dwight’s Used Records. (Yes, I really do listen to everything!) The TL;DR summary is that it’s a cover CD where he “deep country fries” a lot of hits other musicians have performed.
Here’s the long version: I couldn’t concentrate on some of the songs. It wasn’t a clear country album throughout the CD to me because I know most of the cover songs on this album pretty well. I couldn’t hear “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” without hearing ZZ Top in my head. Same with the “Loco-Motion” and hearing Kylie Minogue’s 80’s take instead. He does sing every song on the album very well, and carries through all the different musical variations fairly adeptly. His voice is up to the musical challenges of each song, and I think he does knock the adaptations of the original country songs way out of the ballpark. His notes are always held at a good solid pitch and aren’t screeched out as many of the country wannabees try and pass off as authentic singing.
Fair warning – Yoakam pulls everything into deep country music on this album. This isn’t the popular-mainstream-Taylor Swift-crossover kind of cover stuff. If you get the CD, expect country music.
My favorite track was “Mercury Blues”, and I definitely would listen to “Miner’s Prayer” and “Paradise” again.
Having said all that above, it’s good overall. I’ll rate it a solid 3.7 out of 5. It was an entertaining listen, and showed Yoakam can stretch pretty far in different directions while keeping his core sound intact.
You can get Dwight’s Used Records
