CMT Blog: Archive

With this job, I've been fortunate to see almost every city in the U.S., and one of my top destinations so far has been Milwaukee. I was traveling for work and ended up going on a spontaneous late-night bar crawl, talking to the locals and drinking quite a few Miller High Lifes. It's a rather nondescript city -- except for the eye-popping art museum -- yet I felt like I could have found common ground with anybody on the next stool over. As a result, I feel a natural affinity for Slaid Cleaves' "Hard to Believe," a catchy ode to the beer-fueled city that appears on his new album, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away. The narrator reminds me of that guy at the bar that wants to tell you his life story and then goes on to tell you what the hell is wrong with the world. It helps that Cleaves has an engaging, conversational singing voice because it softens the blow of an unhappy ending. Wait, what? Country songs that reflect the down times, too? Hey, I'll drink to that.