And they may even succeed, but theyвЂ™re still just Cheerios commercials.

These days even Cheerios commercials are trying to get you to cry. But when itвЂ™s peppered with references to smartphone pictures and cracking cold ones, it just feels plastic. ItвЂ™s good that at least an effort is being expended to find something better to talk about in songs for Cole Swindell than hooking up. Bro country artists just canвЂ™t get away from references to ice cold beer, broing down with the bros, and other crutch phrases and lyrical tropes that take what could be a pretty decent song, and give the listener the sense that the whole emotional aspect is simply pandering of a different style, rendering any impact as fairly shallow and short lived.ДЄgain, I donвЂ™t question any specific loss Cole Swindell has suffered, or his co-writer Ashley Gorley who apparently came up with the вЂњYou Should Be HereвЂќ title and concept. What issues arrive have to do with everything else in the song. ThatвЂ™s one of the reasons it makes such compelling subject matter in songs, and вЂњYou Should Be HereвЂќ strives to stir that sense of bereavement weвЂ™re all unfortunately acquainted with. Not to belittle the loss Cole Swindell has experienced in his life, but itвЂ™s something we all deal with. Take this new single from Cole Swindell just released called вЂњYou Should Be Here.вЂќ DonвЂ™t get me wrong, it is an improvement from previous output, but when you reach the bottom thereвЂ™s only one direction to go. So even though we might see the rhetoric heat up about how the music being churned out of the Bro factory is fortified with extra substance these days, itвЂ™s best to take a вЂњbelieve it when we see itвЂќ attitude. Even Chase Rice is out there saying his early music lacked substance, and to expect something deeper from him henceforth.Д«ut old habits die hard, and itвЂ™s easier to do a U-turn in a battleship than to retool Music RowвЂ™s songwriting consortium on the fly. Prove you can be an artist of substance, or you may not be long for this world post-Chris StapletonвЂ™s CMA wins.ДЄs scary of a proposition as this must be for Florida Georgia Line, so much so that Tyler Hubbard is out there sporting a man bun and the duo is trying to make an emotional ballad out of the vacuous single вЂњConfession,вЂќ think about if youвЂ™re Cole Swindell, whose dwelled solely in the wake of artists like Florida Georgia Line and Luke Bryan for his entire career. As we transition into 2016, you can anticipate the masters of Bro-Country filing into line to prove they have gravitas in the face of dwindling support for their party hardy dreck falling so quickly out of favor from the sheer frequency such narrow themes have cast over the last couple of years.

You should be here cole swindell