This album features 13 new recordings written by songwriters that will be familiar to Pride’s fanbase as well as tracks penned by such fellow Country music stars as Eddy Raven and Richie McDonald (Lonestar).
Except For You, the lead-off single from the album was written by Ben Peters, who wrote the Pride hits Kiss An Angel Good Morning, It’s Gonna Take A Little Bit Longer,, Burgers & Fries” and More To Me. The album also includes a rendition of Resting Place, a song that topped the Gospel music charts for the Wilburns in the late 1990s.
Review
On his first collection of new material in eight years, Charley Pride sounds
much as he always has. If you're looking for any touches of modernism, you won't
find them, except maybe in the lyrics of “America the Great,” the tune that
opens the album. If the disgruntled Tea Party crowd is looking for a theme song,
“America the Great” could be it. It opens with a snare drum tapping out a
martial marching rhythm and sounds like an anthem to the worst kind of
conservative values. It references Jefferson and Kennedy, but pines more for
values those icons feared, including prayer in the schools, “family values,”
and putting the Ten Commandments in the lobby of a courthouse. Its chauvinistic
feel mars an otherwise pleasant album, although there is a thread of mindless
nostalgia running through several tunes here that almost makes them parodies of
themselves. “Hickory Hollow Times & County News” and “Guntersville
Gazette” both recall the days when newsprint was the major source of the news,
not a band thing, but the tunes trade on formulaic images to make their
point – high-school sports scores, births, deaths, divorces, and in the case
of “Guntersville Gazette,” an old sweetheart marrying her new beau. He
sounds better on the straightforward love songs. “The Bottom Line”
celebrates long-term love with a Cajun rock backbeat and “You Touched My
Life” and “Except for You” are the kind of mellow romantic ballads Pride
excels at, while “The Choices She Made” celebrates the sacrifices
working-class women often make for their men. “Cajun Party Time,” the one
uptempo tune, is a hoot and a welcome respite from the album's mostly serious
fare. Pride is in fine voice throughout. He still has a youthful tone and
sincere delivery that make even the most tired clichés ring true, and his love
songs are still delivered with a comforting glow. j. poet – AllMusic