Toby Keith - "Boomtown"

[StevePulaski]

Boomtown (1995)
By: Toby Keith

Rating: ★★★

Toby Keith's sophomore effort Boomtown, released barely a year after the release of his eponymous debut album, opens with one of the saddest contemporary country songs I know, so sad you think it was written by George Jones and sung with a yodel by Hank Williams. The song is "Who's That Man," about a man admiring what we believe is his neighborhood, remarking how the road was recently redone and how he always makes a left to get to his destination. It isn't until he says he fights back tears with a smile when he drives by a specific home, pointing out his yard, his dog, and his kids, and his wife, but questions who that man is, who is now running his life. The man is divorced and drives through the neighborhood to witness his old family's prosperous life without him.

Just writing and reflecting on the song made my eyes well with tears, and it's the kind of heartbreaking topic that Keith handles remarkably well. Keith has a resonance with blue-collar, working class individuals, and that fact is more than evident by the title of his sophomore album, referencing his old life as an oil-rig worker in an oil boomtown. The album zips by in less than forty minutes, about equal length to his previous effort, and gives the equivalent level of urgency and zest that his debut did.

There's "Big Ol' Truck," a song that is a brazen ode to female truckers, unafraid of kicking up mud in their four wheel drive, "Victoria's Secret," about a lonely mother/wife turned prostitute in the evening hours, and "You Ain't Much Fun," a light-hearted break from a great deal of emotion the album provides to identify a man questioning how much fun his wife is when he's sober. One particular song that sticks out to me is "Upstairs Downtown," a song that is not very sad, but very honest, and serves as another teary-eyed ballad in Keith's early discography. The song concerns an eighteen-year-old woman who moves out of the house and struggles to make end's meet in a small apartment. While the song has plenty of upsetting circumstances, it's more of a slice of life song in terms of how it feels to get you foot in the door and try to make it on your own, as an adult, an individual, and, perhaps the scariest, an independent in society.

The level of resonance in Boomtown is, once again, incredibly high, as Keith truly understands this working class demographic a lot better than many other musicians of other genres, again affirming my love for the genre of country music. The album concludes with the titular track, which, oddly enough, isn't a single or a very popular track in Keith's lengthy catalog, which details life as an oil worker in a competitive field. The song, unsurprisingly, oozes empathy and lyrical competence; it was at this point in time that you'd be crazy to think that Toby Keith wasn't anything other than a rising country music star.

Recommended tracks (in order): "Who's That Man," "Upstairs Downtown," "You Ain't Much Fun," and "Boomtown."