Review: Toby Keith, I Love This Bar

Toby Keith is an American country singer, originally from Clinton, Oklahoma, who has enjoyed multi-million dollar sales in the United States and beyond, in a career which has stretched from the early 1990s. Keith has enjoyed multiple number ones, including a duet with legend Willie Nelson entitled 'Beer For My Horses'. A review of his song 'I Love This Bar' follows...

Lyrics

The 'I Love This Bar' lyrics are fairly straightforward in message and delivery. It is an unpretentious homage to the pleasures of sinking some beers after work in your local bar, a subject people, especially men, from all over the world can relate to. Toby Keith sings of the people who populate his locals, a diverse, largely blue collar bunch who are, in his eyes at least, the salt of the earth. The song is highly inclusive, referencing rednecks as well as "blue collar boys" from the factories. There are old people, loners, losers and winners, yet being in the bar makes them all part of some wider, more wonderful community, which one senses is as close as Keith will get to outright musing on the nature of America and its strengths.

Music

The music ploughs a straight ahead mainstream country furrow, sentimentally sweet like beer on a summer evening, its sense of nostalgia and celebration perfectly matching its lyrical content. It may praise the virtues of the kind of bar where bikers hang out and yuppies get shown the error of their ways in a jovially violent way, but there is little 'outlaw' about this brand of country, with Keith hailing "chain smokers and boozers..thirsty hitch hikers" in a deep baritone as richly sweet as Southern Comfort, rather than bourbon.

Video

The video for Toby Keith's 'I Love This Bar' is as straightforward as the lyrics to the song, literally portraying the subject matter of the song, while Keith watches on wryly, beer in hand, from the background, warmly smiling at the marvel that ordinary America continues to represent to him. The band are playing behind chicken wire however, to protect them from the bottles thrown in their direction. This imagery squares with Keith's avowed political beliefs, which are best summed up as patriotically American, with a decidedly blue collar take on those kind of belies. Keith has endorsed Democrats and Republicans in the past, and has expressed admiration for Barack Obama as well as Sarah Palin in the past.