Kenny Chesney: Be As You Are : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On his recent records, country superstar Kenny Chesney has been a good ol' boy on some Jimmy Buffett shit, going multiplatinum with a combo of clambake honky-tonk, cowboy-hat calypso and breezy change-of-pace ballads. Be As You Are is also inspired by the islands, but this time Chesney has recorded an entire album of breezy change-of-pace ballads. Over little more than piano and acoustic guitar, Chesney lays his supple, hunky tenor into sun-soaked reflections about "French Kissin' Life" and the joys of key lime pie, pausing for some perfunctory character sketches involving New Englanders who just want to get away from it all. Be As You Are is plenty pretty, but aside from the mildly Caribbean-flavored "Guitars and Tiki Bars," it sounds like Chesney's drummer never got back from fetching the Coronas.