Tim McGraw

Before he became Mr. Faith Hill -- and, in his own right, arguably the most successful male country singer since Garth Brooks -- Tim McGraw was just another young hat act seemingly cut from the same new traditionalist mold as Alan Jackson. Tim McGraw, his modest 1993 debut, is a pleasing if unremarkable set of light honky-tonk ("Two Steppin' Mind") and smoothly sung ballads ("Only Thing That I Have Left") that doesn't quite hint at the highly polished country pop that would soon become his trademark. Not a Moment Too Soon gave him his first notable hit in the utterly loathsome "Indian Outlaw," a ridiculous salute to "Cherokee pride" comprised entirely of stereotypes so brazen ("You can find me in my wigwam/I'll be beating on my tom-tom/pull out the pipe and smoke you some"), one suspects even Custer would have been embarrassed singing them. Not McGraw, although at least he didn't write it (or any of his songs, for that matter). The ballad "Don't Take the Girl" was markedly better, and proved McGraw to be a master at delivering admittedly sappy fare in an achingly sincere voice that almost dares you to be unmoved. By All I Want and its successor Everywhere, he was a well-oiled hit machine, effortlessly making the most out of slick, by-the-numbers mid-tempo Nashville pop like "She Never Lets It Go to Her Heart" (All I Want), faking it through catchy up-tempo clunkers like "I Like It, I Love It," and knocking the occasional honest-to-goodness contemporary country gold nugget like "Just to See You Smile" (Everywhere) clean out of the park. Precious little honky-tonk remains to be found on either A Place in the Sun or Set This Circus Down, but even with straight-up-the-middle Nashville power balladry, there's something to be said for consistency, and by this point it's clear McGraw and his producers were getting first dibs at the cream of the crop from Music Row's resident tunesmiths. Surprises are few but all the more welcome when they do pop up, as in Set This Circus Down's Bruce Robinson–penned "Angry All the Time," an unflinching portrait of a marriage stretched to the breaking point, sung with Oscar-worthy conviction by McGraw and happy wife Hill. Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors doesn't quite deliver on the back-to-basics kick implied by the title (the album was recorded with McGraw's road band rather than Nashville session musicians), but at least he seems to be trying. Covering Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" in the exact same style as the original (or, for that matter, any style) isn't the bold rock & roll statement McGraw might have intended it to be, but the teenage abortion drama "Red Ragtop" is an emotional corker, nearly as rife with sugar-free hard truth and regret as Bruce Springsteen's similarly themed "The River." Pity both that song and "Angry All the Time" came after the premature Greatest Hits set, which gets docked half a star for featuring not only the inevitable "Indian Outlaw" but also the gooey horror of the (much) lesser Faith duet "Let's Make Love," which would be only marginally more icky if Donny and Marie were singing it to each other. (RICHARD SKANSE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide