Song Review – Kelsea Ballerini’s “Dibs”
Kelsea Ballerini is the worst. At least Taylor Swift’s stupid little songs meant something to her and had something to say, which meant thay had enough weight to mean something to someone else. Kelsea Ballerini is the sound of superfluousness. She’s the frothy, vanilla whip floating on the top of a cappuccino. She’s a constant smile, always bubbly and amiable because that’s how conformed young women are supposed to be. There’s absolutely no pain or doubt in anything she does. She’s life seen through the rectangle screen of a smartphone with a sparkly pink cover that smells like strawberries. She’s the bridge between Radio Disney and young teen sex play with boys who learned how to be amateur rapists from Chase Rice songs.
“Dibs” has so much nothing that the background music to a Depends commercial is more compelling. I don’t even know how to describe this, Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise” in panties maybe? Kelsea says “boy” just as much as we bitch that the Bro-Country losers say “girl,” and she treats objects of affection like objects to call “dibs” on. “Make everybody jealous when I take you off the market, get my lipstick on your right cheek ’cause boy I got to mark it,” Ballerini says in this song. How is this not just as objectifying as the boys? It’s at least as insipid and trite. And of course “Dibs” includes a portion of the chorus where Kelsea does her best to rap with all the soul she attained growing up in her white flight neighborhood in Knoxville.
“Dibs” is already doing very well commercially, and looks to be on the same trajectory as Kelsea’s #1 song “Love Me Like You Mean It.” It only makes sense because sonically, they’re pretty much the same damn song. With all the talk about the value of music these days, rubber stamping out a song like “Dibs” does leagues more damage to monetization efforts than freemium streaming services do because it portrays music as valueless, expressionless, throwaway background noise. “Dibs” wouldn’t be worth the effort to steal. It’s here today, gone tomorrow.
But what bothers me the most about this song is how so commonplace it has become to see a song like this become a big success on country radio without any measurable clamor or concern about where this might be leading country music in the long-term. Kelsea Ballerini has no idea what country music is. At 22-years-old, she’s lived her entire life likely without hearing one authentic country song on the radio. To her, classic country is Taylor Swift. At least Florida Georgia Line knows who Hank Jr. and Alabama are.
Kelsea Ballerini will be headlining arenas before she’s old enough to rent a car. Taylor Swift could say the same thing, but she also spent years slagging it out in bars, on radio tours, and as an opener. I’m not saying Kelsea hasn’t worked hard, but all her efforts have gone into things like choreography and public relations coaching. Kelsea Ballerini is Black River Entertainment’s Taylor Swift. They want her to blow up and take the rest of the label with her just like Swift did for Big Machine. But Taylor Swift had to bust through doors as a teenage pop singer pretending to be country. For Kelsea Ballerini, she’s just waltzed right through them and right into a country pop coronation. And instead of being held back on country radio because she’s a woman, she’s become the token female add on everyone’s playlist.
Kelsea Ballerini seems like a sweet girl and I’m sure she smells great. She’s not to blame for any of this; she’s just the face of a really poor effort by a lot of people with dollar signs in their eyes. She has a couple of songs that actually say something, like “The First Time,” even though just like all of her songs, the production is lazy, formulaic, and terrible. Some will say “Dibs” is harmless, but that’s part of the problem. Music is supposed to make you bleed at times; it’s supposed to make you feel something. The only thing I feel from “Dibs” is sorrow for how far “country” music has slid.
jb
October 29, 2015 @ 8:59 am
Dear god I hate this song with the fire of a thousand suns. It makes “Love Me Like You Mean It” sound like “Stand By Your Man.”
JD
December 17, 2015 @ 8:44 am
I think it’s ridiculous a label geared towards country music or any label in NASHVILLE TN would even consider this, let alone local radio stations play it. THIS IS NOT COUNTRY. I’m ashamed… How can a “Country” music radio station even play this crap, then follow it up with “Dan and Shay” Who the F is Dan and Shay, and why are they on country radio stations. I guess we needed to know their vocal range accomplishments at the end of “Nothing like You”, which again is not a country song.
I realize i live in “Music City” not “Country Music City” but keep country songs on country music stations.
It’s shameful to me if the Grand Ole Opry would even consider either of these two to grace the Grand Ole Opry stage. I’d rather listen to The Willis Clan… wait did i just say that? well… at least they sing country, and play proper southern instruments.
Michael Lipousky
July 3, 2018 @ 3:11 pm
I hate her fucking music! Absolutely all of it! In that mousy voice is like fucking nails on a chalkboard !!
BwareDWare94
October 29, 2015 @ 9:02 am
Even her name is annoying. I cringe every time I hear it.
Kelsea Ballerini is a white washed urban brat. She doesn’t know what adversity is. She doesn’t know hardship. She has no idea what a town of 1700 looks like as opposed to Knoxville’s nearly 180,000 people and it’s not like Nashville can imitate small with 700,000 people. Her music ought to be considered satire in regard to dumb white millennials who’ve never missed a meal.
I don’t care if she’s sweet or nice or friendly or whatever–she’s not educated enough to understand the plight of others and her music portrays that. I’m not saying she should have to suffer to be an artist but to be taken seriously, you better have something to say, and she’s just a great big bucket of white noise.
RD
October 29, 2015 @ 9:09 am
“She misses her boyfriend /slash/ producer, who seduced her, ehh produced her a hit…”
Six String Richie
October 29, 2015 @ 11:58 am
To be fair, I don’t think she aimed to portray pain or adversity in either of her singles. But yes, her music is quite bad.
Eric
October 29, 2015 @ 2:17 pm
One can write beautiful songs that do not involve themes of economic hardship. This is just an example of plain dumb songwriting, period.
Melanie
October 30, 2015 @ 4:01 am
I consider the song “Gentle On My Mind” a perfect song about love (or at least emotional attachment), which is absolutely an original take on those themes, paints some beautiful word-pictures, with not one formulaic phrase.
Eric
October 29, 2015 @ 2:58 pm
One more point: when it comes to being “educated”, we should distinguish between being informed vs. possessing significant formal education.
In my experience, those with high levels of formal education tend to be among the most callous and least understanding toward the poor and working-class. A common refrain that you hear from them is “Those people should just get an education.” About the only type of charities that these people tend to support are those that fund education.
Those who were unsuccessful in the formal education system due to a lack of academic ability, on the other hand, instinctively understand that academic ability is a talent just like any other, which not everyone possesses. As such, they realize why there are vast numbers of individuals who need help from society, especially in this era of disappearing blue-collar jobs.
Fuzzy TwoShirts
October 29, 2015 @ 9:05 am
Once again validating what I keep saying: we can’t fix the women on radio problem without fixing the stupid on radio problem first. Otherwise we’ll just get stupid music made by women.
I’d rather hear good songs, and no women on radio, than hear bad songs like this.
This also plays nicely into what I was saying about letting “kiddy” acts on the radio. This is like ICarly for Country radio. It doesn’t have any real substance, it doesn’t even have any reality. At least Maddie and Tae can be compared to the far more substantive program “Drake and Josh” which was decent.
Trigger
October 29, 2015 @ 9:12 am
” we can”™t fix the women on radio problem without fixing the stupid on radio problem first. “
Ha!
Melanie
October 29, 2015 @ 9:35 am
Amen to your first paragraph especially. This music isn’t even worth getting riled up over, except for the inescapable fact that it is absolutely murdering country music-other than that (which is the biggie), it’s like getting riled up over “My Little Pony” or something. I am not joking at all when I say this-I really believe that there’s a conspiracy to kill off country music. I won’t go into my reasons why I think that, here, but maybe some who have seen a few of my other comments could guess one of the reasons that I think this.
Fuzzy TwoShirts
October 29, 2015 @ 9:51 am
I don’t know. If somebody tried replacing flash based animation for CGI on the next “My Little Pony” episode the backlash would be overwhelming.
As for the conspiracy thing, I would say that it’s not that people are out trying to destroy Country Music, I just thing that the “Zen Masters” who have preserved the genre are not fighters. My former bandleader was a master of traditional Country Music, and he was content to sit in his garage and jam 24/7 and put Whiskey away like it would be illegal tomorrow, he had no ambition to fight over Country Music. Jason Isbell has the talent, but instead of fighting for Country Music, he has resolved to make his music as well as he can and the people will come (and they have.) Sturgill has the talent, but not the ambition. It is his quest to save Country Music only because nobody else stepped up to the plate, and he doesn’t want to shoulder it alone. Vince Gill, George and Alan are doing things the Sega Dreamcast way, by just being awesome, and we won’t realize what we missed until it’s gone, the same way the Sega Dreamcast, one of the most remarkable consoles ever, got overlooked in 2000.
The people who could and maybe should be fighting for Country Music aren’t the ones speaking out (Haggard notwithstanding) They’re letting the music speak for itself.
Melanie
October 29, 2015 @ 10:08 am
You make a great point that the remaining veterans are going to HAVE to speak out (what do they really have to lose, at this point? That’s something I couldn’t know), and plainly, because unfortunately without radio play, it seems that the music isn’t speaking for itself now, to the larger public. Or maybe we who love real country really are too small of a demographic, and it still wouldn’t make any difference, because the big shots have seen what sells, and this kind of crud is it, and that’s all that matters to them. It won’t be the first time a genre has died, it just seemed that it couldn’t happen to country, because of its long, deep tradition. Seems anyone who believed that was wrong (other than the more-or-less small, various underground scenes, but that just makes it like the various small, underground scenes of other genres-nobody but the hardcore true believers even know they exist). Country music was “America’s Music” for decades, who would’ve ever thought it would come to this? (And thanks again Trigger for turning me onto Gillian Welch, I didn’t have much faith when you suggested her, and frankly was some time before I gave her a chance, because I just couldn’t believe that she was going to sound like anything I would recognise as “country”. Well, she’s not “country” as it was known in its heyday, but she gets it, and I fell in love. Only from here would I have ever learned of her and given her a chance, even if she’s far from the Tammy-Loretta-Kitty mold of country).
Travis
October 30, 2015 @ 5:20 am
We hear veterans speaking out about country hear and there but I have to say I was dumbfounded reading an article about this Country 500 fest in Daytona for next year. Willie Nelson will be playing the same show with Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan and many others. After Willie’s line on the last Billy Joe Shaver album “Superstars nowadays get to far off the ground, singing about the back roads they never have been down, they go and call it country but that aint the way it sounds, its enough to make a renegade want to terrorize the town”; how can Willie play this kind of festival?
Trigger
October 30, 2015 @ 1:42 pm
Willie has absolutely no idea he is playing Country 500 Fest in Daytona, and probably won’t until a week before it. I’m not saying he absent-minded, but he’s long since handed over the controls to such things to others, and he shows up on stage when he’s supposed to. It would be different if it was Sturgill Simpson or something, but Willie fits in anywhere. At least someone will actually play country at the thing.
NCW
October 29, 2015 @ 7:48 pm
Why you gotta bring My Little Pony in the middle of this!
Melanie
November 4, 2015 @ 7:30 am
I meant the toy from my childhood, I had NO idea that there was a show or movie or whatever called that! Dang!
Jen
November 7, 2015 @ 5:00 am
One of the reasons they don’t fight is because money does all the talking, and all of these people combined don’t have enough money to.fight it. Then there’s another thing that was pointed out : these people are happy putting out whatever people will turn out for, and even happier putting away the liquor like it “will be illegal tomorrow “, which makes them apathetic and sluggish. …Kenny Chesney is a great example. He’s had some beautiful songs in the past, but “Pirate Flag”, and that God-awful “Beercan Chicken “, and others were him “conforming ” to the new, and trying to stay relevant. ..maybe he likes that kind of music (look who he takes on his tours! ), but many of his fans( me included), clearly don’t. I can’t stand FGL, Jason Aldean is another, then there’s Luke Bryan. These are artists I used to enjoy (with exception of FGL), and look where they’ve gone? Remember Luke’s big mouth about Waylon, et al? He should have been bitch-slapped for that. He gives a canned apology, and all.is.well He’s still EOTY, which I have come to believe is not earned. It’s simply bought and paid for by the highest bidder.
KC at least puts on a great show (so I’ve heard). Luke shakes his ass, and shows off some.pecs, and he’s in. Nothing he put out this year was EOTY material. KC, either, for that matter! I stopped listening to country, for the most part. I flip stations, but now, prefer oldies. Not because I’m getting old, but because today’s music sucks! None of my favs are any good anymore. They’ve all “conformed”, and it’s not pretty!
Royce
October 29, 2015 @ 9:07 am
This song isn’t really bad, but its mediocrity just makes it worse. Dibs is such a strange slang term to me because I usually attribute it to food.
Boys aren’t food and girls aren’t food.
Trigger
October 29, 2015 @ 9:11 am
Yeah, “bad” isn’t really the right word for it, because if you listen to it enough, it’ll probably become catchy to you. Aggressively mediocre and nutrition-less is more like it.
Lewis
October 29, 2015 @ 9:28 am
Herpes is catchy too, but I don’t want that in my life either. Mediocre at best.
Melanie
October 29, 2015 @ 9:39 am
How about pink and purple wallpaper, the kind a 12 yo would choose for her room? As long as she keeps it in her room and nobody pretends that her decorating “style” is the second coming of Erte, it would be inoffensive. Fortunately, I don’t have much chance of being subjected to it in the places I frequent.
Derek E. Sullivan
October 29, 2015 @ 9:18 am
I couldn’t get through it when someone mentioned it a while back. And please don’t put her in the same breath as Taylor, whose first two songs “Tim McGraw” “and “Teardrops on my Guitar” were head and shoulders above this pop garbage.
Also, I just want to say Trigger. You don’t have to listen to trash. You can ignore crap like this.
Trigger
October 29, 2015 @ 9:33 am
No, I can’t. In an industry where the voice of dissent has been squashed, someone has to speak up and say “This is not cool. This is not country.” I meant it when I said in the review that my biggest epiphany with this song was that three years ago, the uproar over a song like this being released to radio would have been massive. Today, it’s just another bad single. But that doesn’t mean our dissent should be any less resolute.
I don’t review singles and albums like this as part of my job as a music curator. This isn’t for daily readers, unless they find reviews like this entertaining. It is to let Music Row know that they can’t trounce on the institution of country music without at least hearing about it.
Melanie
October 29, 2015 @ 9:43 am
I know readers don’t want every blog post to be about the latest trash from Nashville, but I’m heartily glad that you’re doing some articles on it, bcause I just don’t believe that Nashville (the industry) should be allowed to get away with this without someone pointing out that the emperor’s wearing no clothes. They just shouldn’t get away with it, even if our voices are ultimately futile. I want them to know that they’re not fooling everybody.
Fuzzy TwoShirts
October 29, 2015 @ 9:52 am
Of course he isn’t wearing clothes. He’s a llama now. Can you imagine a llama in a suit?
CountryKnight
October 30, 2015 @ 7:33 am
Disney joke in the house!
Thanks for making my day.
Chris
October 29, 2015 @ 9:34 pm
I doubt Music Row really gives a shit what your saying if I’m just being honest. Not that what your are doing isn’t right. I just think they really don’t care whether someone believes what they are putting out is country. They care about money they are a business. They start and stop with money. Not good music.
Eric
October 29, 2015 @ 2:28 pm
Derek,
Thanks for bringing up that point about Taylor Swift. Trigger treats artists quite fairly nowadays, but calling Taylor’s early songs “stupid” strikes me as an attempt to pander to the still-large chunks of the SCM audience who think that she destroyed the genre.
However, I disagree with your second point. When bad songs rise to the top of the country radio charts, they should always be aggressively called out. Radio is a limited medium, and idiotic songs like this crowd out a multitude of great songs that could vastly improve the quality and image of country music.
Fuzzy TwoShirts
October 29, 2015 @ 2:38 pm
“Our Song” wasn’t that great, (only Taylor Swift song I vividly remember hearing on radio.) That said, on the “she ruined the genre” thing: I think she was the last straw in a near decade long era of what Trigger calles “Soccer mom Country” made by Reba, Carrie Underwood, some of the McGraw stuff, etc. A lot of the hits from that era were soft, not very “manly” and not very exciting musically, I don’t think. (there was also the glut of Religious themes but that’s a tangent for another comment)
I think the bro stuff (loud, manly, we’re Country) came as a backlash to that. As for Taylor Swift’s relevance, I think her age really opened up the floodgates in a genre where most performers have at least been adults, many of them older than in other genres. Before Taylor Swift we had a far smaller ratio of young to old people on Country Radio; after Taylor Swift the percent of young people vastly increased.
As I’ve said before, I think that drawing in young performers and a younger audience was harmful to Country’s success. Most artists who appeal to young people are flash in the pan and don’t survive changing trends, and most young people don’t have the discerning ear for quality. I think that driving away the older folks has hurt Country Music the most, since they have historically been the people buying the records.
CountryKnight
October 30, 2015 @ 7:35 am
I do miss the better performed religious themes in country music, but otherwise, with few exceptions, I do not miss that era of country music.
Trigger
October 29, 2015 @ 2:55 pm
The point of my “stupid” comment about Taylor Swift’s songs was to say that even if someone does not like her music, it’s still more refined than this. If someone wants to find my true feelings about Taylor Swift’s music, there’s dozens of lengthy articles for them to peruse.
Amanda
October 29, 2015 @ 9:26 am
I was flipping through stations last week and caught an acoustic version of this song on Taste of Country. It sounds so different from the album version…and not in a good way. Her vocals were rough and I only made it through half the song.
Link to acoustic version: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tDRUM3I5lOo
Melanie
October 29, 2015 @ 9:51 am
Supposedly autotune makes it possible for anyone to carry a tune in a bucket, even if it does make them all sound like the same thin tinny souless robots on record. Geeze, will we ever again hear someone bend notes like George Jones who made it clear as crystal why country was called “white man’s blues”? Or Tammy’s low moan which swooped up to the keening cry with the tears in her voice? Nobody has a distinctive sound anymore. The interesting thing is, the greatness of their voices had nothing to do 3 octave ranges and overdone vibrato, it was the individuality and the ability to make you believe in what they were singing, the good times and the bad.
Fuzzy TwoShirts
October 29, 2015 @ 9:54 am
I can’t understand autotune.
Any other profession:
“so you want to be a welder, can you weld?”
“No”
“Get out.”
“So you want to drive a truck? do you know how to drive?”
“No”
“Get out.”
“So you want to sing, can you sing?”
“No”
“We’ll just use autotune.”
Melanie
October 29, 2015 @ 10:15 am
I can only understand it on this level-it just doesn’t MATTER anymore if they can sing (to say nothing of writing, good writing), as long as they have a marketable IMAGE. IMAGE is king. The classics had images too, but they had to freaking SING first!
Stephanie
October 29, 2015 @ 10:44 am
I also feel like the images of the classics were at least based on something real to them. Maybe I’m romanticizing, I tend to do that, but I do feel like those images came from a place that meant something to the artist, rather than just being about whatever the marketing report suggested.
Eric
October 29, 2015 @ 6:09 pm
Then why waste the time of actual music listeners by putting them on the radio? They should just become models instead of singers.
Trigger
October 29, 2015 @ 10:16 am
The original point of Auto-tune was to be a studio tool to help fix a small flub in an otherwise great performance. Employed as such, there’s nothing wrong with it. Of course though, immediately it began to be used as a crutch for an entire vocal take and as a voice enhancer. Breast implants began a prosthesis for women who had to have breasts removed for medical reasons. Now, it’s 99% cosmetic.
Charlie
October 29, 2015 @ 11:35 am
Whoa, now–ease up there Trigger. Let’s keep the fake titties out of this.
Don’t make me start my own SCM web site . . .
Saving
Custom
Mammaries
To quote John Candy, “Those are fun for the whole family.”
GeneL
October 29, 2015 @ 3:31 pm
It’s really sad that Kelsea Ballerini is getting the biggest push amongst Females and her YouTube video only has 10K views and yes the Acoustic version is really bad.
Mike in Winston
October 29, 2015 @ 9:30 am
At least there is a ferris wheel in the video.
Lane
October 29, 2015 @ 9:50 am
They have pushed this girl trying to get her to be the new Swift but Taylor had writing chops. Even when they talked about what a success she is and how she got the first female #1 since ever, the music wasn’t actually a hit. Not much sales only gold which is shocking for all of the promo. She lucked out w/ saladgate and radios trying to show that “they love women” so it pushed up the chart. If you can imagine it, she is even WORSE live. Yikes!
George
October 29, 2015 @ 10:04 am
Allow me to quote Beavis and Butthead “This Sucks”
Jack Williams
October 29, 2015 @ 10:08 am
We had the pop country station on in the car (wife’s turn). This song came on and I almost immediately suspected who it was. At one point, I turned to my wife and asked “did she really just rhyme market with mark it?”
Trigger
October 29, 2015 @ 10:18 am
Terrible songwriting.
Banjo
October 29, 2015 @ 11:14 am
Finding a well written song with any meaning on country radio today is rarer than rocking horse shit.
dale
October 29, 2015 @ 10:13 am
There are a lot of not so nice words that could be used to describe this song , but won’t go there let’s just say it is awful, irritating, it sounds as bad as fingernails on a chalkboard, The only reason this song went #1 is cause her label ” bought ” her a number 1. there are so many other women in country music who actually sounds country and are worth listening to , radio should give them airplay, Reba’s song -Going Out Like That Should have been a #1 . Jana Kramer’s – I Got the Boy should have done been #1 , but got stuck on the charts and Mickey Guyton -Better than you left me, these are some awesome songs but radio choose to ignore them and go with Kelsea – Love me like you Mean it and Dids, , but like everything else it is about money and not quality.
Benny
October 29, 2015 @ 10:36 am
Umm… I Got the Boy is still going strong on the charts…
Donny
October 29, 2015 @ 10:22 am
No wonder men are turning into pussies nowadays, this is what our country music consists of.
Stephanie
October 29, 2015 @ 10:48 am
I probably shouldn’t but I love this comment. I mean, I never thought of it, but I feel like it applies to the vast majority of what “Country” music is turning into.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes; Brothers Osborne, Hank Jr. Album News; Rhiannon Giddens on Mountain Stage | Country California
October 29, 2015 @ 10:51 am
[…] endorse Saving Country Music”™s review of “Dibs” and Kelsea Ballerini in general. That’s Kelsea Ballerini the popular music act, […]
Banjo
October 29, 2015 @ 11:03 am
This is why I love and hate this site all at the same time. I love it for all the music it turns me onto (Willy Tea, Arlo McKinley, Sturgil, etc etc) but without it I would have never had the displeasure of Kelsea Ballerini strapping one on and raping my ears. And I know I could just ignore it, but its like a car wreck, you just have to see how bad it is. This is the exact reason I havent tuned into a country radio station in years – it is so soulless and bland. Keep trying to fight the good fight and save country music Trigger (much like I and most of your readers will) but I am pretty sure at this point its like trying to stand on your head and shit into your back pocket – its damn near impossible.
Chase
October 29, 2015 @ 11:15 am
Can you do a review of Clare Dunn’s “Move On”? I’m really interested in your opinion of it.
Trigger
October 29, 2015 @ 11:38 am
I’ll bring it up at the next staff meeting 😉
Melissa
October 29, 2015 @ 11:20 am
I’m not sure which is worse, the overdone fakey-sounding twang, or the half-hearted, ubiquitous hip hop “Hey!” in the chorus. This song is awful, and dull awful, the worst kind of awful.
On the bright side, four songs by female artists that took some actual effort have been in the top 20 recently. (I Got the Boy, Fly, Burning House, and Smoke Break.)
BlackHawgDown
October 29, 2015 @ 11:45 am
What’s depressing about this is not the fact that something this awful gets produced. It’s the fact that when you are pumping gas or sitting at a traffic light there is someone with windows down and this blaring rocking out to it and all you can do is just shake your head in disappointment and feel sorry for the poor lost soul.
BlackHawgDown
October 29, 2015 @ 11:49 am
What’s depressing about this is not the fact that something this awful gets produced. It’s the fact that when you are pumping gas or sitting at a traffic light there is someone with windows down and this blaring rocking out to it and all you can do is just shake your head in disappointment and feel sorry for the poor lost soul.
CountryKnight
October 29, 2015 @ 12:06 pm
I wouldn’t mind dating a girl like her but I definitely don’t want to listen to music by a girl like her.
Jackie Treehorn
October 29, 2015 @ 8:37 pm
I don’t know about that man. I think trying to converse with a girl like her would be like trying to swim in a pool filled with maple syrup. Sweet for a second or two but then quickly turning into painfully impossible.
CountryKnight
October 30, 2015 @ 7:31 am
I didn’t say I wanted to marry a girl like that. 😉
Pete Marshall
October 29, 2015 @ 12:10 pm
This song is horrible it’s worst than her first single “love me like you mean it”.
Smokey J.
October 29, 2015 @ 1:27 pm
Taste of Country has this to say: “This airy track is never weighted down with too much emotion”. This is meant as a compliment, but is actually the whole damn problem. Songs like this are so “airy” that they just sort of float away and are forgotten in no time, leaving no impact on the listener whatsoever. But, I’m sure that those of us who might like a little substance in our music just don’t know how to have fun, right?
This is totally a bro-country song, just one that is co-written and performed from the female perspective of that shallow lifestyle. She even fits in a “shotgun seat” line. I’m too lazy to do any research on her co-writers, but I bet they have other credits for bro-country tracks.
We said we wanted more women on country radio. So, they just gender flip bro-country. Sick. I’m pulling even harder for Maddie and Tae now.
Melanie
October 29, 2015 @ 1:46 pm
I’d like to pull for M&T, and I really don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but their voices are like fingernails on a chalkboard to my ears. Not that they’re off-key or something like that, they just sound thin and tinny and grating to my ears, a richness or fullness, I don’t know how to describe it, is completely missing. I don’t listen to much new stuff, so don’t know enough to say-is that an example of what autotune can do to voices? It almost sounds like the Chipmunks to me, not quite.
Six String Richie
October 29, 2015 @ 5:54 pm
I agree with you completely. I can’t stand their voices. I want to like them but their voices ruin it for me. They just sound like 15-year-old girls who are going through their “pop-star phase.”
For some reason, KB’s vocals are a bit more tolerable to me. But her songs are much worse so I can’t listen to her music either.
Summer Jam
October 29, 2015 @ 9:34 pm
I cannot stand Maddie & Tae. They are god awful. All my friends cannot stand them either. I don’t know of anyone who likes them TBH.
Smokey J.
October 30, 2015 @ 5:36 am
I get that. I can’t even say that they are my cup of tea, either, as far as something that I would go out of my way to listen to. But, I like that they have something to say, aren’t ashamed to be country, and I think their success would be a positive development.
Fuzzy TwoShirts
October 29, 2015 @ 2:45 pm
“they gender-flipped bro country” I was saying months ago in this very comments section that we needed to address the quality of the music before we addressed the gender of the person making it. “stupid music by women” I predicted.
And look what happened!!
since they gender flipped bro country, are we going to call it “Bruce-Country?”
Jf
October 29, 2015 @ 1:36 pm
“She”™s life seen through the rectangle screen of a smartphone with a sparkly pink cover that smells like strawberries. She”™s the bridge between Radio Disney and young teen sex play with boys who learned how to be amateur rapists from Chase Rice songs.”
Is someone keeping a list of the best Trigger quotes of the year? I think I would have a damn hard time narrowing it down to a top 10 at this point.
albert
October 29, 2015 @ 10:22 pm
“She”™s life seen through the rectangle screen of a smartphone with a sparkly pink cover that smells like strawberries. She”™s the bridge between Radio Disney and young teen sex play with boys who learned how to be amateur rapists from Chase Rice songs.”
“Is someone keeping a list of the best Trigger quotes of the year? I think I would have a damn hard time narrowing it down to a top 10 at this point. ”
Couldn’t agree more -THAT IS ONE BEAUTIFUL QUOTE FROM TRIGGER .
Amanda
October 29, 2015 @ 1:41 pm
I was curious about the song’s writers and stumbled upon a Billboard article from July all about how this song came to be.
Things pointed out in the article…all perfect examples of what is wrong with country radio these days:
“”˜Love Me Like You Mean It”™ and ”˜Dibs”™ have very similar vibes,” she allows, “and that really helped do ”˜Dibs”™ how I needed to do it.”
For now, it”™s best to think of her as a rarity in contemporary country music ”” a new female who scored a No. 1 single with her first release and has a sophomore offering that”™s buoyed with the same bright attitude.
But the “heys” were actually less an obsession than a point of contention at the beginning. Ballerini and Griffin loved ”™em, but Kerr and Duke thought they were cheesy.
In contrast to the long, winded lines in the chorus, they instinctively loaded the verses with shorter phrases and more pauses. “The chorus was so wordy and flowy and stuff that we wanted to completely change the feel ,” explains Kerr, “so that when the chorus comes, it just drops into this hand-surfing-out-the-window kind of thing.”
Songs can have too many words, and I think this is just one of those,” says Kerr. “If you had put a bridge in there, it could have been too much.
Ballerini did only a handful of takes on the final vocal, and Whitehead brought up Kesha”™s “Tik Tok” ”” with its much-discussed “brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack” line ”” as they cut it. The point wasn”™t to coax a polarizing performance, but to get one that was immediately identifiable.
SiriusXM and Radio Disney started playing “Dibs” even while “Love Me” was climbing Country Airplay, making it an easy choice for a second single. Black River asked for a remix before it shipped, but it was a simple exercise. The only instruction was to bring out the “heys.
Link to Billboard article: http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/country/6648355/kelsea-ballerini-dibs
the pistolero
October 29, 2015 @ 1:55 pm
Question: Why isn’t this shit categorized as, say, progressive metal? I mean, it bears as much resemblance to Dream Theater as it does actual country music.
I mean, good grief. We all know that, just like with FGL, nobody would give Kelsea Ballerini’s crap a second listen if she wasn’t a pretty blonde chick.
I’m going to listen to the new George Strait album now to soothe my ears.
BEH
October 29, 2015 @ 2:11 pm
Answer: It is country music it’s just not your flavor of country music. It’s today’s hot new country. Just like you said “progressive metal” and not just rock music as a whole or even metal as a whole. Everybody in today’s hot new country is pretty (women and men) and most are blonde. But of course, it’s always been that way. Her song is crap and meant for 12 year old girls. But music for 12 year old girls doesn’t have to be crap. Taylor Swift is a perfect example.
the pistolero
October 29, 2015 @ 2:32 pm
And they might as well call it “today’s hot new progressive metal” because, again, it bears just as much resemblance to actual progressive metal as it does country music. Sure, you could call it “redefining the genre,” but Geoff Tate tried that when his last album with Queensrÿche was released and nobody bought THAT load of shit either — figuratively or almost literally.
BEH
October 30, 2015 @ 5:24 pm
Um progressive metal is not based around a major key structure and one of it’s defining qualities is odd time signatures. That is the exact opposite of country music. It doesn’t matter if it’s new, old, pop or traditional. Country music is major key and danceable. Plus country music singers know how to enunciate (we won’t talk about Dwight Yoakum).
the pistolero
October 30, 2015 @ 5:29 pm
Country music is major key and danceable.
Uh, so are a lot of other genres.
BEH
October 29, 2015 @ 2:04 pm
I thought Florida Georgia Line did wear panties! My bad. Anyways, I’ve made “I’m calling dibs” my official catch phrase. You should see how many people cringe when they hear me say it. I’m calling dibs, on my sandwich, on this Coke, all mine. I think you nailed it when you said that Taylor Swift’s songs actually meant something. They may not mean something to people on this site but they do mean something to young girls. Swift’s songs where from the heart and she has always had to fight for the credibility and respect she deserves..This song is just real cookie cutter stuff not based on anything real. At least it’s a big hit so they are somewhat vindicated for writing such a stupid song. Give the people what they want right? (That’s a rhetorical question so settle down fuzzy twoshirts).
Fuzzy TwoShirts
October 29, 2015 @ 2:16 pm
(so settle down fuzzy twoshirts)
I got a laugh out of this. Thank you.
BEH
October 29, 2015 @ 2:26 pm
You’re welcome
Trigger
October 29, 2015 @ 2:52 pm
“I”™m calling dibs, on my sandwich, on this Coke, all mine.”
If anyone wants to terrorize their office, they should talk like this all the time.
albert
October 29, 2015 @ 10:32 pm
“Give the people what they want right? ”
How do people know what they want if they aren’t given choices ? Mainstream country is giving people what mainstream country wants to give them -the same crap over and over again . If they offered music that was more creative , more interestingly arranged , better crafted lyrically , more diverse instrumentally AND vocally with timeless emotional themes and not hip, trendy street jargon ( rap ) they would be giving listeners a choice and I’m convinced listeners would embrace the opportunity to get behind artists and music of substance .
BEH
October 30, 2015 @ 5:14 pm
From Wikipedia: A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question that is asked in order to make a point rather than to elicit an answer.
Eric
October 29, 2015 @ 2:19 pm
I was hoping that you would review this 😉
This is truly a dumb song, as terrible as anything in bro-country. The chorus might be one of the most idiotic that I have ever heard on any major song. Honestly, it deserves a “Two Guns Way Down” rating.
Zac
October 29, 2015 @ 2:28 pm
The last sentence sums up the entire problem with the country music audience. Most of the people listening to “country” music at this point are just looking for something innocuous to listen to, similar to how the Big Bang Theory continues to get great ratings. These people don’t want to bleed, they just want to while away their existence listening to moronic party songs.
JohnS
October 29, 2015 @ 2:30 pm
I was curious and purchased her album on CD when I saw it on sale at my local Best Buy. At the time I didn’t like “Love Me Like You Mean It”, but usually the women singers tend to do a better job with country music these days. Alas, not only was I disappointed in the album, but the only song on there that I could lie and tell people is country is “Secondhand Smoke”: A song that actually tells a story on the album.
David
October 29, 2015 @ 6:05 pm
I’m going to have to disagree on this one. No, the song doesn’t even resemble country, and it isn’t good by any definition, country or not. But for me, it is so easily ignored that I don’t care. FGL, on the other hand, would instantly stop all but the most basic of my brain functions. To this day I get angry just thinking about “Cruise.” No way that a completely forgettable song like this is anywhere near as bad as the damage that stupid song did to me.
CountryKnight
October 29, 2015 @ 6:52 pm
Taylor Swift 2.0
There really is not much of a difference between Taylor Swift and Kelsea Ballerini. Both have done irremediable harm to country music while sporting happy blonde smiles. As a wise man once said: “A pretty girl can get away with anything.”
The same wise man also said: “No one will ever go bankrupt selling to teenage girls.”
albert
October 29, 2015 @ 10:33 pm
AMEN country knight
Elin
October 29, 2015 @ 8:27 pm
“With all the talk about the value of music these days, rubber stamping out a song like “Dibs” does leagues more damage to monetization efforts than freemium streaming services do because it portrays music as valueless, expressionless, throwaway background noise.” Exactly. “Music” doesn’t have value. GOOD music has value.
Pete Marshall
October 29, 2015 @ 8:48 pm
Can we rewind 30 years please? just country music only.
Charlie
October 29, 2015 @ 8:57 pm
I’ll make the first average review. I don’t think it’s a good song at all nor do I care for her or the voice very much. I can relate as it isn’t bad once in awhile to have a girl make the first move, and basically say you’re mine- whether it lasts a few days or longer. I’ve certainly been in that situation. This is sort of the songs I should hate with everything I love but I would rather listen to this than most anything Carrie underwood has put out. She certainly has a squeaky voice and super pop which I don’t care for. Lyrics not constructed great either. The one time I did see her live I completely held a grudge in every single thing about her (and she sang this song) since I believe it was “Peter pan” she mentioned she wrote it while listening to Beyoncé. Everyone clapped, while I had a hatred glare in my eyes. Good and bad my thoughts and feelings.
Summer Jam
October 29, 2015 @ 9:31 pm
Crappy lyrics, and pop country for sure, but I really like Kelsea. She’s a very sweet girl (thats rare for me to say as i hate almost everyone) and she seems very upbeat and loving. She is heavily supported by my local station (WGTY) and they actually had her shoot her music video for Dibs at the York Fair which is right down from where I live, if you havent seen it watch it, video is cool as hell. Shes probably one of the most down to earth people you’d ever meet. While her music is definitely not a move in the right direction for good country music coming back to radio, I think she deserves to get plenty of airplay. She is pretty talented and is way better than most of the garbage that makes it big time on country radio.
Adam
October 30, 2015 @ 10:26 am
Just a horrible response all around.
Summer Jam
October 30, 2015 @ 12:38 pm
FREEDOM OF SPEECH….I can say whatever I want its a free country.
Bomber
October 31, 2015 @ 7:14 am
Cool. Go hangout with her in a bar. Her music is still garbage. I don’t care if you’re solving world hunger in Africa, if you sing low tier pop music and pretend it’s country nobody should mince words in talking about how bad it is.
Summer Jam
October 31, 2015 @ 11:45 am
Very mature reply, son.
the pistolero
October 31, 2015 @ 1:26 pm
Talent means less than nothing if it’s wasted making the musical equivalent of cotton candy.
I’m sure Maddie and Tae are nice, down to earth, and personable as well.
Summer Jam
October 31, 2015 @ 1:50 pm
true. not everyone cares about real country music though, some just want a career and they do whatever they can to get airplay. its understandable from a career standpoint, but it goes to show who truly cares about the direction of the genre and who doesn’t. Josh Thompson, Alan Jackson, Jon Pardi, and Mo Pitney are great examples of artists who care about playing real country and don’t give much of a shit about money. if i was a mainstream country artist, i’d tell the CEO’s to go fuck themselves if they threw some garbage like Chase Rice material at me.
TheRealBobCephus
October 29, 2015 @ 9:33 pm
If her tweet in the beginning of the video is true…this was shot in my hometown. I’m going to go cry now.
BwareDWare94
October 29, 2015 @ 10:01 pm
How catering can a supposedly “talented young artist be? Not only does she allow them to let her record shit music…look at this picture. They’ve got her features all exaggerated and blown up, but she seems the type who would say, “Oh. Well, OK. I don’t look like that but whatever.”
albert
October 29, 2015 @ 10:13 pm
I could only feel worse about the state of mainstream country if I had actually based my living on it for my entire adult life.Not only is is this shit just that ….SHIT …but its putting a lot of talented , committed , passionate and experienced ARTISTS out of work . For the sake of making some lazy $$$$ , a culture is willing and ready to discount talent , passion , creativity and experience on such a massive scale that it’s not just disgraceful but should be considered criminal ….like burning the flag ,selling alcohol and cigarettes to minors or abusing animals . Its a sign of a culture that cares less and less about anything that truly matters and more and more about preying on its own to make fast easy $$$$$ .
Melanie
October 30, 2015 @ 3:05 am
Great point-I wonder how many really talented singers, stylists (ie I appreciate Willie Nelson more for his knowing what to do with the right song for him than strictly for his voice on its own merits-can anyone imagine him getting anything but the gong on one of those teevee shows-“America’s Next Voice” or whatever they’re called), and he’s one of the greatest artists in country of all time?), and writers are out there just languishing for lack of oxygen while all these teenybopper (or over age wanna be frat boys) are sucking up all the air on the radio, because they have the right “look”? To give George Jones props yet again-can anyone imagine him, or scrawny little Hank Sr, with their immense talent, gerting the time of day now, because they weren’t “hunky”? It’s just sickening. Even rock, which was more about image than country, none of the prog guys (Robert Fripp? lol) , or Janis Joplin with that soul-shaking voice, would get the time of day now because heaven knows they weren’t hunks or beauty queens, but who cared when they played or sang. Loretta was just the mountain girl next door, not plain by any means, but no glamor doll, but she sang with conviction and a sound all her own, a voice that sounded like it had been honed by singing to herself and the kids for years. Damn you Shania, you helped bring this crud in. Yes Dolly got famous in the end for her (self-made) image, but she was singing professionally on the radio (and early teevee, years before her own family even owned one), and she looked like a gawky little buck-toothed kid when she was a kid-nothing like the beautiful woman she was when she got with Porter Wagoner. It was the darn voice, and the song writing (whether their their own or that of the great writers, like Billy Joe Shaver or Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, among so many, many others, who were craftsmen who understood the requirements) which made the classic artists, image came later, and was as much their own creation as that of professional image makers. Certainly no one in Nashville advised Nelson to grow his hair long and wear a bandana like a hippie, that was all him, authentic, and it worked, and it came about after his music, not before.
Who’s going to write an all-time classic like “Rocky Top” these days? No banal words about trucks or tailgate parties, shakin it, or the millionth song about “I’m gonna make him pay, cause I’m a grrrlllll, doggoneit, grrrrrllll power, yay!) And I think anyone who wrote words like “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die” would be run out of town on a rail, because now our “honesty” must fit into PC parameters.
Marky mark
October 30, 2015 @ 1:21 pm
This environment is to a great extent the result of the video age in my opinion. Not that looks didn’t matter before, but less attractive people were listened to, not looked at back in the days before video. The image is now so intertwined in the listening experience it almost overpowers the aural experience.
Stephen M.
October 29, 2015 @ 10:28 pm
Willie Nelson passing gas probably sounds better then what assaulted my ears when I clicked the video. Ugh.
albert
October 29, 2015 @ 10:41 pm
And while we’re not on the subject of Adele ….what the hell is THAT piece of crap songwriting that apparently crashed the servers with people clamoring to be exposed to it on the intertube ? Look at THOSE trite , cliche, overdone and underwritten lyrics on the page and make sure you’re standing close to the porcelain pot when you do . THEN treat yourself to the track with the same four chords 99% of pop , rock and country songs have been relentlessly exploiting for decades . Yes …she has a nice voice with a unique sound . It ends there. Lyrically this is yet another lifeless , heartless pile of crap .
Melanie
October 30, 2015 @ 4:10 am
I just looked it up, Bobbie Gentry was only 23 yo when she wrote the beautiful, epic ballad “Ode To Billy Joe”. There are 40 yo “artists” in “country” music these days who couldn’t write a song like that with a gun to their heads.
jeffro
October 30, 2015 @ 1:23 pm
Just effing horrible. I want to punch the people who high-fived one another after this was in the can. Jesus fucking christ this is bad.
albert
November 1, 2015 @ 10:43 am
“Jesus fucking christ this is bad”
errrr…..AMEN !.
Janice Y
October 30, 2015 @ 8:39 pm
To be honest, this review is so unprofessional, just like the Storyteller album review. Most of this “song review” is not even about the actual song, but bashing the poor artist! You should have made a separate article if you wanted to put Kelsea on blast like that! And no, I’m not even a Kelsea fan. Every single article you posted this past week seems a little rushed and unprofessional.
Trigger
October 30, 2015 @ 11:38 pm
Welcome to Saving Country Music, I’ve been doing this for eight years. You should see my rants. Nonetheless, I stand behind both of these reviews, and have received specific comments on the quality of both. Only in the music industry is honesty compared to unprofessionalism. But hey, I understand, my opinion and comments can be a little offbeat. But nothing here is “rushed.” I take sharing my opinions very seriously to the point of obsessions. I choose my words carefully. It doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes because I’m still human. But appreciate that before I posted the Carrie Underwood review, I knew what the reaction would be from Carrie fans because that is my job. And I didn’t let it affect my review. And that’s what separates Saving Country Music from many other sites.
Edward Genereux
October 31, 2015 @ 9:44 am
This review reminds me of a curious dream I had Tuesday night after getting back from class at the U of Minnesota. You see, that night happened to be a particularly rainy evening in the Twin Cities, so I arranged for my mother to pick me up. As we drove back home, I turned the dial to each of the country music bigwig stations in the area–K102 and Buz’n 102.9–hoping I might find Maddie and Tae or something thereabouts. It ended up anything but and, in fact, both stations were playing “Dibs” simultaneously. I screamed briefly and turned off the radio.
As for the dream itself, it occurred after I went to bed at 11 that night. In it, one of my female cousins was jumping up and down in anticipation of a gig featuring Miss Ballerini at TCF Bank Stadium on the same campus where I go to school. Next thing you know, I was almost literally being dragged kicking and screaming to my cousin’s car and being driven off to the concert. After our tickets were scanned for admission purposes, we took our seats on the turf field. I should have known that my cousin was such an obsessed KB fan that she would buy seats rather close to the stage. Before long, several of my cousin’s friends noticed her and they exchanged squeals and jumping up and down. I had my earplugs handy, so I was able to survive that part without too much issue.
Alas, the concert itself was a different story. The screaming of 55 000 mostly female fans (about TCF Stadium’s capacity for concerts), coupled with the pulsations of the drum machine and especially Kelsea singing (if one could call it that) through a microphone with Auto-Tune built in was almost unbearable. Before long, blood was dripping out my ears and I was screaming myself, not in favour of Kelsea Ballerini, but in desperate anguish.
Then, all of a sudden, I felt no more bleeding. I took off my earplugs and realized that the crowd was mostly silent. On stage was Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues and on his back was a ziplining restraint. I knew then that he had ziplined over TCF Stadium a la Garth Brooks over Texas Stadium in 1993. Only this time, he had not come to further corrupt country music, but to save it, even though he himself is most associated with progressive rock. What was best, though, was that he launched into an expletive-laden tirade on how the imposture that is Kelsea Ballerini has been even worse than the first imposture, which was bro-country. His point was that whereas bro-country was the product of years of degeneration on Music Row, Kelsea is simply a product. He concluded his spiel as he flipped the bird, bellowing: “Fuck Music Row, fuck the impostor musicians, fuck the fans who buy this shit and FUCK YOU, KELSEA NICOLE BALLERINI!!!”
Sadly, this turn for the better ended there, as the glitter-faced fans foamed in their mouths and started to crowd around Mr. Hayward. I don’t know what happened next, as the alarm on my smartphone sounded at that time. Time to get up and resume my homework.
2sticks6strings
February 15, 2016 @ 10:12 am
Gag me with a rusty, sugar coated spoon. I hate this song. My husband knew I would. Before I even heard of it or even Kelsea, he sent me a link and said I would love it as a joke. I wanted to kill him lol. Her name is even annoying. She minds me of that RaeLy nn…Raylin…Reylyn..Rahayline God made Girls song….how ever trailer folk spell it. It’s so impersonal and meaningless. It’s blowing up in popularity and I can’t understand it. Especially when everyone I know hates it, and they love country. The the thing that rubs me wrong is that if a guy were to sing this exact song it would be considered creepy or disgusting. I still consider creepy no matter who sings it. I hate ootsy cutesy sugar pop unicorn fart songs. I would listen to Taylor over her any day…and I can’t stand Taylor either. And the I got dibs on your….and your….and. your….and your….seems like it keeps going and going. We get it. You’re obsessed.
Davius reid
March 20, 2016 @ 8:19 pm
Lol so guess im the only person who likes the song and I happen to be a guy. The song is catchy. Personally I like new country, like fgl, sam hunt, DAN and shay pretty much all rock country or pop country. I would even consider fgl to be a mix of hip hop and country.
Bertox
August 26, 2016 @ 2:15 am
This song would have been great on The Walking Dead when Darryl was hanging out with those psychos who called dibs on everything
Cletus
September 8, 2016 @ 6:26 pm
Dibs are actually a really good ice cream snack. As for the song that shares the same name as the ice cream it’s no Burning House or Chainsaw.
the realist
May 16, 2018 @ 12:59 pm
Kelsea “auto-tune” Ballerina, Ballareni.. whatever…sounds like a Chipmunk singing into an articulating fan on the high speed setting. Of course, I could take the female approach to evaluating singers and say, “Oh she’s so hot! I love love love her music…because, well, she’s hot and that’s all that matters.