Eric Church Gets Funky On New Album ‘Soul,’ Turns It Up On “Look Good And You Know It”

Let me tell y’all something… Eric Church did NOT name this album Soul for nothing.

I’ve had Heart on repeat for the last week, and now, the third installment of the long-awaited triple album is finally here.

Of course, we’ve been loving tracks from the first release like “Russian Roulette” and “Bunch Of Nothing” (which he also performed at the ACM’s last weekend), so you’ll definitely want to go check those out if you haven’t yet.

He released the second album, &, to the Church Choir exclusively on Tuesday and it’s just as good as these other two, but unfortunately it won’t be available to everyone. It’s a shame, because there’s some masterful work on that one, too.

In terms of new material on Soul, there were only a few songs that we hadn’t had the opportunity to hear yet. If it wasn’t for the fact that “Lynyrd Skynyrd Jones” was already out, I would be writing about that one right now. It’s a masterpiece and the obvious standout to me.

But, since we’ve all had the chance to hear that one, I want to talk about one that wasn’t previously released. Almost every song on this specific project has a certain level of Motown, even Bee Gees, funkiness to it that is a pretty stark contrast to Heart.

It seems like he fully embraced the sounds he’s sort of dipped his toes in before, with tracks here and there like “Higher Wire,” “Knives Of New Orleans,” and “Chattanooga Lucy” on previous records. I feel like he’s wanted to go in that direction for a while and this unique project provided the perfect opportunity to jump in and try it out.

So, with all that being said, let’s get into the good stuff. I want to introduce you to my newest favorite Eric Church song, “Look Good And You Know It.”

It’s funky, sexy, super bluesy, and it suits him quite well. He wrote it with Jonathan Singleton and Travis Meadows.

It finds Eric singing about a break-up and missing the girl he let go. Of course, as often happens after a big split, the girl puts a lot of effort into her appearance—yes, it’s really true…to make him jealous.

And if someone tells you girls do that for anyone other reason, I’m not saying they’re lying, but I’d be skeptical.

Eric finds himself pining over how good she looks, and the way she’s owning it makes him miss her even more.

Yep, it works ladies:

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt like hell
Wish I was blind so I couldn’t see for myself
You look good and you know it baby
Go on and own it baby
Lord have mercy on my soul
Looks like your rock is on a roll

I ain’t cryin’ there’s just something in my eye
I ain’t dyin’ ‘cause you came in here tonight
It’s not because you look so good it hurts
I’m just choking on the smoke of a bridge I burned”

And, if you want another great song to chew on from this album, try “Rock & Roll Found Me”, which he wrote alongside his guitarist Driver Williams and the incredible songwriting giant Casey Beathard. It’s another cool track conceptualized around the idea that Eric stumbled into rock & roll by way of being different growing up, suggesting it happened more by fate than chance with incredible wordplay.

All in all, you get exactly what you’d expect from Soul. It sounds the way you think it would with a title like that. It’s a fun, rich, albeit sonically very different from Heart, fresh take on Eric’s usual sound. You can tell his creativity was running wild through this process.

I know he said before it’s unlike anything he’s ever done, and in a lot of ways it is. I mean, writing and recording 28 songs in 28 days? Who in their right mind even thinks of doing something like that? Let alone delivers something on this scale with so much quality…

I still haven’t really wrapped my mind around that. He’s a once in a generation artist without question, in my opinion, whether you like him or not. No one else is doing anything close to what he did on this project and the process he went through to get to the final product. They’re not even trying.

Probably because they couldn’t pull it off, but you get the point.

On the other hand, in a certain sense, it’s exactly like everything he’s ever done; it’s full of genius lyrics and meaningful messages we’ve come to expect and it doesn’t hold anything back. If that’s not the most Eric Church thing you could possibly do, I don’t know what is.

It almost feels like the end of a chapter now that all the music is out, seeing as he hinted at this massive project back in February of last yearbefore any of us really had a grasp on what was about to transpire with everything in terms of the coronavirus pandemic.

I just think it’s important to look back on this journey and project as a whole, because it is likely a career-defining moment we’re getting to witness first-hand.

Who knows when we were even supposed to actually get this album. Could’ve been months ago, or even last year, until everyone’s plans got changed in a huge way. Regardless, I think it came at the perfect time.

Because now, not only do we have three stellar albums to listen to, we get to see him SOON on the ‘Gather Again’ Tourand we’ll have an elevated level of appreciation just to be able to be there than we ever could’ve imagined a little over a year ago.

Coincidentally, I think that’s exactly what this project deserves.

Until that gets underway, check out “Look Good And You Know It”:

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