Oh, we’re doin’ it people.
We’ve now had week or two to digest the new Eric Church project, a triple album affectionately named Heart & Soul, and after the kind of build up this thing had, it’s only right that we take a little time to dive in and examine the project as a whole.
One thing I’ll say about this project is that it takes a few listens to fully appreciate. It’s quite different than your typical Eric Church album, but that was kind of the point, wasn’t it?
After all, he holed up in the mountains of North Carolina for nearly a month, cranking out a song a day for 28 days. Write in the morning, record in the evening, and whatever happens… happens.
Normally, you write a bunch of songs, figure out which ones you want to record, record a bunch of them, get the team together and figure out how you want to construct the album. You weed out some of the weaker songs, weed out some that are too similar, and then at the end, you have 10-12 songs that go on the finished product.
But that’s not what happened here.
“Heart On Fire,” “Heart Of The Night,” “Never Break Heart,” “People Break,” “Break It Kind Of Guy…” We have a lot of “hearts” and “breaks” in there and you’d normally pick one or two of those and shelf the rest. But here, you can see the moments where they found a mood or a feeling and it carried over into a few different songs. So they just ran with it.
And then of course you have the & album which is a Church Choir exclusive, a “thank you” of sorts to his loyal fans.
So knowing all of that, the entire project in context, it’s pretty damn cool (even though it might not be my favorite Eric Church record of all time). Plus, those white vinyls look super SLICK in the collection.
All that being said, I took the opportunity to rank every song from the albums (including &, so sorry if you haven’t heard those) knowing full well that it changes like the weather. I mean, ask me again in couple weeks and I will probably give you an entirely different list.
But that’s kind of the beauty of it, right? There’s 24 songs and A LOT of room for differing opinions. We have some Meat Loaf vibes, some Queen vibes, a bit of Springsteen and the Bee Gees… a nod to Lynyrd Skynyrd, it’s quite the mixed bag. I personally enjoyed the Heart side of the project much more than Soul, but that’s just me.
So without further ado, all 24 songs from Heart & Soul, RANKED:
