He had me at “Heads Carolina.”
Cole Swindell dropped his new album Stereotype yesterday, and honestly I wasn’t expecting to be writing about it. I’m not a huge Cole Swindell guy, although he has some undeniably great songs like “You Should Be Here,” “Dad’s Old Number,” and “Break Up In the End.”
But when I looked at the tracklist for the new album and saw a song called “She Had Me at Heads Carolina,” he had my attention.
The song is, of course, a reimagining and a tribute of sorts to the Jo Dee Messina classic “Heads Carolina, Tails California.”
And I can’t even lie – it’s a JAM.
The song was written by Cole along with Thomas Rhett, Jesse Frasure, Nashville hitmaker Ashley Gorley, and even the original writers of “Heads Carolina,” Mark Sanders and Tim Nichols.
In this new version, Cole uses the melody and some of the lyrics of Jo Dee Messina’s hit to tell the story of heading out to karaoke at the bar and falling for the girl on stage singing “Heads Carolina, Tails California.”
Is it a little cheesy? Sure. But then again, wasn’t a lot of ’90s country music a little cheesy too?
If you’re a fan of ’90s country and Jo Dee Messina, good luck getting this one out of your head.
Of course there’s nothing like some REAL 90’s country, and we’ve got all of the best on our Saved By 90’s Country playlist on Spotify and Apple Music.
