If you’re a HARDY fan, you’re likely not complaining about all the new music and content he’s graciously bestowed on us in the last couple of weeks.
The “Wait In The Truck” collaboration with Lainey Wilson complete with eerie, domestic-violence-tinged video, the surprise single release of “Jack,” and now three new songs and an upcoming album announcement for the mockingbird & THE CROW alongside a headlining tour.
It has been a hearty few weeks of HARDY… no pun intended.
And I would be lying if I said that all the recent music and announcements didn’t have me knees deep in old HARDY albums and tracks.
I’m a sucker for some of his lesser-known singles like “HATE YOUR HOMETOWN” and “I’LL QUIT LOVIN’ YOU,” which both seem like break-up titles until closer inspection. The latter is actually one of the sweetest love songs featuring lines of scenarios that aren’t possible as the only way for the narrator’s love to end.
Examples like “when the sky turns evergreen,” “when cold beer don’t quench your thirst,” and “when there ain’t an ‘amen’ in church,” stand out.
And any HARDY deep-dive needs to include his 2018 EP THIS OLE BOY, which is fourteen minutes of top-quality country music. Transitioning from “REDNECKER” to “4X4” to the title track, “THIS OLE BOY,” before ending off with one of my all-time favorite HARDY songs, “THROWBACK.”
The song quite literally throws it back to the older days, recalling some of the best parts of life in the 1980s and 90s that have become practically obsolete, like paying with cash or listening to a cassette tape in an old Buick Skylark. It’s a lighthearted take-you-back song that ends with the tag line:
“We do what we do and we don’t care if it’s cool
Might be a little old school but it is what it is and it’s throwback.”
It’s some of HARDY’s best songwriting, in my opinion, flowing from verse to chorus so smoothly with the use of the word “throwback.” Not to mention that it’s chock full of references from a time we all wish we could go back to every now and then, or as HARDY calls it in the track – “take a ride on the retro side.”
This is the OG HARDY track for me. It’s the one that got me hooked on the artistry and the lyrics he’s become so well-known for in the years that have followed.
It’s hard to believe that “THROWBACK” itself is now considered a throwback, but even with a few years on it, this song is 10/10.
Check out the acoustic:
And the studio:
