Nine months after the release of “Growin’ Up,” reigning CMA (Country Music Awards) Entertainer of the Year and overall country powerhouse, Luke Combs released “Gettin’ Old.” The album serves as a follow-up and brother album to the aforementioned record. “Gettin’ Old” was dropped on March 24, 2023, receiving impressive streaming numbers and critical success.
Right out of the gate, “Gettin’ Old” feels much more cohesive and focused than “Growin’ Up.” While the latter had some relatively high highs with the smash hit, “The Kind of Love We Make,” and the duet with Miranda Lambert, “Outrunnin’ Your Memory,” the album felt too safe and overall quite forgettable.
“Gettin’ Old” accomplishes exactly what it intended to do; it shows Combs getting older, maturing into a father and husband. As he states in the opening track, “Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old,” he is at a crossroads in his life. He captures being at a transitional period in life exceptionally well throughout. While there are still some more light-hearted tracks strewn about such as “Hannah Ford Road,” “Tattoo on a Sunburn” and “You Found Yours,” a majority of the tracks are touching on much more mature topics and themes.
It’s clear that fatherhood is the main focus of the album thematically. Given that Combs and his wife, Nicole, just announced they are expecting their second child, it’s no surprise that he has had fatherhood on his mind. “See Me Now,” “Take You With Me” and “You Found Yours” all touch on different aspects of parenting, whether it’s being a father or a son.
“Take You With Me” is an especially great track. Like the aforementioned songs, “Take You With Me” transforms from a song about Combs and his father to one about him and his son. The evolution between his relationships and the phrase, “I’ll take you with me,” are expertly done through some brilliant songwriting from Combs, James McNair and Rob Williford. The production is also gorgeous, sounding far different from his past songs. It’s much lighter overall, only consisting of acoustic guitars, light percussion and what sounds like touches of mandolin throughout.
“Joe” is an extremely poignant song that touches on alcoholism. The titular character, Joe, laments about his past struggles and overcoming them. The final lines of the chorus, “Here’s to good days and better tomorrows / And a light at the end of the bottle” are particularly compelling, celebrating a long road to sobriety. This track is bound to inspire anyone who struggles with addiction to take an introspective look at the battle.
Fellow country superstar and songwriting aficionado, Eric Church, co-writes the track “My Song Will Never Die.” The song explores the compelling concept of the transcendent nature music has. It explores how the songs he records will outlive him long after he is gone. The concept is an extremely inspiring and intriguing one that touches on the impact that art has on its audience well after the artist creates it.
However, like many albums nowadays, “Gettin’ Old” feels far too long. I’ve touched on the topic of overly-long albums in past reviews; however, it is one of the unfortunate downsides of the streaming era. There’s more incentive to add more songs to an album to boost streams. As a result, artists end up adding more songs that may not ultimately serve the album’s overall theme. This retroactively kills the art of the album-making process.
“The Beer, the Band, and the Barstool,” “A Song Was Born” and “Fox in the Henhouse” definitely fade into the background in this strong record. These tracks end up feeling like filler in an album that is already filled with strong tracks throughout.
Outside of the couple of songs that feel like filler, “Growin’ Up” is an excellent album. For someone who was always quite critical of Combs’ past output, I was extremely impressed with the LP. He knew he needed to take a swing for the fences with his fourth studio album, and he knocked this one out of the park. As someone who is typically very skeptical of major-label country releases nowadays, I can’t help but feel that Combs is one of the best mainstream artists country has to offer. This album is rock solid throughout the admittedly overly-long tracklist.
8/10