This week, I want to do something of a postmortem. Not on an actually dead artist, although there are plenty of them I can cover in a genre with as long of a lifespan as country. I want to talk about a group that is still alive and kicking, but isn’t making country music anymore: The Band Perry.
Why do this? Why talk about them? And why is this band that is ostensibly still around getting a postmortem out of me?
The Band Perry hit the Nashville scene like fucking napalm. There was no one who looked like them, no one who sounded like them, no one with lyrics like them. When your first single gets certified platinum six times, there’s some kind of magic there. Something that’s happening, and is worth paying attention to.
During their country tenure, they could basically do no wrong, cranking out hit after hit after hit, and building a rabid fanbase. They brought this pop-punk meets country meets Americana sound and aesthetic, very different from the plaid crop tops and butt-hugging denim of their contemporaries in country at the time. They teased their hair and wore corsetry and leather and Tim Burton stripes. No one brought the same vibe as The Band Perry, and frankly no one’s brought it to country since.
And then, after two albums, and with their careers on a trajectory that looked like it couldn’t possibly be stopped, in 2017 they made the switch to pop music. Plenty of people were skeptical, of course. They had somewhat broader appeal, but not the same sort of broad appeal as someone like Taylor Swift did when she transitioned out of country. Still, their fans gave them a chance.
Their fans didn’t like it. Pop listeners didn’t particularly like it either.
I want to be EXTREMELY clear here: I’m not judging them for the choice, and neither should anyone else. They switched to pop because that was what they wanted to explore. They moved into a new creative field, looking for fulfillment that country music wasn’t bringing them anymore. And I wish them all the best for that. I would absolutely freak the fuck out if they ever came back into the country scene, but they don’t owe me or anyone else that. They’re a pop group now, and sincerely, good for them. Follow your fucking passions whenever you’re able to.
But since this is about country music, and about getting people’s feet wet if they’re new to the genre, I figured we should talk about them. And you can’t talk about The Band Perry without talking about the genre change, and how it went. Not really. Not fully.
With all that out of the way, the logical place to start would be the song that did, in fact, explode country radio and go platinum six times over: If I Die Young. It’s a haunting, sparse country song that really came out of the gate swinging, in regards to this band that hadn’t seen massive success. They did have another single off their first album, Hip to My Heart, which came out first, but it’s basically forgotten in the wake of If I Die Young.
A young woman singing about the life she could have lived, and about…potentially dying young. I’m saying the music’s good, not that you need to be Sherlock Fucking Holmes to figure out what it’s about. It has such strong lyrics, and the instrumentation is quintessentially country. Combines with Kimberly Perry’s throatier vocals, it creates a truly magnificent example of the genre. I still listen to this song on the regular. It holds up.
From If I Die Young on until they left country, you could see The Band Perry’s style and aesthetic evolve rather rapidly, especially through their music videos. Their sound evolved, but at a much slower pace. Their eponymous first album, I would equate more strongly to something like Caravan of Thieves, but if CoT was from Louisiana. I think that’s most strongly emphasized in All Your Life, which is, at least for me, the best song off their first album.
Now it’s true, I love a sappy little love song, so I’m not unbiased in this regard. I also love a circus, and the music video certainly helped catch my attention when it would cycle through on CMT (Because yes, I spent many a Saturday morning in my teenage years and early twenties watching the CMT top country programs.). But it’s, once again, the lyrics that really help pull this song into the top spot from that album for me. I love songs that treat the subject of “love” as some form of decadence, and this absolutely does that, but then it’s also able to bring it back around to the simplicity and purity of love. The decadence is excellent, but unnecessary within the confines of All Your Life, and that just really vibes with me.
And that’s honestly a big reason that The Band Perry left such a lasting mark, both on me and on the country fan base writ large: their vibe. I can’t stress enough how much of a breath of fresh air they were when they hit the radio. They cam into the scene at a really weird time in country music. A time when a lot of bands were flashes in the pan, and a lot of established artists were beginning to coast on their notoriety. And all of them were putting out songs with heavy drum sections and generic strings. So The Band Perry came along with mild percussion, heavy themes, a southern gothic palate, and acoustic instruments, and people took notice.
Their second album really built on some of the things that made them unique, and it also started to show their drift toward more pop and rock. I think DONE. really portrays that the most effectively.
Unlike some of their early songs, DONE. is just a fun country song. Admittedly, more bias here, because it falls into that “pissed off woman” niche of country that I absolutely love, but it’s a gorgeous blending of country and rock sensibilities, all carried on the back of a mandolin and Kimberly Perry’s absolutely driving voice. Her sound is always taking you somewhere, even when it’s hammering away at repeated notes like it is in this song. It becomes the rhythmic clacking of train wheels on the way through this song. It’s fun, but it’s a damn good song at the same time.
And did that all caps, ending in a period title maybe serve as a capstone to their country career? In hindsight...sort of. I don't think that was the intent, but it sure does seem to fit the mold nicely.
One of their songs that I just don’t think gets enough love (Although there’s not really a bad song on their two albums) from this same era is Chainsaw. It’s another “yeah this relationship is over” song, but I am still a sucker for metaphor and lyricism. I think stylistically, this one gives DONE. a run for its money on pushing the boundary into pop/rock. But for me, the fact that it’s all bit on this half-story, half-metaphor of cutting down the tree with your initial s carved into it just appeals to some part of me. I was raised up in a new age, neopagan household, so maybe that’s why it edges it out. Destroying a symbol like that? That’s how I addressed far too many problems as a teenager because of my upbringing.
I’d like to say “there are so many more songs that I could bring up” here, but the truth is that there just aren’t. The entire country catalog of The Band Perry is two albums. We could certainly touch on You Lie, which is a wonderful display of Kimberly Perry’s voice and range. Walk Me Down the Middle is one of their most “country” songs, fitting very much into the ecosystem at the time. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely is their other very “early 2010s country” sort of song. And, like, I enjoy both of those songs. But it’s like buying chocolate taffy and getting strawberry. I have nothing against strawberry. I like strawberry. But when I want chocolate, strawberry isn’t scratching the same itch.
But you know what does? Better Dig Two. For me, this is The Band Perry at their peak. I said that I adore love songs that treat love as decadence, and this ratchets it up to eleven. Love isn’t just decadent. It’s addictive. It’s whiskey to an alcoholic. It’s meth. It’s so good, and yet it can do so much damage.
Like, that’s the kind of relationship that Me In Real Life™ would tell you to stay away from. It’s codependent and toxic, to put it nicely. But the fiction of a love so strong that there’s no alternative but death when it’s over? Man, I eat that shit up.
Plus, if you want to talk vibes? Better Dig Two is the culmination of all the Tim Burton, pop-punk, emo, southern gothic ether that The Band Perry had been swimming in for their whole country career. It’s the peak. It’s the pinnacle. It’s still among my favorite country songs of all time.
I wish them nothing but the best, but there’s a hole that was formed when The Band Perry left the genre. It’s one that hasn’t been filled effectively in the 5 years since they moved to pop. They absolutely owe us nothing, but it’s still a hole. And I still long for the day when another band with that vibe might show up and feed my fantasies once again.
Until then, we enjoy the songs they did give us, because they’re a unique time capsule from early 2010s country music. Important to the ecosystem, a record of massive change, but wholly different from everything else around them at the time. And wholly different to anything coming out today.
An important part of modern country, and some god damn good music to boot.
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