Tyler Childers has been under fire recently for a multitude of reasons. Tyler has been relatively inactive in the music industry throughout the last year. Mostly because he doesn’t enjoy being in the mass social media spotlight. Regardless, many fans were not too happy with this absence. Excitement rose when Childers started to tease the coming of a new album. He started posting teases to his Instagram, hinting at new music. In this addition of Albums Rated, I will be reviewing Rustin in the Rain as a whole, and looking into the controversy that surrounds it.
July 27th left a multitude of hardcore Tyler Childers fan disappointed. An anticipated track was released called, In Your Love. The song is about one lover giving their all to their partner as seen in these lyrics, “I will work for you until my hands are tired and bleeding”. Before watching the music video many listeners envisioned the song being about a heterosexual couple. These same listeners would even associate the song with their own relationship. These same people were angered to see the music video which starred a homosexual couple. Fans went ballistic on social media saying how Childers has changed. One man, who wishes to stay anonymous says “the video honestly just made me feel uncomfortable”. This reason, along with the short run time of the album, did not go over well with fans.
Rolling Stones interviewed Childers and asked him why he decided to make a homosexual couple the focus of his music video. They report that Childers has a close family member who is gay and this prompted the idea of the song. This family member just wanted to “see himself in a country music video”. Childers just wanted to look out for his family.
As for the album itself, though short, it does have meaningful and good songs. Space and Time being the most notable one of the bunch. This cover has been anticipated since he released his version of it to promote fellow artist SG Goodman’s album Old Time Feeling. The song tells the story of an individual not wanting to die before they tell their partner they love them. This song helped to put SG Goodman on the map and fans went crazy when they heard Childers promote it for the first time. It was a particularly good addition to the album.
“Has Childers changed?”, in short no. Tyler Childers has not changed one bit. He is still writing and singing the same folk-country songs that he is known to sing. This album was covered with a bit of controversy, and this caused fans to disregard the album even before it was released. Fans were going into this album with a negative attitude from the start due to the controversy. This combined with the fact that Childers’ previous works are some of the most notable country songs in the past 23 years, made it hard for this album to live up to expectations. For me, this album scores 6.7 out of 10. It wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t an utter failure, like how some fans will lead you to believe. Childers used a lot of chordophones in the album, this isn’t a bad thing, I just don’t think it fits most of the songs that they appeared in. This was the biggest turnoff, it just hurt the flow of the songs. Besides this, the storytelling and meaningful lyrics were on point. Childers’s haunting voice echoed throughout the album and told these stories in the best possible ways. I look forward to Childer’s upcoming work.