Ernest

One Liner: Buddy to Morgan Wallen making some cheesy but solid bro country

Wikipedia Genre: Country
Home: Nashville (for real - born and raised)

Saturday

Thoughts:  Seeing this on the poster made me grin, just because of my childhood trauma associated with the name Ernest.  My middle name is Ernest, named after my grandmother who was named Ernestine, who was named after her father, Ernest.  I am the only one of my four siblings to have a middle name, and for some demented reason my folks happened to grace me with that name just in time for this dumbass to appear in pop culture and make it hell every time some other kid learned my middle name.

After a string of awful commercials, this guy parlayed that into a string of similarly awful movies, with wonderful titles like Ernest Goes to Camp, Ernest Goes to Jail, Ernest Goes to School, or Ernest Scared Stupid.  Which of course made the other kids say these stupid movie titles as I was headed to camp, or school, or jail.  It was all very annoying.  I will say though that one of my best friends still affectionately calls me Ernie, and I'll allow it.

Anyway, this is not Ernest P. Worrell.  This is some Morgan Wallen-adjacent country singer who has the audacity to try to claim an entire first name as his own.  Ernest is a name derived from the German word ernst, which means serious.  This guy's real name is Ernest Keith Smith.  He got his start writing songs for Morgan Wallen, Florida Georgia Line, and others, and then signed his own contract in 2019.  He was actually born and raised in Nashville, which feels like a rarity among these artists who mostly moved there from somewhere else.

A few weird facts from his Wikipedia bio:

• he cites a CD of Eminem songs given to him by a friend, as well as the Space Jam soundtrack, as his "main influences."  Which is super weird for a country artist.
• He had a heart attack at age 19 because of a viral infection.  Jeez!
• He developed a drug addition while playing baseball in junior college 
• He used to play baseball against Morgan Wallen in high school and they have remained friends.
• He has a podcast called Just Being Ernest.

Sadly, his Spotify is scrubbed of his early music, which was apparently country rap with titles like "Dopeman" and "Bad Boy."  Instead, his first thing on Spotify is a 2019 album called Locals Only that is pretty straightforward country music in the Bro Country vein.  Top track is the album opener, "I Think I Love You."  13.4 million streams.

Got some of that Buffet-barefoot-in-the-sand vibe in there.  The other big song on here is even more polished and modern-country than this one ("Hard Way").  I know that the mainstream country audience isn't looking for the things that make me happy with country, but I still wish that these guys were a little less clean and a little more real.  Also, I watched a rad version of "Pancho and Lefty" this morning that made me extremely happy, so maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic and this is definitely not scratching that itch.  "Takes After You" is prime cheese ("if he don't take after Jesus, I hope he takes after you!"), but it is also a pretty good song.  Dangit.

After that initial album, he dropped FLOWER SHOPS in 2022, which featured his biggest hit by far.  That track just happened to include Morgan Wallen on it, so of course that carried him up into the upper echelons of stream count.  "Flower Shops," with 188 million streams.

oooooh, wide screen video!  So cinematic!  You know what, I don't hate it.  Slightly generic song, but I like the chorus.  And I just don't know what to think about Wallen.  He sounds good on this tune, and there are no drum machines in sight, so it feels like he's okay.  Has the world actually forgiven him for the n-word incident?  Or is he remaining popular through the stubborn intransience of the country crowd?  I don't actually know.  But their voices sound nice together.

You know what is good in his catalog?  He's got a 2023 album called ERNEST & The Fellas Unplugged.  Which is a shit album name, but I think those arrangements are good.  Also, he covers John Mayer, which is entertaining.  However, I'd like to lodge a complaint that the instruments here are, in fact, not unplugged.

There are some drum machine-assisted tunes among these tracks, but overall, I'm not mad at this guy.  I definitely like him better than the Munsick guy, but that isn't saying too terribly much.  I think I might enjoy his show, even if I wouldn't probably add these songs into my saved song rotation.