Elle King- Come Get Your Wife
Label: RCA
Producers: Elle King, Ross Copperman, Martin Johnson, Brandon Paddock
Although Elle King’s breakthrough with the 2015 crossover smash “Ex’s & Oh’s” seemed to set her on a path toward the rarified space of solo female rock hitmakers, her journey in the years following proved to be not so linear. Despite the release of an excellent and underrated sophomore effort in 2018, King’s greatest follow up success proved to arrive in the form of collaborations in the country field. Which leads us to Come and Get Your Wife, King’s third studio effort and her first proper country record. The album should not be confused with the slew of awkward “gone country” releases by former pop hit-makers that flooded the charts back in the late 2000s. With her down-home humor and bluesy swamp-twang, King easily asserts herself as a natural country storyteller, and not one with a cross-over signifier attached to her name. Her humble, blue-collar narratives on tracks like “Ohio” and “Lucky”, coupled with the redneck rave-up nature of cuts like “Blacked Out” and “Tulsa” recall Gretchen Wilson’s 2004 blockbuster Here for the Party, while she sounds right at home collaborating with country A-listers like Miranda Lambert (the banjo-pop on last year’s chart topper, “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home) and Dierks Bentley (the sincere down-trodden romance of “Worth A Shot”). Rounding things out are dabbles in everything from the campy Southern Gospel of “Try Jesus” and the bluegrass tinge of “Crawlin’ Mood” and “Bonafide”, to an excellently tender cover of alt-country hero Tyler Childers’ cult-favorite “Jesus Giant”, which may be the dark-horse highlight of the entire project. Only time will tell if Elle King’s artistic journey will continue its chameleonic ways, but the raw sincerity of Come Get Your Wife suggests that’s she not only committed to this country turn, but to also pulling it off with as much skill as any act in Nashville today.
Track Listing:
- “Ohio” (Elle King, Bobby Hamrick, Ella Langley, Matt McKinney)
- “Before You Met Me” (Tofer Brown, Laren Hungate, Meg McRee)
- “Try Jesus” (King, Ashley Gorley, Ben Johnson, Casey Cathleen Smith, Geoffrey Warburton)
- “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)” featuring Miranda Lambert (King, Martin Johnson)
- “Lucky” (King, Hamrick, Langley, McKinney)
- “Worth a Shot” featuring Dierks Bentley (Ross Copperman, Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne)
- “Tulsa” (King, Hamrick, Langley, McKinney)
- “Crawlin’ Mood” (Charlie Worsham, Jesse Frasure)
- “Bonafide” (King, Hamrick, Langley, McKinney)
- “Blacked Out” (King, M. Johnson)
- “Out Yonder” (Hamrick, Langley, McKinney)
- “Jersey Giant” (Tyler Childers)
- “Love Go By” (King, Joe Janiak, Warburton)
The 706 
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