American Saturday Night

1	American Saturday Night 4:34
2	Everybody's Here 3:31
3	Welcome to the Future 5:52
4	Then 5:21
5	Water 4:21
6	She's Her Own Woman 4:29
7	Welcome to the Future (Reprise) 1:19
8	Anything Like Me 4:13
9	You Do the Math 4:36
10	No 4:20
11	Catch All the Fish 4:08
12	Oh Yeah, You're Gone 5:36
13	The Pants 4:36
14	I Hope That's Me 3:40
15	[Untitled] 1:30

Barnes & Noble

Don't blame Brad Paisley if the one-liners and joke songs are a bit thinner on the ground on American Saturday Night. Like a certain ex-president who abstained from golf during wartime, the country superstar felt that with the economy in free-fall, two wars raging, and a crisis in healthcare, it just wasn't the time to be checking anybody for ticks. (Well, as a healthcare initiative, that might just have legs...) So after a diverting instrumental set, now comes Paisley's turn as a more serious songwriter. Sure, Paisley albums have always come stocked with a tear-jerker or two, but Saturday Night makes a study of whistful melancholy on songs such as "Then" and "Water," and strikes a chord for the ages on "Welcome to the Future," which is possibly the most Obama-friendly song ever played on country radio. Fortunately for Nashville, there's a good dose of bipartisan patriotism with the title track, and a signature he-said / she-said riff on "The Pants," showing that even on weekends, it's all in a day's work for Brad Paisley. Mark Schwartz

All Music Guide

An American Saturday Night is not an unusual topic for a country song, but Brad Paisley's celebration is. Paisley sees a typical weekend night as a cultural collision of French kisses, Italian Ices, Canadian bacon, and margaritas, a place where Mexican and Dutch beers chill side by side in a bucket of ice. If he leans too heavily on labels, referring to those beers by brand name, it's merely a reflection of Paisley's uncanny knack for capturing the casual contemporary details of American life at the tail-end of the 2000s. It's not just the pile up of iPhones and international video chats on "Welcome to the Future," the first country anthem of the Obama era, it's how he'll pick up prescription for his girl and flips macho stereotypes on their head on "The Pants." He's a thoroughly modern man and that attitude helps invigorate his traditional country, a sensibility that's welcome on American Saturday Night, which veers toward the mellow despite its rollicking title track or the breakneck "Catch all the Fish" and the odd burst incongruous gurgling synth. On the whole, American Saturday Night is one of his dreamier albums, filled with swaying slow dances, sweet love tunes, and the occasional brokenhearted blues, all delivered with a worn-in ease. Paisley prevents things from getting too relaxed by juxtaposing his every-guy vocals with spitfire guitar, something that gooses even the sleepiest tempos, just like how he spikes his party tunes with sly humor. He never lets things get too serious or too maudlin, he cracks jokes at himself and his friends, he lets everybody into his Saturday night party, because he knows that what makes an American party -- and what makes America -- is how all the best things wash up on the U.S. shores. Stephen Thomas Erlewine