My Life's Been a Country Song

1	What Kinda Gone 3:01
2	No Love Songs 3:58
3	It's Good to Be Back 3:17
4	I Don't Wanna Live 3:37
5	Never Ever Gone 3:01
6	If It Isn't One Thing 3:42
7	Keep Me from Loving You 3:06
8	Little Sundress 4:01
9	My Heart Move On 4:11
10	My Life's Been a Country Song 3:17
11	Change Me 3:55

Barnes & Noble

For his fourth album, Chris Cagle has delivered a mostly high-octane workout heavy on the wailing guitars and thundering percussion of '80s arena rock, all in service to the committed performance of meaty songs. Certainly he's singing with an urgency uncommon to his earlier efforts. Even a relatively low-key love song, "If It Isn't One Thing," has an undercurrent of smoldering tension in Cagle's intense, testifying vocal and the edgy electric guitar lines snaking through the arrangement before soaring up and away in the choruses. There's also a kind of bent sense of humor surfacing here, especially in the driving lead-off song, "What Kind of Gone," in which Cagle, supported by a clever arrangement that favors tough rock guitars but is punctuated by a banjo plunking away in the background, muses over the various definitions of "gone" after his girl takes a powder on him. Another kind of gone is contemplated in the stomping, guitar-driven pulse of "Never Ever Gone," with Cagle lamenting the gal he can't get out of his mind, "no matter how hard I try to turn it off." Ever the romantic, though, the old boy concludes on an optimistic note in the booming power ballad "Change Me": "You can do anything you need / baby, I want to believe / your love can save me." Co-produced by Cagle and the estimable Scott Hendricks, My Life's Been a Country Song puts the music and the message together in compelling fashion. Chris Cagle is on the verge of something big. David McGee

All Music Guide

Chris Cagle says that his life is a country song in the title of his fourth album -- a claim that may well be true, but based on this 2008 album his life doesn't sound much like a country song. Cagle, like many country singers of his generation, walks the line between classic rock and mainstream country, which means there's more twang in his voice than there is in the music, no matter how many fiddles and trebly Telecasters are pumped up in the mix. Of course, this hardly represents a change of course for Cagle, who has tread this path since his debut, nor is it really a complaint: it's a statement of fact. Fortunately, Cagle has an earnest, plainspoken charm that keeps his music relatable -- it never seems pumped up for arenas, as some rock-influenced contemporary country does -- and he has to rely hard on that charm here, as he has his blandest set of songs yet. Tellingly, this is a collection that contains no originals from Cagle: every tune was penned by a pro. Some of these are quite strong -- the Rhett Akins-written "Little Sundress" is a bright, summery pop tune, the lead single "What Kinda Gone" is a sturdy slice of rocking country -- and some are simply pleasant pieces of product, like the Mellencamp-lite "No Love Songs." There may be just a little bit more of the latter than there should be, but Cagle helps sell them with his neighborly drawl -- enough for them to be casually enjoyable, if not quite memorable. That may not quite be what Cagle needs at this stage -- he hasn't had a big hit since 2004's "Chicks Dig It" and could use another -- but it's a solid double down the middle, enough to keep his batting average up even if he isn't knocking 'em out of the park. Stephen Thomas Erlewine