The Rock: Stone Cold Country 2001

1	The Rock 3:24
2	Beer Run (B Double E Double Are You In?) 3:04
3	Wood and Wire 3:49
4	50,000 Names 3:50
5	The Man He Was 2:51
6	I Got Everything 3:13
7	Half Over You 3:31
8	I Am 3:06
9	Honey Hush 3:33
10	Around Here 2:35
11	What I Didn't Do 3:46
12	Tramp on Your Street 4:14

Barnes & Noble

Time is George Jones's great ally, because the longer he hangs around planet Earth, the better the records he makes. Not as dark and foreboding as 1999's Cold Hard Truth, one of Possum's grandest moments, The Rock nonetheless offers more than a few object lessons in country singing that cuts to and through the bone. What Jones does with Karen Staley's honky-tonk tearjerker "Half Over You," is bound to break hearts up and down the line as Jones describes the forlorn first moments after a love affair goes south. "I Am" is one of the more curious entries in the Jones oeuvre, being the story of a man unable to do anything but live up to the archetype of the modern male as strong, silent, and emotionally reserved. But the anguish in the measured doses of Jones's phrasing, so emblematic of the expectations he wants to buck, is so palpable and chilling that you listen over and over to be sure you heard what you think you heard. "What I Didn't Do" is an exercise in self-loathing that rivals the searing revelations of his previous album's title track, a litany of failings that wrecked a relationship. And the atmospheric, fiddle- and pedal steel-fired evocation of the Hank Williams legend in Billy Joe Shaver's "Tramp on Your Street" is the perfect honky-tonk finale to another Jones tour de force. Of course there's time for tomfoolery, especially in the form of a rambunctious duet with Garth Brooks on "Beer Run (B Double E Double Are You In?)." But oh, those stone-cold hard truths about the way we live our lives --- you don't get over The Rock easily. David McGee

All Music Guide

One album with Asylum was enough for "the Possum," and even if The Cold Hard Truth's mastermind Keth Stegall has been retained for a couple of cuts on The Rock: Stone Cold Country 2001 (possibly the most awkward title of any George Jones record), it's clear that the pure hardcore country of that album has been abandoned for a refined, commercialized version of that sound. That's not entirely a bad thing, since this is hardly as compromised an album as High-Tech Redneck and, by and large, the material is good. But, apart from the last-minute addition of the Garth Brooks duet "Beer Run," few of the songs really stand out -- they all occupy a pleasant midlevel that sounds good while playing but doesn't really register in memory. That still doesn't hurt the record, since it's unencumbered by unnecessary superstar duets and is appealingly lean, but it is the kind of record for the dedicated believers who like to hear Jones performing cleanly as a professional. Not really something to celebrate like The Cold Hard Truth, but it results in a solid latter-day effort, much like I Lived to Tell It All. Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Billboard

...evokes the very heart of everything that country music ever hoped to be. Ray Waddell