Album Review: Patriotic Country 3

By Jeff Swindoll Aug 18, 2008, 14:32 GMT

Patriotic Country 3. Benefiting Our Military Kids, which provides grants to children of deployed or severely injured National Guard and Reserve Military personnel so these children can start or continue participation in sports, fine arts or tutoring programs while their parent is away or recovering from serious injury. These parents are making enormous sacrifices for our country and Our Military Kids is dedicated to minimizing the sacrifices their children must ...more

God, Country, Apple Pie, and Old Glory are all represented in this collection of country artists.  The album is called patriotic country, but some of the tunes just seem more like a tribute to small town America more than saying “rally round the flag boys.” 

For example, the album starts off with Kenny Chesney’s ‘A Lot of Things Different.’  I’d not call it “patriotic” as the song is about a man looking back on his life and how he’d do things different.  It’s a good song, but it really didn’t make me want to salute the flag.  It did have a small town feel to it though. 

‘Letters from Home’ (by John Michael Montgomery) sounds a bit more like it since it has soldiers at war waiting for letters from loved ones.  ‘Politically Uncorrect’ sounds like an unapologetic small town anthem from Gretchen Wilson and the legendary Merle Haggard (‘Fightin’ Side of Me’ is also on the album from Merle) to be sung at some of those highfalutin city folks. 

The oddest selection was ‘Long Arm of the Law’ by Kenny Rogers about a pair of young lovers (from a small town…) that surely didn’t sound patriotic, though a good song.  There are some songs that do make you want to wave the flag, but then there is several more that just sound like anthems to a much simpler small town life.

Perhaps those simpler times were more patriotic, but this is a nice selection of country music.