Morgan Wade – Obsessed Review

Contemporary country gets a bad rap. Not least for the lack of quality by those working the genre, but because the inception of its peak is still the best. Few will come close to the lofty heights, but some will try their hardest. Morgan Wade has given it her best effort on Obsessed, a solid collection of light, pop-rock adjacent pieces. Love and its many manipulations are laid bare by this fourteen-track collection. Obsessed is an album which provides obvious details, and in demonstrating the plainness it loses something. Where it may rely solely on the reflection which comes from a dying love, like Lana Del Rey pinpointed on Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Wade provides listeners with intimate recollections of life with another. It is up to the listener as to whether they find some love in these loose pop grooves. 

Something like Time to Love, Time to Kill gets to the singular point Wade presents through Obsessed. Sometimes it sounds remarkable as it does with the slick riffs of light joy here, other times it is reduced to a vagueness which crushes the potential emotional momentum. There is integrity within this piece, but it is so stagnant, and so reliant on those ineffective genre tropes. It is hard to hear a way out for those in the genre. All of it is doomed to repeat itself, moments in time to the instrumental flavour. Jet-lagged experiences in hotel rooms with 2AM in London is shockingly similar in subject matter to the rest of the genre. It remains fascinating to hear those voices still trying to come to terms with life on the road. All of them are doing it in the same fashion, this tender acoustic underlining the loneliness of travel.  

Wade has a solid voice but her material fails to rise above generic. Her heartbreak at being away from home is replicated from track to track, by herself and other musicians elsewhere. How the whole of contemporary country has only two choices of lyrical material remains a great mystery. Lost loves or the loss of love for something once loved. Riveting, this is not. There is truth to how Wade writes, but she writes in a way which is typical of the genre. One line of writing only works well when the instrumental or vocal chemistry is there to carry it. Dull western tones of clunking guitar work. It sounds tender but is a brittle noise. Hansel and Gretel is a defining experience for this, the clang and echo of a fairytale generalised to fit the obvious tones of heartbreak. 

Despite the teething issues heard throughout the slow swing of cliche country noise, Wade is still one of the better voices to come from this modernised crop of country singers. Obsessed is well off the mark and makes no major moves, but it is consistent enough to endure. Dead grass on Spin is the closest Wade gets to moving imagery. The rest is filler. A single pointer or message is no fault for an album. Artists have proven one topic is enough to find their way through a harsh or revolutionary experience. But neither occurs on this latest Wade album. These are the clement forms of an artist with a unique voice buried under the expectations of the genre. Rolling over for the contemporary country crowd will do nothing but devolve the genre, and while Obsessed cannot be blamed for that, it does nothing to fight back the dullness.