When American Saturday Night came out in 2009, West Virginia-born country star Brad Paisley had already established himself on seven studio albums as a honky-tonk fonky-skronk guitar-playing singer who hurled jokes like he was firing a T-shirt cannon in a basketball arena. Suddenly, he proclaimed he no longer craved the old kudos—clever was cool, but he wanted to produce a set of great songs. That’s all. On this jewel, Paisley succeeded in both ways: First, the platinum ballad “Then” is a classic slow dance that radiates heart. And on much of the rest, Paisley plays word games more than ever, while reaching for something harder to hit than heartstrings.
Change was in the air. Brooks & Dunn were breaking up, and rising country star Taylor Swift was winning MTV VMAs. The music was getting more cosmopolitan, and Paisley was a gateway drug. On American Saturday Night, an album about change, two standout songs take on the theme in vivid ways. The title track references a girl who's into Brazilian boots, German cars, and “Back in the USSR”—and then Paisley flips it around and makes you believe there’s nothing more uber-American than sharing those interests over an imported beer at your beloved neighborhood bar. This is what life is about, he says: trying new stuff while never straying from your comfort zone.
Then there's the masterpiece, “Welcome to the Future,” in which Paisley reminisces about arcade games, then marvels at how you can now play them on your phone. But he acknowledges that we haven't evolved as much as we should when he waxes nostalgic about a high school football player he knew, before he lets it drop how the Klan burned a cross on his yard. This year at the end of the new millennium's first decade was a national moment of self-reflection, and without ever naming the then-new president, Paisley suggested one more way that change was called for. The guy turns over words and ideas like brats on a grill, and here they go deeper with every turn, offering a new, reassuring world before us if we want it.