Kristian Bush - "Trailer Hitch"

[avalyn]

Label: Streamsound
Sent to radio: June 24th; Add date: July 28th ; iTunes: July 28th
Writers: Kristian Bush, Brandon Bush, Tim Owen
Acoustic Live Version:


** He did have a demo/recorded version with a write up of songwriters on his site but it was removed due to the song being single. Once it's back up and everything I'll share it here.

Sources:
1. Check out the video below for amazing acoustic versions of first single "Trailer Hitch," as well as "Feeling Fine California" and the upcoming album's title track, "Southern Gravity."

2. brianmansfield
"@amanda522 @ brian_mansfield So you saw Kristian Bush last week. Curious if he mentioned which song is the single?" Yes, "Trailer Hitch."

[sabre14]

Hate to nitpick but the label is Streamsound ;). That's a typo I could easily make too.

[mairy]

STUDIO: www.airplayaddboard.com/mmrwebinclude/player.asp?&format=H1&sngcde=bushth

[Kari]

Spent some time listening to these songs at a radio thing a few weeks ago.
I love what he's doing. He said he has written over 300 songs since Jennifer
decided to do a solo thing for a bit. He assured us, they are still together.

Trailer hitch was my favorite

[avalyn]

Jun 10, 2014 13:13:22 GMT -5 sabre14 said:

Hate to nitpick but the label is Streamsound ;). That's a typo I could easily make too.

Thank you! I was doing the label off the top of my head. It switched the words on me. I fixed it though.

[kw9461]

Production is too loud, but other than that I quite like it. His voice reminds me of Marcel's - a bit rough but very effective on the right song. With a title like Trailer Hitch my expectations were quite low, but it turned out to be pretty darn good. If radio gives this a chance it will certainly stand out, I can't think of anything that sounds remotely like this song. How ironic would it be if Kristian wound up with more solo success than Jennifer.

[Kari]

Jun 11, 2014 20:07:46 GMT -5 kw9461 said:

Production is too loud, but other than that I quite like it. His voice reminds me of Marcel's - a bit rough but very effective on the right song. Wit ha tile like Trailer Hitch my expectations were quite low, but it turned out to be pretty darn good. If radio gives this a chance it will certainly stand out, I can't think of anything that sounds remotely like this song. How ironic would it be if Kristian would up with more solo success than Jennifer.

I hope radio is receptive too. It's one thing for a program director to nod their head and smile their approval of a song and artist at a radio event and then simply not spin it once it goes for adds.

[someguy]

I like this a lot. I could hear Kenny Chesney singing this. Hopefully radio will be more receptive to him than they were to Jennifer.

[avalyn]

According to Country Aircheck Weekly. This will be sent out MPE June 24th @ 9pm EST. This is the ad. Kristian mentioned at a streamed radio video that the symbol on this would be used for him as much as possible in some extent. He brought up he isn't one to put his face on an album cover - he fought the label about Sugarland's covers not having their faces on them. So he came up with that symbol to symbolize his solo career. Not word for word how he said it but pretty close. It was inspired by something on a map - he turned it sideways and added a circle to it.

[jesster]

This just isn't a solo voice I need to hear on my radio. In live performance with Sugarland he was pretty painful IMO when attempting brief lead vocal segments.

On the brighter side, to the extent I could make out the lyrics I didn't hear him singing about "shaking it" or "moneymakers"

[avalyn]

I am thinking these songs are on the full album as they are currently on the sampler being given to radio/media.

1. Make Another Memory (Kristian Bush / Jeff Cohen / Rodney Clawson) - music monday version
2. Light Me Up (Kristian Bush / Jesse Rice (?))
3. Trailer Hitch (Kristian Bush / Brandon Bush / Tim Owen)
4. Southern Gravity (Kristian Bush / Scooter Carusoe) - Music Monday Version
5. Flip Flops (Kristian Bush / Paul Overstreet / Jeff Cohen) - Music Monday Version

[onebuffalo]

Jun 20, 2014 12:08:32 GMT -5 avalyn said:

I am thinking these songs are on the full album as they are currently on the sampler being given to radio/media.

1. Make Another Memory (Kristian Bush / Jeff Cohen / Rodney Clawson) - music monday version
2. Light Me Up (Kristian Bush / Jesse Rice (?))
3. Trailer Hitch (Kristian Bush / Brandon Bush / Tim Owen)
4. Southern Gravity (Kristian Bush / Scooter Carusoe) - Music Monday Version
5. Flip Flops (Kristian Bush / Paul Overstreet / Jeff Cohen) - Music Monday Version

I love the fact that Paul Overstreet is still writing. You couldn't escape his songs from the late 1980s to early 1990s.

[bluedog6]

Jun 10, 2014 10:35:35 GMT -5 avalyn said:

Label: Streamsound
Radio: Late June / Early July 2014 (from KB himself on a livestream. New Single will be out 3 to 4 weeks from June 10th)
Writers: Kristian Bush, Brandon Bush, Tim Owen (?)
Acoustic Live Version:

** He did have a demo/recorded version with a write up of songwriters on his site but it was removed due to the song being single. Once it's back up and everything I'll share it here.

Sources:
1. Check out the video below for amazing acoustic versions of first single "Trailer Hitch," as well as "Feeling Fine California" and the upcoming album's title track, "Southern Gravity."

2. brianmansfield
"@amanda522 @ brian_mansfield So you saw Kristian Bush last week. Curious if he mentioned which song is the single?" Yes, "Trailer Hitch."

Thanks for posting that acoustic set. There is nothing I love more than listening to acoustic music. My biggest beef with current country music (other than the whole bro-country thing) is too much dependence on electric guitar. Rock and roll was born with the electric guitar. Country music was born with acoustic guitar, and fiddle, and mandolin, and banjo, and dobro, etc. It is best savored when it is acoustic.

[StillTheSame]

This week's "Music Monday" is about this song:

kristianbush.com/news/216023

[Deleted]

This was shipped to radio yesterday (Tuesday) morning. According to AllAccess, the official adds date is July 28.

The studio version is also up under Cool New Music at AllAccess.

[avalyn]

Lyric video

In the lyric video for his debut solo single, "Trailer Hitch," Kristian Bush is paying it forward… literally. The Sugarland guitarist took to the streets of downtown Chicago to put the message of the song to work, which is to stop obsessing about material things and instead experience the immense joy of giving gifts. ("Never seen a hearse with a trailer hitch," he sings.) So, armed with a video camera, a guitar and 300 one-dollar bills, the singer-songwriter became a street performer of a very different sorts.
"I thought how cool it would be if we tried to give away money from a guitar case instead of ask for money," Bush tells Rolling Stone Country. "People were looking at me funny; they got suspicious. I mean, here I am giving strangers money on the street. People would say no, and then I'd say, 'Go give it to someone who needs it.' Then they caught on. It turns out, people are much more comfortable giving than they are taking."

Bush reports it took him about an hour and a half to give away $300. "And that's what I did on my way to Wrigley Field," he says with a laugh, explaining that the video was shot just before he threw the first pitch at a Chicago Cubs game later that day.

[avalyn]

#3 added song this week at 32 first week add's.

A behind the scenes of the recording process of the song/album.

[echocountry]

I think this is an OK song, but I think Jennifer's lead solo single was much better....Her whole album is fantastic! :)

[sabre14]

This song is really growing on me. Kristian's voice was always one I actually would have liked to seen utilized a bit more while with Sugarland, though obviously Jennifer was the identity of the duo with her distinctive vocals. Kristian did get to sing on tracks like "These Are The Days" and "Gold And Green" from their Christmas album.

Anyway, the vocals I find enjoyable. The production is just the slightest too loud but nowhere near overproduced. I've always find the subject to be easy to relate to as well. There's just one problem with this song, and that's the one lyric where he says that he felt so good by the afternoon, that he decided to give away his car. I think no matter how much I don't want to be materialistic, I don't think I nor anyone would just give away their wheels on a whim.

[Markus Meyer]

I'm loving this one as well, just so charming and bouncy.
Hard not to imagine him walking up to someone and giving them his car while listening.

Can any chart watchers say how well this is doing so far? Seems like it's doing decently but I don't know too much lol

[.indulgecountry]

I don't care for this at all. To me, his vocals on this are pretty terrible. I actually didn't mind the few times he was audible on Sugarland songs, though this solo stint proves to me what I already knew that Jennifer Nettles was the voice of the band for a reason. Their voices are on opposite ends of the spectrum for me. Like comparing Reba to Tyler Farr.

Aside from that, I think the melody is clunky (in part due to the rough vocal) and the lyrics are meh. The line "Everybody wanna die rich" in particular leaves me cringing every time, and I find it unavoidable when listening to the song (it just stands out to me, in a bad way). The production is also pretty uninteresting and between the way it sounds instrumentally and vocally, I get a knockoff Jason Mraz vibe from this more so than anything country, and Mraz is clearly a much more gifted vocalist as well (and I'm not even a fan of his).

I'll be surprised (and a fair bit disappointed) if this ends up doing better than "That Girl" for Jennifer. Granted I didn't care for that song either and I feel like she's gone a little too far outside the norm for country radio, but I'd be upset for Kristian to be received better than her by country radio. They need to just drop the solo acts soon and get back together and get back to the good thing they had going with Sugarland, preferably tapping back into the sounds of their first two albums and staying far, far away from the sounds of The Incredible Machine.

[someguy]

This officially ties "That Girl"'s peak this week, as it moves up to #36. Go figure. I never really would have seen that coming a year ago. I still do like the song, though it's not aging all that well with me. I don't see it becoming a huge hit at this point, but I do think that it will probably make the top 30 at least.

[avalyn]

Music Video for Trailer Hitch.

[sabre14]

^ Well that was interesting....

Just because Halloween is less than 10 days from now doesn't mean your music video has to be filled with zombies, lol.

[avalyn]

It is really different, I'll say that. I've watched it a few times. It's been fun to pick out different people in the video as zombies/actors. Though from what he has said nearly everything else that was pitched to him was reinventing the lyric video and he didn't want to do that. I can appreciate that as a fan.

Some behind the scenes looks into the video making process, him explaining the choice of this video and a look into the makeup part of the video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKp4yCp15xM
www.joblo.com/horror-movies/news/exclusive-behind-the-scenes-of-a-zombie-music-video-with-robert-kurtzman-292

[tim]

I happened to hear this and watch the video for the first time last night (usually not a good idea to watch a music video first...I've learned it'll put an image in your mind you'll find hard to get out). I don't think I made it more than a minute into the video before stopping as I just wasn't feeling it. I found myself not paying much attention to the song and thinking how weird the video was. Turn the page to the next morning and I'm making coffee with the radio on and guess what comes on...this song haha. I've never heard it on the radio here locally before so thought it funny it was on. I'm only on my fourth listen now and I am really enjoying this tune.

Anyways, I'm just now catching up with this song's chart run and see it's been lingering for a bit. That said, the fact that this morning's radio show was playing it can't be a bad sign (again, this is the first time I've heard it locally so maybe the promotion was stepped up a bit).

[Deleted]

How has "Trailer Hitch" gotten higher up the charts than Jennifer Nettles' "That Girl?" The Nettles single had much better sales and it seems like Jennifer Nettles would have more name recognition/momentum having been the lead vocalist on Sugarland, yet "Trailer Hitch" has already gotten as high as #35 on Billboard's chart while "That Girl" stopped at #37. Could this disparity have something to do with the theme of "That Girl?"

[sabre14]

Oct 23, 2014 23:03:20 GMT -5 @daydrinker said:

How has "Trailer Hitch" gotten higher up the charts than Jennifer Nettles' "That Girl?" The Nettles single had much better sales and it seems like Jennifer Nettles would have more name recognition/momentum having been the lead vocalist on Sugarland, yet "Trailer Hitch" has already gotten as high as #35 on Billboard's chart while "That Girl" stopped at #37. Could this disparity have something to do with the theme of "That Girl?"

I got to be honest, I'm really not all that surprised that "Trailer Hitch" has been more successful than "That Girl". The fact "That Girl" had better single sales is the only part that doesn't add up but "Trailer Hitch" is just more radio friendly than "That Girl" - that's most of what's going on here. It wasn't so much that Jennifer's song had a not so radio friendly theme (which I think may have contributed) but the fact it was a slower song that may have flown over some stations heads. Same thing went for all of Jennifer's album. Don't get me wrong they were terrific songs but they never added up to commercial radio success IMO, and the failure of "Me Without You" after the top 40 peak for "That Girl" is exactly what I expected.

As for "Trailer Hitch"; I think this song is just catchy ear candy. There's nothing controversial about it, it has a catchy melody and hook, and it's short. Plus Kristain's recognition with being a former Sugarland member certainly helps familiarize him with radio. His voice can be a stumbling block for some I'm sure but most average PD's and fans can and have looked past that. By the way, this is now the highest charting single for Byron Gallimore and Jim Wilkes label Streamsound as "Trailer Hitch" reached #35 on Billboard and #37 on MB this past week. Austin Webb's "Slip On By" was the previous high as his peaked at #39 on MB and #40 on Billboard very early this year.

[Deleted]

Up to #32 on Billboard now, and he should move into the top 30 on Monday's chart as long as he can hold off at least 2 of the 4 from among Jana Kramer, Lady Antebellum, Tyler Farr, and Toby Keith (and I think he'll stay ahead of all 4 of them). Three top 10 songs will go recurrent so if no one passes Kristian, then "Trailer Hitch" should finish the week at #29.

I don't see this one getting much higher than that, though, but top 30 is a pretty good accomplishment for Kristian and Streamsound Records.

[Deleted]

Kinda ironic to think that Kristian's song has already climbed higher than Jennifer Nettles "That Girl"