If you like country and rock, then this album is for you.
After all the promotional tracks like “Wait in the Truck” featuring country singer Lainey Wilson, the title track and sold-out country-rock artist Hardy released his sophomore album, “The Mockingbird & The Crow” and it’s a wonderful experience.
To understand the album, let’s take a look at the album cover and album title. The title of the album talks about the two sides of himself. You have “the mockingbird,” which is the country side of Hardy. Then you have “the crow,” which is the full-blown hard rock side.
You could also say the same thing for the album cover: you have the left side of his face, which is colored and represents the country side. The right side of his face in black and white and represents the rock side. This is a very creative cover in general and it’s a great way to represent the album.
The album raises the question: will Hardy stay in the country world that he’s been in since 2018? Or is he fully going to move into the rock world where he is currently getting a lot of love. Or, will all his albums be like this one, half-country and half-rock?
I’m going to give you some great songs from this album that are worth listening to. Let’s first talk about the three great collaborations that came with this album.
The first one, track #2 on the album, is “Red” featuring country superstar Morgan Wallen. The track talks about how a lot of great things are red. The first line is “red, I’m talking about the sun coming up and the sun coming down.” It’s my least favorite of the collaborations but still a wonderful song.
The next collaboration, track #3, is the hit “Wait in the Truck” with up-and-coming popular artist Lainey Wilson. The song tells the story of a man who, upon finding a beaten woman on the side of the road, confronts her abuser in his trailer. He shoots him when he reaches for his shotgun and ends up getting a life sentence in prison – but he’s happy knowing he saved a life of a woman. It’s my second-favorite of the collaborations.
The final and my favorite collaboration – and my favorite song on this album, track #15 – is “Radio Song,” featuring A Day to Remember frontman Jeremy McKinnon. This song is a bash to the Bro Country movement that’s been sweeping country music the past 12 years and the song demonstrates how to write a country song that ends up on radio nowadays.
The final song I want to mention is the title track, “the mockingbird and THE CROW. Just like with the album in general you have the first half of the song which is country talking about how he’s been writing songs for other artists and that he started singing the songs he was writing. And on the other side you have THE CROW that talks about how he doesn’t just wanna be the soft singing country singer he wants to be the loud rock singer like the singers he grew up listening to.
Overall, I think that this album is a great career point for HARDY and that he’s going to have fun in both genres of music now. And if you want a fun album to listen to while driving around this is the perfect album for it. I cannot wait for his next album because there is always room for improvement
Hawk rating 8.5/10
