There’s an argument to be made that when you have a song as popular as Eli Young Band did (“EYB” from here on), you can’t really be “forgotten” or “under-appreciated” but I think “Crazy Girl” was just a small taste of what EYB could offer the genre. Before the monster success of that single, they had multiple albums and had established a fan base on the Texas Country scene. Even now, they continue making music
Mike Eli (lead vocals/guitar), James Young (guitar), Jon Jones (bass), and Chris Thompson (drums) combined to form this group after meeting in college – fun fact, there is no “Eli Young” though I’m sure most casual listeners would just assume that’s Mike Eli’s name since he’s lead vocalist.
EYB would debut with a self titled, 14-track album that embraced their Texas roots. Listening to this compared to their most recent album, “Love Talking” presents a pretty stark contrast in production and sounds. I found “Back of My Mind” to be the standout track on this album and it sort of feels like that was one they could’ve brought forward to a future album.
After this, they would release “Level” which has multiple standout tracks including: “Small Town Kid”, “So Close Now”, “Everything Is You”, and “Highways and Broken Hearts”. The latter of that list being one of their best tracks and “So Close Now” seemingly the perfect song to present to a major label to show that they could embrace a more contemporary production while retaining their own distinct sound – Mike Eli’s voice is pretty unique in it’s own right. As a bit of a side note, I’ve always felt thematically “Highways and Broken Hearts” is a perfect companion track for “Guinevere”, which leads me to their first major mainstream success with the “Jet Black and Dangerous” album.
Released through Universal South Records (which would later on become Toby Keith’s label, Show Dog Nashville), this was most likely most Country listener’s first exposure to EYB. With “When It Rains” presenting a head bopping first impression, the band followed up with one of their trademark hits in “Always the Love Songs” (which would reach #11 on the charts) and then proceed to have two more singles over the album cycle (which was essentially four years, 2007-2010). The other singles “Radio Waves” a sort of heartbreak track that has a touch of a meta level to it and “Guinevere” a song about a woman seeking something more and trying to get through the damage she’s dealt and been given. It also has a great line with “Says forgiveness ain’t nothing but a lifeless tire on the shoulder of her soul/That never rolls”. It would be this album, espeically, the nostalgic “Always the Love Songs” that set the stage for an absolute explosion in popularity with their next album.
With the Life at Best album, EYB would produce their biggest hit and the #1 song on the year end charts with “Crazy Girl“. The Lee Brice co-written track captured a lot of Country fans hearts and catapulted the band into stardom. To this day, it’s far and away their most played song on YouTube (approximately 42 million views compared to 19 million as their next highest – which would be the second single off this album). The song would go on to win the Academy of Country Music Song of the Year award in 2012 and is likely going to be on Country radio in some capacity forever.
After that smash hit, EYB would release “Even If It Breaks Your Heart“, a track about continuing to dream no matter how difficult the path is to your goals and it would also reach #1 on the charts. The band would put out a third single from this album that would somewhat flounder (at least if you’re comparing it to the two singles that came before) with “Say Goodnight“. Of note, the song had one of the more interesting music videos of the year where an extraterrestrial robot crash lands on Earth, is hitting by a woman in a Jeep, and then falls for that woman. I just rewatched it to make sure I’m not missing anything, it’s interesting to say the least (I’m poking fun, but I don’t really have an issue with the music video, I actually prefer it to just doing something standard and basic). For fun, here’s the video:
I’ll also note that this album was right in that sweet-spot for nostalgia for me, so songs like “Every Other Memory“, “My Old Man’s Son“, “The Falling“, and “War on A Desperate Man” still stand out to me.
The next album would have the lead single “Drunk Last Night” with a driving beat and a story of last night drunk dials that would garner the band another number one hit. This was a song I just felt was so good, I listened to it a LOT. Afterward, the second and final single from the album “Dust” would bring out more of the Country-Rock side of the band and become a Top 20 hit for them. The rest of the album had highlights with “What Does” and “Prayer for the Road“. With the end of that album era would come a new record label and an EP with a bit more Pop-Country influences.
“Turn It On” and the other three songs on the EP didn’t have the band abandoning their sound, but it certainly was a bit different. After the first single failed to do much on the charts, the band released “Saltwater Gospel” – a track about finding peace on the beach and while that song would not really see much more success than the previous one on radio, it would be able to gather enough support for them to release another album “Fingerprints” that was more focused at their signature sound.
I’ll note, “Saltwater Gospel” had a long chart run, then was re-released with the late, great Jimmy Buffet featured on the track. This song was around for awhile.
After that album, EYB would have another single “Break It In” and then “Love Ain’t” – which would be released along with their greatest hits album. Since then, the band released the album “Love Talking” which would have the singles “Lucky For Me” and “Love Talking” and a personal favorite of mine album track with “Live With It”.
Recently they released a single with George Birge called “Amy’s Back In Austin” Overall, it just felt like the band was unable to fully recover their momentum after “Say Goodnight” underwhelmed and then “Dust” sort of halted their momentum enough that they decided to go with a new direction of sound (or were push to do so by their record label) and the end result was a fizzling out of mainstream radio steam. However, their quality of music didn’t fizzle and I highly advise you to check out their last couple of albums as it’s likely you’ll find something you like on them (especially if you found yourself singing along to “Crazy Girl” years ago).
Generally, with this series, I just want readers to go back and listen to some of these artists I enjoyed over the years and check out some of their new music/projects. Go support these artists!
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