Shaboozey: The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Different Western Tales Album Overview

The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Different Western Tales is a 20-track epic from a person whose registry of economic woes—“Gasoline and groceries/The record goes on and on”—has shortened considerably since he wrote his breakout hit. Since Shaboozey captured world consideration in 2024 with “A Bar Music (Tipsy)”—presently tied for the longest-running No. 1on the Billboard Sizzling 100—and two appearances on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, success has granted him the sources to do no matter he needs. This summer season, he employed a 12-piece backing band to interrupt into Invoice Monroe’s bluegrass traditional “Roanoke” throughout his Tiny Desk Live performance. And for the follow-up to his star-making third album, The place I’ve Been, Isn’t The place I’m Going, he’s made a report that performs like a whole season of Yellowstone on fast-forward.

Pink Floyd’s The Wall is considered one of his all-time favorites, however the Virginia-born songwriter appears to attract extra inspiration right here from Purple Lifeless Redemption and Tarantino movies. The narrative goes one thing like this: A feminine protagonist units out to avenge her father’s homicide and falls in love with an outlaw from the gang chargeable for the very homicide she’s looking for to avenge. She tries to repair him however—spoiler—murders him within the closing act. An ensemble forged helps inform the story, with interludes from Teyana Taylor as our remorseful villainess, Sam Elliott as each character he’s ever performed, and Jamie Foxx, who warns that “Hell is sizzling” atop hay-bale rattles with the hushed gusto of the megachurch pastor from a Druski skit. The ambition is admirable, however and not using a companion comedian e-book to fill within the blanks between the extra formulaic tracks, the grandiose plot falls flat.

As recounted to Rolling Stone, Shaboozey’s inventive director cautioned the singer that this undertaking may demand “long-term consideration from individuals in a short-span financial system,” and the album’s elaborate framework might be learn as an intentional various to attempting to recreate the viral success of a success. Nonetheless, he makes a pair makes an attempt anyway. Simply as “A Bar Music (Tipsy)” took inspiration from J-Kwon’s 2004 hit “Tipsy,” this album’s “Excessive Midday,” that includes Gunna, bears the unfastened form of Yung Joc’s 2006 single “It’s Goin’ Down.” A ready-for-war gym-bro monitor for the Skoal set, it’s an apt selection for ESPN’s 2026 Faculty Soccer Anthem, certain to promote many instances of the flat vodka seltzers it shares a reputation with each Saturday. The buoyant “Cowgirl” is the obvious imitation act, that includes the road “Received one other bar tune for you and all your folks” over the same stomp-clap beat. Its wordplay is peppered with radio-ready drinking-game subliminal messaging, from “Shooters gotta shoot” to “Let me see your hand,” none of that are intelligent sufficient to impress something too disruptive.

Shaboozey has made crossover impression in an business whose outdated record of conditions he can nonetheless declare, and he fares higher when his influences stretch again to nation music earlier than “Tipsy.” He does his finest John Prine on “Drunk,” talk-singing an ode to like misplaced and bottle discovered, solely faltering when he ups the theatrics with the slurred diction of an everyday, maybe in pursuit of an A24 improvement deal. It’s a transparent homage and all of the extra spectacular for its lack of novelty: “If I’m dying, I wanna die drunk,” he sings, a refrain so intuitive you’re stunned it hasn’t been uttered 1,000,000 occasions earlier than. Baritone balladeer Orville Peck makes the album’s closing visitor look to cowl the American customary “Streets of Laredo,” and even when its climactic dying scene falls considerably flat, the selection permits Shaboozey to participate within the style’s ongoing oral custom.