‘Fun-enough tunes. Big choruses. Nice guy.’: A Canadian journalist watches his first American country music show

Country-pop chart-topper Luke Combs wrapped the U.S. leg of his 2023 world tour with a pair of weekend shows at Lincoln Financial Field. Friday night’s concert was beset by rain delays, lightning, mass confusion, and, finally, a late-night set that ran into the wee hours of Saturday morning. (Buzz around the Linc was that the organizers happily forked over the fine for violating the city’s 11:30 p.m. curfew. The fee, one presumes, would probably be far less than refunding a sold-out crowd.)

Saturday’s concert suffered its own weather setbacks, as an early-evening rainstorm delayed openers Lainey Wilson and Riley Green. But the full touring retinue would take the stage, in due time, culminating with a triumphant headlining set by Combs, whose music this reporter hadn’t, until this evening, heard much of.

As a Canadian living in America, I’ve had the U.S. country-pop industrial apparatus largely under my radar. That said: As a native of the land that exported Shania Twain, I’m well aware that, for some time now, country music has long been (some kind of) pop, or mainstream radio rock, shellacked with a little twang, and decked out in a Stetson (or, of late, mesh-back trucker cap).

So it was no real surprise that an artist I’d seldom heard, who — as he boasted Saturday night — has moved millions upon millions of records, could sell out a football stadium. For his part, Combs seems like a genuinely likable guy: affable, with an easy smile, resembling an old-timey lumberjack, or bottom-of-the-card regional wrestler.

A filmed trailer splashed on big screens before the show set up his hard-luck story: a guy from nowhere (aren’t they all?), who made it big, despite all odds. What odds?, I found myself wondering.

I suppose he’s not exactly tabloid handsome; but then country and western music’s history is riven with faces whose ruddiness stands as a measure of their authenticity.

That country music is as slick and polished as any popular genre — if not slicker and even more polished — is an obvious observation. Combs’ big, flashy stage show had a well-oiled, routinized, exactingly professional feel. Every humbling thank you to the crowd seemed scripted, every “surprise” guest appearance (by openers Green and Wilson) timed like clockwork. And that’s fine.

What sticks out about Combs — and country-pop at its most mainstream, stadium-scaled level — is not its slickness, but its underlying desire to seem un-slick. “Thank you for supporting country music!” the guys holler from the stage, as if it’s some struggling, little-engine-that-could genre. As if Nashville isn’t basically the new epicenter of the American culture industry. Like they don’t have brand sponsorships advertised on jumbotrons and QR codes flashing on screen that link to merch stores selling $80 vented button-up fishing shirts. As if they’re not playing in a professional football stadium where a beer costs, at the low end, $16.50 a can.

Also — and I swear I’m not trying to be overly salty — I found it a bit weird when Combs said that his song “Beautiful Crazy” was his first dance at his wedding. Playing your own song as the first dance at your wedding just seems a little me-me-me to me. But I suppose his wife was probably into it. The song’s about her, after all.

At the end of the day: fun-enough tunes. Big choruses. Nice guy. People openly weeping and singing along to every word. I would never dare begrudge anyone their version of a good time.

Setlist:

1. “Lovin’ On You”

2. “Hannah Ford Road”

3. “Cold As You”

4. “One Number Away”

5. “Houston, We Got A Problem”

6. “Love You Anyway”

7. “Going, Going, Gone”

8. “Must’ve Never Met You”

9. “Forever After All”

10. “Beautiful Crazy”

11. “Does To Me”

12. “Where the Wild Things Are”

13. “Outrunnin’ Your Memory”

14. ”Fast Car” (Tracy Chapman cover)

15. “5 Leaf Clover”

16. “She Got the Best Of Me”

17. “Hurricane”

18. “1,2 Many”

19. “When It Rains It Pours”

20. “Beer Never Broke My Heart”

21. “Better Together”

22. “The Kind of Love We Make”