With more than 50 million record sales to his name, Tim McGraw isn’t just one of the world’s most successful country acts but one of the best-selling music stars of all time. With Here On Earth, McGraw adds an impressive 16 tracks to his already fit-to-burst back catalogue, which consists of another 15 albums.
A perfectly pleasant collection, it ticks all the boxes for long-term fans. McGraw’s instantly recognisable voice is in fine form, his music evokes the appropriate images of the USA and tells stories mostly focused on love and relationships, with family tales and hopeful messages thrown in.
The opener is a low-tempo ode to Los Angeles which sees McGraw offer the first of the many rose-tinted conclusions on the record, as he insists he loves the city’s infamous traffic.
On the title track he ponders the biggest mystery of them all, the meaning of life, while Sheryl Crow sees him compare a lover to hearing the singer on the radio: “Gonna be stuck in my head forever / I knew I’d never be the same again.”
Surprising and experimental, it is not. But McGraw has proven he doesn’t need to be either of those things to be successful.
