American Saturday Night (2009)

Billboard (p.34)
- "Paisley hits all the right notes....The soulful 'Oh Yeah, You're Gone, which features blues rocker Robben Ford, is the album's pearl and shows a side of Paisley he's rarely revealed..."

All Music Guide 8 of 10
An American Saturday Night is not an unusual topic for a country song, but Brad Paisley's celebration is. Paisley sees a typical weekend night as a cultural collision of French kisses, Italian Ices, Canadian bacon, and margaritas, a place where Mexican and Dutch beers chill side by side in a bucket of ice. If he leans too heavily on labels, referring to those beers by brand name, it's merely a reflection of Paisley's uncanny knack for capturing the casual contemporary details of American life at the tail-end of the 2000s. It's not just the pile up of iPhones and international video chats on "Welcome to the Future," the first country anthem of the Obama era, it's how he'll pick up prescription for his girl and flips macho stereotypes on their head on "The Pants." He's a thoroughly modern man and that attitude helps invigorate his traditional country, a sensibility that's welcome on American Saturday Night, which veers toward the mellow despite its rollicking title track or the breakneck "Catch all the Fish" and the odd burst incongruous gurgling synth. On the whole, American Saturday Night is one of his dreamier albums, filled with swaying slow dances, sweet love tunes, and the occasional brokenhearted blues, all delivered with a worn-in ease. Paisley prevents things from getting too relaxed by juxtaposing his every-guy vocals with spitfire guitar, something that gooses even the sleepiest tempos, just like how he spikes his party tunes with sly humor. He never lets things get too serious or too maudlin, he cracks jokes at himself and his friends, he lets everybody into his Saturday night party, because he knows that what makes an American party -- and what makes America -- is how all the best things wash up on the U.S. shores. - Stephen Thomas Erlewine
 

Contemporary country singer/songwriter Brad Paisley was born October 28, 1972, in Glen Dale, WV; given his first guitar at age eight, he delivered his first public performance at church two years later. With his 50-something guitar teacher Clarence "Hank" Goddard and two of the older man's seasoned musician buddies, the teenaged Paisley formed his first band, the C-Notes, and at age 12 began writing his own material. After performing in front of the local Rotary Club, he was invited to appear on Wheeling station WWVA's famed Saturday night broadcast Jamboree USA. Paisley's debut was so well received that he was invited to join the program full-time, and in the years to follow he opened for the likes of the Judds, Roy Clark, and Little Jimmy Dickens. He later attended Nashville's Belmont University, serving an internship with ASCAP; the contacts Paisley made there helped him land a songwriting deal with EMI, and he also appeared on countless demos. Signing to Arista, he issued his debut solo album, Who Needs Pictures, in 1999. The record produced two chart-topping singles in He Didn't Have to Be, an ode to loving stepfathers, and We Danced and also earned generally positive reviews for its diversity of country styles. In the meantime, Paisley recorded a duet with Chely Wright, "Hard to Be a Husband, Hard to Be a Wife", for the Backstage at the Grand Ole Opry compilation; the two later collaborated on several songs for Wright's Never Love You Enough album. The sequel to Paisley's debut, Part II, was released in 2001 and promptly returned him to the Top Five with "Two People Fell in Love". "I'm Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin' Song)" gave Paisley his third chart-topper, and "Wrapped Around" fell one spot short of becoming his fourth. "I Wish You'd Stay" became the fourth Top Ten hit from the record in early 2003. At the beginning of August 2005, Paisley put together a short "director's commentary" preview of his next album for his fan base to download. The full album, Time Well Wasted, appeared two weeks later and narrowly missed the top of the album charts, though it did hit number one on the country charts. In 2006 Brad Paisley Christmas, a collection of both originals and covers, came out, followed by 5th Gear in 2007.