Good Guys

Bucky Covington’s sophomore album arrived over five years following his eponymous 2007 debut. In that time some of his fans graduated both high school and college. But anyone familiar with Covington from the fifth season of American Idol might remember a guy who was having too much fun singing country music to worry about career strategies. This sunny and carefree attitude abounds throughout Good Guys starting with the opening “I Wanna Be That Feeling” — a winsome and uplifting country-pop hit with gratuitous pedal steel and Covington’s warm tenor breaking up in all the right spots. More traditional country sounding instruments surface in the following ballad, “I’m Alright,” but they sound best when kicking up some dust in the outstanding honky-tonk rocker “Drinking Side Of Country,” where Covington duets with Waylon Jennings’ son Shooter. And after hearing Covington perform the definitive version of Nickelback’s “Gotta Be Somebody,” it’s easy to believe that his voice was meant to sing rock songs. But then he goes and takes on Lionel Richie’s “Sail On” and it’s evident that his range is more versatile.