Southern Voice

As one of mainstream country’s most successful artists, Tim McGraw knows how to communicate his ideas with the perfect balance of country elements and the rock accents that have steadily infiltrated the music. He’s an unashamed sentimentalist, yearning for the moments he can never have back. “If I Died Today” wonders who would turn off his coffee pot among the other loose ends. “Forever Seventeen” struggles with the idea of aging. The piano helps ground the sentimentality and wisdom driving “I Didn’t Know It At the Time.” The opening cut, “Still,” resonates with an uneasy sense that time always has its limits. “Mr. Whoever You Are” uses the ache in McGraw’s voice for a sweet emotive turn. “Good Girls” and its cheating tale sails smoothly with its rock guitars huddling just under the mix that features plenty of modern day adult-contemporary touches. Only during Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger co-written tune, “It’s a Business Doing Pleasure With You,” does an unusually thorny McGraw surface atop the honky-tonk workout. McGraw easily handles it. But it doesn’t sound like the empathetic man we have come to know in song.