CAROLYN DAWN JOHNSON - Road Blocks - Dancing Lily Music

Though she had stepped out of the bright spotlight in recent years, Carolyn Dawn Johnson steadily remained one of country music’s most sought-after artists and songwriters.

The CCMA, JUNO, ACM, and AMA award winner, known for writing Chely Wright’s “Single White Female” and landing her own smash hits with “Complicated” and “I Don’t Want You To Go,” has most recently earned a cut with Chris Stapleton just as she’s burst open her next artist chapter with brand-new single, “Road Blocks.”

The song, co-written by Johnson, Jennifer Lynn Kennard, and Oscar Charles, leans into an insatiable, hip-shaking groove that immediately gets you bopping along with its tempo as Carolyn injects the song with the familiarity of her vocals, singing us through the ultra-encouraging anthem of throwing caution to the wind and steering your course.

With bold confidence embedded into her tone, Johnson embraces how everything has now crossed at an intersection that’s landed her at the right place at the right time, cleverly using a highway drive as the comparative basis for the road that her life is running.

With road leaned references in each of the verses, “I’m cruising at a real good pace,” “I could back it up, throw it in reverse,” and “I got a lead foot that just can’t find the brakes,” she accents the idea of how road blocks that are in place to change your course can actually be the set up for your next chapter if/when you push through them, upholding that notion with the uber optimistic chorus:

“I got my eye on the prize

Unlimited skies

Oh, I'm gonna drive

Right on through

Right on through

Those take me out spikes

Those slow me down signs

Oh, I'm gonna drive

Right on through, right on through

Those road blocks”

She enticingly grips the listener with the clap along breakdown of the bridge as she metaphorically shrugs a shoulder in a no need to worry fashion through a rundown of very specific, potential setback situations which spell out how someone will always want what you have and that there’ll always be someone with a negative voice who is trying to hold you back.

Though certainly no stranger to country music fans, Carolyn Dawn Johnson has expertly timed her resurgence back into the artist spotlight in perfect rhythm with today’s country music embracing a 90’s branded sound, giving us a very memorable strike with the first look at things to come from her in 2024 with her full-length album, There She Is.

(Review Written By: Jeffrey Kurtis/Cover Art Photo By: Russ Harrington)

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