ERNEST - Kiss of Death - Big Loud Records

With a songwriting resume chalk full of hits to his credit, including “I Love My Country,” “More Than My Hometown,” “You Proof,” “Wasted on You,” “One Mississippi,” and many more, Ernest has quickly become one of the most renowned writers in shaping the mainstream sound of the modern country era.

However, as he’s broken out from inside the writing room and into the bright spotlight as an artist with the traditionally dripped “Flower Shops” and insanely addictive “Miss That Girl,” his star has continually risen, catapulting his success to smashing new heights across the music spectrum.

With high anticipation for his next artist chapter burning on the near horizon, he now offers us our first peek inside of it with the road-tested, “Kiss of Death.”

The song, co-written by Ernest, Andy Albert, and Ryan Vojtesak, builds through a toe-tapping, western kissed drive as the banjo plucks along the melody of the verses allowing the fire of the instrumentation to accent his lead vocal as he balances his voice on its rawest edge, though keeping a smoothness through its shaky confidence to diligently encompass the lyric.

Lyrically, he outlines the fueled passion that arrives when allowing your heart to fall for the “dangerous” girl while throwing caution to the wind and aptly ignoring her red flag warnings about what you’re getting yourself into.

Utilizing each of the verses in pleading like fashion, he leans into darker verbiage to weave poetically through lines that dare her to go ahead and throw all those red flags at him that she promised she would, while skillfully leading to the confession laced chorus that examines that although he’s ready for any and all of it, he subconsciously knows that his risk in her could be just as much a kiss of death:

“'Cause I feel like dancin' with the devil

Take my heart and rip it out my chest

When I'm with you, I'm good as gone, girl

My angel in a fire-red dress

My kiss of death

kiss me

Kill me”

It’s proven nearly impossible to resist the bad girl/boy. They’re taboo, a bit more mysterious, and a lot unpredictable. But those are also all the same qualities that attract our lust to them. Ernest perfectly captures the free-falling essence that radiates past the obvious red flags as your heart beats faster when you take the all-in plunge knowing full-well of all the risks that signal your heart potentially getting crushed but jumping anyways. 

While the lyrics of “Kiss of Death” are a true testament to his craftiness as a songwriter in showing how well he can connect a common emotion straight to the heart of the listener, his ability to expertly lean the melody and edges of his raspy voice against the anxiousness of the subject, enhances each passing line in a bold showcase that highlights why he is one of the elite within the industry today!

(Review Written By: Jeffrey Kurtis)

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