EDDIE RAY ARNOLD

                                                                "What If I Don't" 

                                                                Enamant Records

With his previous singles “Rock Your World” and “Beautiful Day,” Eddie Ray Arnold stamped down a signature sound that leaned heavy on 90’s country influences and carried just enough dose of modern touch to add a relevance for today’s listener and draw them in while also satisfying those who want a little more country in their country music.

Arnold now returns with his new single “What If I Don’t.”

The song, co-written by John Kennedy and Bryson Jennings, continues to see Arnold lean into that decisively 90’s country feel as he bounces us along the catchy rhythm while carrying us through lyrics that take us directly into the eureka moment where you suddenly, in the snap of your fingers, get over you ex and move on – just like that!

“What if I rolled my windows down and drove myself out of this town,” Arnold asks in the chorus as he unravels a list of “what if” questions, which are all designed to lead to the what if question that delivers the major twist when he knocks us into the hook, “I know that you want me to miss you, but what if I don’t.”

However, with a song like this and its familiar theme in country music, it really becomes all about the approach that leads to this kiss-off moment that will either set the song apart from the rest, or see it fall in line.

For that, with this particular song, that’s where you’ll turn to the opening verse as Arnold sings of seeing a faded sticker that’s been stuck to the welcome sign into town for 15 years that reads “Let Go, Let God!”

By then coming at us with the lines below, Arnold craftily admits that he’s been struggling with moving on from the breakup, but how in that one flash of a moment, everything changed his perspective to the one that’s now allowed him to move on without feeling anything anymore. 

“Hit me like a wrecking ball

Must’ve seen that thing a thousand times

But this time changed it all”

Couple that masterful lyric plot with a crisp, clean melody that keeps you bopping cheerfully along, harmonies that hold their own, and Arnold’s remarkably gifted vocals that know all the right ways to carry the happy to be moving on emotions, and Eddie Ray Arnold has delivered an anthem for the broken hearted that lets them know it’s okay to get unstuck and move on.

(Review Written By: Jeffrey Kurtis)

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