Brett Eldredge’s Latest Album Is easy like a sunday drive

Nostalgia and paying homage to feelings of home— 

We can all go there in our minds with an inner sanctum, a sidekick of a soundtrack, to accompany us on our journey. For Brett Eldredge, his thoughts paying that homage and the soundtrack playing to it is one in the same, and it’s eloquently enveloped in his latest album, Sunday Drive. 

After taking a hiatus from social media and song, Eldredge released, arguably, his most authentic music yet. Sunday Drive in its entirety serves as a reminder of the lessons we learn from the experiences we have in the places that mean the most. Eldredge somehow poses two positions with this album:

• He communicates his own, specific history in a vulnerable and personal way, but

• He does so in a way where anyone and everyone can relate to. 

  We can all find ourselves where he found himself— it’s a transcendental bridging of the gap between another’s experience being interposed with our own. Eldredge does this mystically well in Sunday Drive.

The album is a seamless blend of a variety of emotion and experience. The songs on the album are country, they’re soul, they’re crooner; they’re heartbreak, they’re memories, they’re joy. But they’re all Brett Eldredge. 

“Magnolia” has sounds of a subtle influence from songs like “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” [Williams’ version, rest in peace] —  a little soul, a little country, a little jazz. Then there are songs like “Then You Do,” which transpire from the exciting moment of discovering and falling in love to the halt of unexpected heart ache, and the cycle that ensues. The song is rich and slow but fast and exciting; the song gains momentum— kind of like the way falling in love feels, and then the song breaks unexpectedly, like a heart tends to. “When I Die” is a testament to living with a contentment and peace up until that very day comes.

Eldredge is vocal about his admiration and influence of Frank Sinatra and it is accentuated deeply in his album Sunday Drive. In “Good Day,” Eldredge mentions “Blue Eyes” in the first verse, and in songs like “When I Die” and “Paris Illinois” the crooner influence is perfectly placed amidst an album of contemporary country flair. 

Brett Eldredge’s natural, rich runs compliment every lyric paying homage to nostalgia and the promise of a memory, and encouraging the hope of more of both in the future. Sunday Drive could be Eldredge’s best album to date, and it’s no coincidence it isn’t conventional or commercial.