| American Ride | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Toby Keith | ||||
| Released | October 6, 2009 | |||
| Recorded | 2009 | |||
| Genre | Country | |||
| Length | 42:20 | |||
| Label | Show Dog Nashville #27 | |||
| Producer | Toby Keith | |||
| Toby Keith chronology | ||||
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| Singles from American Ride | ||||
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American Ride is the title of American country music singer Toby Keith's thirteenth studio album. It was released on October 6, 2009, under Keith's personal label, Show Dog Nashville. Its lead-off single is the title track, which became his 19th #1 single on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts in October. The album includes 12 songs, 11 of which Keith wrote or co-wrote, and one of which is a tribute to Wayman Tisdale. This was Keith's last album of the Show Dog Nashville label before merging with Universal South into Show Dog-Universal Music. As of November 2010, the album has sold 420,000 copies in the U.S.
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As with his last album, 2008's That Don't Make Me a Bad Guy, Keith produced the album himself and wrote most of the songs either by himself or with Bobby Pinson. The title track, also its lead-off single, was written by Joe West and Dave Pahanish; it is the only song on the album which Keith did not co-write, and one of the only singles in his career that he did not co-write.[1] Pahanish and West gave Keith this song because they considered him "the only guy in the world that could get away with cutting it,"[2] and he had the demo on his iPod for nearly a year before recording it.[3] On the Billboard Hot Country Songs dated for the week of October 10, 2009, it became his nineteenth Number One hit.[4]
The second single, "Cryin' for Me (Wayman's Song)," was written as a tribute to basketball player and jazz musician Wayman Tisdale, a close friend of Keith's who died on May 15, 2009.[2] This song was released to radio in October 2009. "Every Dog Has Its Day," which Keith and Pinson wrote with John Waples, debuted in March 2010 as the third single release.
The album has been met with generally positive reviews. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic gave American Ride a three-and-a-half star rating out of five. Erlewine's review describes the title track positively, saying that it "casts a cynical eye[…]not celebrating down-home values but wondering where we're all headed[.]"[5] He added that the album "spends more time on the softer side" in comparison to the "swaggering" of most of his previous albums.[5] Ken Tucker of Billboard said that it had "a little less bluster and bravado," calling "Are You Feelin' Me" a "rare show of vulnerability" and "Loaded" a "rocking and rousing" song.[1] It received a B-minus rating from Entertainment Weekly critic Whitney Pastorek, who said that the "brash mockery of current events in the title track offset[s…] a sweet tribute to a friend who passed away" but added, "too few of these samey-sounding songs are memorable."[6] Slant Magazine critic Jonathan Keefe wrote that Keith "walks a fine line between self-mythologizing and self-parody" and said that the "uptempo numbers[…]don't amount to much more than empty posturing," rating the album three stars out of five.[7]
| Chart (2009) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| U.S. Billboard Top Country Albums | 1 |
| U.S. Billboard 200 | 3 |
| Canadian Albums Chart | 48 |
| Norwegian VG-lista Albums | 8 |
| Chart (2010) | Year-end 2010 |
|---|---|
| US Billboard 200 | 178[8] |
| US Billboard Top Country Albums | 29[9] |
| Preceded by Revolution by Miranda Lambert |
Top Country Albums number-one album October 24, 2009 |
Succeeded by Fearless by Taylor Swift |
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