Still Feels Good

Still Feels Good
Studio album by Rascal Flatts
Released	September 25, 2007
Genre	Country Country pop
Length	54:13 (Main CD) 18:45 (Bonus CD)
Label	Lyric Street
Producer	Dann Huff
Rascal Flatts chronology
Me and My Gang (2006) Still Feels Good (2007) Greatest Hits Volume 1 (2008)
Singles from Still Feels Good
"Take Me There" Released: August 17, 2007 "Winner at a Losing Game" Released: October 22, 2007 "Every Day" Released: March 3, 2008 "Bob That Head" Released: June 16, 2008 "Here" Released: September 2008

Still Feels Good is the fifth studio album released by the American country music group Rascal Flatts. It was released September 25, 2007 on Lyric Street Records. It sold 2,192,000 copies in the United States up to May 2009 and was certified 2× Platinum by the RIAA.^[1]

Target Corporation stores released a bonus five-track CD along with Still Feels Good which includes four songs written by the group, as well as a remix of their 2006 single "My Wish".

The album has produced five singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. The first of these singles, "Take Me There", was co-written by Kenny Chesney, and reached Number One on the country charts in mid-2007. Following it were "Winner at a Losing Game" and "Every Day", both of which peaked at number 2 on the same chart, and "Bob That Head" which peaked at number 15. "Here", the album's fifth single, was released in September 2008 which became their second Number One hit from the album.

Track listing

Personnel

As listed in liner notes.^[2]

Rascal Flatts

• Jay DeMarcus – bass guitar, background vocals, piano on "Better Now"
• Gary LeVox – lead vocals
• Joe Don Rooney – lead guitar, acoustic guitar, background vocals

Additional musicians

• Bruce Bouton – steel guitar
• Tom Bukovac – rhythm guitar
• Eric Darken – percussion
• Dan Dugmore – steel guitar
• Paul Franklin – steel guitar
• Tony Harrell – keyboards
• Dann Huff – rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, 12-string guitar, mandolin, banjo, bouzouki
• Charlie Judge – piano, keyboards, percussion, organ, synthesizers, synth strings, drum loops
• Chris McHugh – drums
• Gordon Mote – piano, keyboards
• Jonathan Yudkin – fiddle, mandolin, banjo

String section on "Every Day"

• String arrangement written and conducted by David Campbell
• Larry Corbett, Suzie Katayama, Timothy Landauer – cellos
• Roland Kato – viola
• Charlie Bisharat, Larry Greenfield, Alan Grunfeld, Julian Hallmark, Natalie Leggett, Alyssa Park, Vladimir Poliatidi, Michele Richards, Philip Vaiman, Josefina Vergara, John Wittenberg, Ken Yerke – violins

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[3]
Billboard	favorable[4]
Entertainment Weekly	C[5]
People	[6]
Rolling Stone	[7]

Critical response was mixed for the album. Giving the album three out of four stars, People magazine said "these boys know how to give today's country-pop fans what they want."^[6] Rolling Stone said "These Buffett-style party boys know what makes them the biggest group alive: songs about trucks and songs about girls," and gave the album three out of five stars.^[7] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic, who also gave the album a three-out-of-five rating, said "Everything on Still Feels Good sounds fine[…]but few songs stand out and grab attention".^[3]

Entertainment Weekly critic Ken Tucker gave the album a C rating, saying "this is emo-country arena rock with a (slight) twang[…]the music of Still Feels Good presents not beautiful losers but manipulative wimps."^[5] A positive review came from Ken Tucker of Billboard, who wrote that the band "takes some convincing new detours". His review highlighted "Winner at a Losing Game", "She Goes All the Way", "Bob That Head" and "It's Not Supposed to Go Like That" as sounding different from previous Rascal Flatts songs.^[4]

Chart performance

Album

The album sold 547,000 copies in its first week of release, topping both the U.S. Country Album chart and the Billboard 200. It is their third consecutive album to hit number one in the U.S.^[8] After one week at number one, it fell to number two with about 168,000 copies sold.^[9] Still Feels Good sold 2,192,000 copies in the United States up to May 2009^[10] was certified 2× Platinum by the RIAA.

Singles

Still Feels Good has produced five singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. The first single, "Take Me There" (which was co-written by Kenny Chesney, who had originally planned to record it himself) spent three weeks at Number One. Shortly after the album's release, the bonus track "Revolution" (a cover of The Beatles song) reached number 57 based on unsolicited airplay. Following "Take Me There" was "Winner at a Losing Game", the first single of Rascal Flatts' career to be written exclusively by the group's three members. Both it and the third single, "Every Day", reached number 2. "Bob That Head", which was the fourth single, was also the first country single of the group's career to miss the Top Ten, peaking at number 15. "Here" followed in September 2008 and it became their ninth Number One single in January 2009.

Certifications

Legal case

In August 2008, veteran New York, New York songwriter D.L. Byron sued Rascal Flatts, their producers, and the Disney Music Group for copyright infringement, arguing that "No Reins" took from his song "Shadows of the Night", written for Pat Benatar in 1982. Byron told The New York Post that "[i]t's just too much, too strikingly similar... They'd have to have a tremendous lapse of memory not to realize what they were doing. It's my contention there's willful infringement." Lawyers for band member Joe Don Rooney have responded, "To the extent that 'No Reins' shares any similarities with the plaintiff's alleged copyrighted work, any such similarities between the two works are the result of coincidence and/or the use of common or trite ideas". New York University Law School professor and intellectual property expert Rochelle Dreyfuss has remarked that "[t]hey certainly sound alike" and compared to situation to The Chiffons' famously successful case against George Harrison.^[14][15]

References