Country music has long been my music of choice, ever since I got old enough to ignore my mother’s ban on such “inappropriate music” (I’d previously been allowed only Christian music, namely Gaither gospel which I’d long before learned to hate) and started listening to what I want, and Garth Brooks’ Sevens album sticks out in my mind because it was the first country CD I ever owned, given to me by a good friend of mine after I commented on her copy of it at her house one day.

This particular CD struck me because almost all of the songs were easy for me to sing from Longneck Bottle to Fit For a King. I love to sing, probably the one thing that’s attracted me to older country and old-ish sounds that are still easy to understand and follow even if I haven’t been keeping my voice properly limbered up.

There are a couple of songs on this CD that has some “sentimental value”, for lack of a better term. Namely Friend to Me has always meant a lot to me because of the friend who gave me the CD and gave me a big long speech about how that song fit our friendship so well (and various other ego-boosting sentiments) and we often sang it together both with and without an audience.

Next, Belleau Wood caught my attention from the first time I ever heard it; it’s the story of German and American troops in the trenches on Christmas and singing Silent Night together until midnight and the cessation of the Christmas truce hit and firing resumed as before.

For those unfamiliar with Garth Brooks’ music his is a soulful collection of fiddles and steel guitars mixed with his country twang.

This is one of those CDs that I can’t listen to very often because there is a bit of a monotonous style to this collection…they’re all mellow and in a similar key with only two (I Don’t Have to Wonder and In Another’s Eyes) that don’t have an almost identical beat and sound as the others. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy all these songs separately and if you have a multi-disk changer and can shuffle between several CDs it’s a good one to throw into the mix, it’s just when I’m hearing one after another that it sort of annoys me.

There are some CDs that I can just sit and listen to whether I sing to them or not and still enjoy them immensely…this isn’t one of them. If I can’t sing to the music give me some Metallica or something, it’s more pleasing to my ear than the instrumentals here. Listening to just about any Garth Brooks (with a couple of exceptions) does little more than annoy me.

Overall this is a good addition to a country enthusiast’s collection but unless you’re a die-hard Garth Brooks fan or this exact sound is amongst your favorites you may not want to listen to it very often. Every couple of weeks or so I’ll pull this CD out and listen to it once through and then I’m good for a while even though I thoroughly enjoy each song individually.

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Driving

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