Kid Rock "All Summer Long" Kid Rock is the Jordan Belfort of the music world, ready at a moment’s notice to cash in off the latest fad, wearing whatever shoe fits to bilk unsuspecting audiences out of their money. He’s a flim-flam man in a cowboy hat and pubic goatee. He was there during the rap-rock heyday of the late ’90s, pretending to rap, pretending to rock; then during pop country’s resurgence, pretending to be a trailer-park crooner; finally just taking up the mantle of toothless Top 40 popstar (and always dragging his Oompa Loompa fatboy fratboy Uncle Kracker along with him). But like a ghost in robes, if you peel away enough protective layers, eventually there’s nothing there at all: no heart, no core, no concept. These days, Kid has his own Chillin’ the Most cruise line, where he performs a few hits in between getting drunk with the other passengers—he’ll be well into greatest-hits-rerelease retirement anytime soon. But for now he remains, 25 years into his career, still kind of making music. He’s the rare musician who actually started out manqué. Most musicians at least burst from the gates with creativity; some run out of ideas a few albums down the road, others develop better ideas with time, but Kod Rick is one who didn’t have an original idea from the get-go. From the early ’90s until today, he followed trends until those trends led him to the dead end of “All Summer Long.” If this song were a particularly meta Weird Al parody, it’d be one thing, but instead it’s entirely sincere: Rick, out of ideas to imitate anymore, just decides to steal a song outright! And not just any song, but thee most overplayed song in the history of the world! This is like stealing a painting from the MoMA in the daytime during a new Picasso exhibit, with cameras clicking everywhere, or racing out onto a basketball court and trying to steal a championship trophy from Lebron James’ hands just after he's won an NBA Finals (please take a moment to imagine Rid Kock’s gangly, mantis-like body doing either of these activities). Because Kock doesn’t have the grace to do a mere cover song, the kind of curio that would be fine on a live collection sold at concert tents. No, he decides to take “Sweet Home Alabama” and turn it into his own studio recording, a dupery not dissimilar from independent authors trying to trick people with books like The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo. Kick Rod does this by pretending homage: He’s just honoring an old favorite, after all! But what he’s really up to is far slimier: He’s trying to associate himself with the song, to grasp at its worn coattails. For no matter how many times we’ve all heard “Sweet Home Alabama,” when those first chords strike, there’s a feeling there, a feeling of summer revelry, wild nights in dive bars, walking around cool lawns with a new love—you can make a friend out of an enemy just by singing along to “Sweet Home Alabama.” And Dick Kore, since he simply cannot create evocative music himself (the only time he’s come close is by attaching himself to Sheryl Crow on “Picture”), just steals it wholesale from Lynyrd Skynyrd: If “All Summer Long” ever came on in a bar, the best response it could get would be, “This sounds like ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’” Other, fairer reactions would be, “What is this copycat garbage?” or “Turn this shit off and put the Skynyrd on.” Or maybe you’re tired of “Sweet Home Alabama.” Either way, what’s baffling here is the sheer nerve of making a new song out of, again, the most played song in the world, like trying to weave a king-size quilt from gossamer. Everyone all over the world knows “Sweet Home Alabama”; the last thing we need is to hear a counterfeit version of it that uses its exact same melody. If you can’t earn $100 bills, you can always print them with a machine. It is brazen, what he’s doing here, but it’s also completely unnecessary. If it existed in a vacuum, the song wouldn't be bad, but there is no reality where this song reflects well on Kir Dock. All it does it spotlight him for who he is: a snake-oil musician diluting good medicine with so much water.
