Album review: Scotty McCreery’s ‘See You Tonight’
In 2011, Scotty McCreery was fresh off a win on “American Idol” and eager to ingratiate himself with the moms and daughters who presumably propelled him to victory. The result, as heard on “Clear as Day,” was a comically innocent vision of teenage courtship in America: “We shared a Coca-Cola,” he sang, “Sittin’ on a log.”
Two years later, McCreery, now 20, is a bona-fide country star, which means freedom — or enough of it anyway to choose one constituency or the other. And on “See You Tonight,” he aims for the daughters in a big way, putting his sturdy baritone to work in songs that propose hooking up in an impressive variety of settings, from his truck (“Get Gone With You”), to the beach (“Feelin’ It”) to “up on top of Kill Devil Hill” (“Now”).
In “I Don’t Wanna Be Your Friend,” one of five tunes he co-wrote, McCreery even corrects for some nice-guy mistakes from his past. The boy next door has definitely left the building.
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“See You Tonight”
(Mercury/Interscope)
Two and a half stars (out of four)
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