A Heartfelt Depiction of Life, Love and Reality
Kenny Rogers’ posthumous album Life Is Like A Song aims to do just that: retell the complexities of life through the intimacy of song. Wanda Rogers, in curating this album of Rogers’ archived songs and covers, translates an undiscovered discography into life lessons on love, loss, life and family. During his time, Rogers himself proclaimed that he wished to create music that revealed what men wanted to say and what women wanted to hear. This album, put together by his wife, succeeds in that respect, through a string of pop-country ballads exploring somewhat-cliché conceptions of romantic love.
This album is undisputedly important to Rogers’ canon, as well as the canon of country music, with Rogers as a figurehead of the genre and featured artists like Dolly Parton, Jamie O’Neal and Kim Keyes. Yet questions stand: is this album a collection of scraps, or can it stand on its own? To some extent, the answer is no.
On the first half of the album, Rogers offers little diversity or underlying meaning. Even with the ornamentation of Kim Keyes, Jamie O’Neal, an Eric Clapton cover and country legend Dolly Parton recreating the power duo that gave us “Islands In The Stream,” the first six songs on the album all stand as pop-country ballads about a man’s love for a woman, or the loss of such in “I Wish It Would Rain.” Without discrediting the artful blend of gospel, rock and country sounds, lyrically, Rogers speaks in cliches. These songs all individually offer their own value, yet in turn offer little diversity for such a large segment of the album.
That’s not to say that the album isn’t remarkable in many ways. The centerpiece “Catchin’ Grasshoppers” revolves itself inside the quaint simplicity of an evening chasing grasshoppers with his twin boys, Justin and Jordan. The song, citing “Hanson’s field” and the names of his children alongside a stripped-down accompaniment makes for a more intimate insight into his life, framed in the appreciation of tender memories of fatherhood.
“Goodbye,” written by Lionel Richie, and “Say Hello To Heaven” both tell tales of loss. “Goodbye” provides a comforting silver lining to tragedy, finding “peace in where you are” after life, offering a comforting reassurance in the wake of his own death. “Say Hello To Heaven” tells the story of a man losing his wife, once again finding comfort in the idea of heaven. Both songs extend wisdom beyond life and love, stories made only more impactful retold in his own voice after his passing.
The ending of “At Last” offers a blissful cap to his career, tying the record together in serenity. Overall, this album is more than remaining scraps of the past. Though that argument could be made given the lack of depth in the first half of the album. Yet, especially given the layers to the second half of the album, and the impressive and in some case nostalgic features, he offers a distinct album of wisdom from beyond the grave. Afterall, nothing speaks to you like the wisdom of a dead legend.
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