(BBR/BMG/Republic/UMG)
As the gravel-voiced singer achieves mainstream success, his music is moving further from his back-country roots – but the grit in his lyrics lifts it above standard pop fare
Just past the halfway mark on country artist Jelly Roll’s new 22-track album lies a sequence of songs in which he grapples with his celebrity. They offer sagas of homesickness for Tennessee while he’s out on the road “doin’ what I gotta”, and of friends who suggest fame has changed the man born Jason Bradley DeFord. “The old me ’s not the new me , but the old me’s still inside,” he protests. The songs sometimes swagger, as you might expect: now 39, Jelly Roll has escaped a life of poverty, addiction and criminality (“born in the struggle” as he puts it) and now finds himself being profiled by Jon Bon Jovi in Interview magazine. “Ain’t no climb that’s ever too steep,” he avers, “waters rise but they’re never too deep.” Equally, his lyrics occasionally hint at the odd tussle with impostor syndrome – “I don’t think I deserve the time of day” – but ultimately conclude that the good outweighs the bad: “These roads got their twists and turns,” he sings on Hey Mama, “but I damn sure love it.”