Jelly Roll is a feel-good story that Americans love, whether the story is true or not. People want to believe it because it gives them hope, for themselves, for society as a whole, or for both. It’s so intoxicating. And they indulge like a drug.
Jelly Roll is like a Shake Shack preacher or a snake oil salesman who sells the idea of sobriety to the masses without going through the 12 steps, deviating from it day by day, yet remaining true to Christ. Singing praises to the narrow path. His fiery sermons on the podium at awards shows and his classic persuasive rhetorical monologues on morning talk shows are often used to convince the masses, even if they don’t practice what they’re preaching. Sell your content.
On the same day that Jelly Roll released Beautiful Broken, a new album about getting sober and finding the right path, they also announced they were opening a bar on Nashville’s Lower Broadway. This is the commercial exploitation of the false narrative that is at the heart of the Jelly Roll experience.
Even beyond the realm of popular music and the entire world of entertainment, people know who Jelly Roll is and the story of his reinvention. This is largely due to his sermons, interviews, and constant parade of puff articles in the media. Your mom and grandma know about Jelly Roll. Your racist uncle loves his music, despite his facial tattoos and scruffy personality. By doing so, they convince themselves that they are not critical people.
Without a doubt, Jelly Roll brought himself back from his predicament, turned his life around, and through discipline and self-understanding, acknowledged his past sins and submitted to his belief in a higher power, reaching the pinnacle of mass society. He rose to the top. He recently lost 100 pounds. This is a benevolent side of Jelly Roll’s story, and one that deserves praise. Another important aspect is how he inspires others to do the same in their lives. This has happened to many people.
Jerry went from being the dregs of society to becoming one of the most popular and admired artists in all of music. This is a distinctly American story, told through the winding story of an unusual and unlikely person from Nashville. But while part of the story of Hustle is that of a street smart pusher who tells people what they want to hear, the truth about Jelly Roll is much more complex, and his vocal supporters exists somewhere between his and his assessment. The most ardent naysayers.
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Beautiful Broken is not a country album. This is not an opinion and is not up for debate. This album is an empirically sound statement based on measurable indicators and benchmarks for country music while better meeting the requirements of other genres. Even for a performer like Morgan Wallen, who purists would consider exclusively pop, his music still falls under the loose standards of a contemporary form of “country” music. There is a possibility that it will be certified. Jelly Roll’s Beautifully Broken can’t even make that claim its own.
This album isn’t really a hip-hop, rock, or pop album either, although it certainly has sounds that are more indicative of those genres than country. In fact, Jelly Roll’s Beautiful Broken is a modern Christian album, with a consistent and ongoing religious theme throughout, and a contemporary pop, rock, and hip-hop sound and treatment. It’s being brought to life.
Perhaps no album in contemporary popular music has ever been released that presents such a monoculture of lyrical content and thematic content as Beautifully Broken. Almost every song on the 22-song track list has the exact same cut-and-paste template: “I used to be a sinner, but I’m not anymore. Now I use God to get me through life.” It works like this. It’s amazing how this album refuses to deviate or diversify from this central theme, and instead remains fixated on this one point like a reproach.
This is an album of self-empowerment affirmations and eye-opening bromides that may have a mass effect on general audiences. But for those who like to dig beneath the surface of music, this whole exercise will seem shallow, stupid, even uncool. Some of the songs and moments here are so brooding that they could be inserted into a Disney soundtrack, but the volume of these moments is enough to reveal the formulaic patterns behind the effort. , which works to ruin them all.
On the other hand, similarly, given the very narrow range of sounds and influences derived from them, this music is incredibly monotonous, with saccharine melodic choruses indicative of the pop world overlaid on top of electronic production. He has an unimaginative, melodramatic tone that sounds just like everything else. in popular music. Beautifully Broken is a monogenre album at its best, but only if country isn’t the most important thing on the menu.
There are a few small exceptions to the sameness that pervades the album. The songs “Guilty” and “Woman” are more like traditional love songs, but they continue the theme of subordination and inferiority to something or someone. You’ll have to wait until track 13, “Hey Mama,” to hear what could be considered a modern country song. The intro/outro of “A Little Light” also fits this characteristic.
At least with Jelly Roll’s debut “country” album, Whitsitt Chapel, there was a performance effort to make it fit into the country worldview to some degree and to deliver something a little different with each song. At Beautifully Broken, they think they’ve found a method that works for Jelly Roll, and they’re not giving up.
The average song on Jelly Roll’s Beautifully Broken has five songwriters. Eight songwriters contribute to multiple tracks. With so many cooks in the kitchen, it’s no wonder the results are bland and strangely bland. Although many would characterize this album as “personal,” Music Row recognized how lucrative it was to make “jelly roll songs,” and everyone wanted to do it. It can be seen that they are produced in large quantities. Extending that approach to the deluxe edition of the immediately released 28-track album Pickin’ Up The Pieces further emphasizes this point.
This doesn’t take away from the fact that the overall message of Beautifully Broken is not a positive or important one. But perhaps it would have been better done with fewer doses or with a little more variety. There are no Bro-Country songs or awful “sex in the club” tracks here, and the audience should appreciate that. However, there are conflicting messages that detract from the work, which parallels the acclaimed personal life of Jelly Roll.
Starting with the opening song “Winning Streak,” Jelly Roll regularly references sobriety, specifically the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program. But sometimes they seem to avoid the idea of sobriety. Sometimes these contradictions and hypocrisies keep popping up.
In the album’s ninth song, “Get By,” Jelly Roll sings that he might “drink a little” and “smoke a lot” and then show up at church looking like he did the night before. In the next song, “Unpretty,” Jelly Roll sings, “I’ve been praying for change, but 12 steps feel so far away,” and the song is about practicing a 12-step program. is. You could say these songs depict an “arc” from work to sobriety to achieving it, but that’s not the case. This contradiction remains throughout the record and throughout Jelly Roll’s personal life.
While the media, Christian groups, and temperance advocates parade Jelly Roll as a hero and extol the message of Beautiful Broken, the buzz from Nashville is the sound of a wild party. , he openly admits that he still drinks, smokes, and probably does other things too. , the daily drug use, the unruly cronies surrounding Jelly Roll, paint a different picture than the puff pieces published by the media and the sermons he delivers at award shows. And listening to the music, in many ways confirms these rumors and explanations.
Jelly Roll is not a country music artist, not the humble hero that people think he is, and at best a flawed Christian. And it’s all fine. You don’t have to be a completely sober Christian to be a good person, and you don’t have to be a redneck to be a good musician. But at Jelly Roll, marketing, image, and hype are far ahead of reality.
For some people, jelly rolls may be beautifully broken. But some people have become so invested in flawed messages and false narratives that the surface begins to crack and crumble. Either you’re passionate about the show and country music, or you’re not. Jelly rolls are different.
4/10
