Jake Owen Didn't Follow the KR Rule of Thumb, New Album was an MLB

Low bar, high potential. Four simple words. Four words to live your life by and you will never be disappointed about anything ever. There are two parts to the Keno Radio rule of thumb, the first being "low bar". One of the greatest pieces of advice I've ever heard was set the bar low and stumble over it. If you set the bar low for yourself, or anything in life, you will never be disappointed. Now I'm not saying don't set goals for yourself, everybody needs goals. However in order to live a satisfied life, you gotta set goals that are easily attainable so you can constantly feel accomplished. Lets be honest there's no better feeling than when you put your mind to something and reach that goal. So if you set the bar low, you'll rarely be disappointed. Minimal disappointments = maximum smiles.

The second part to the KR rule of thumb "high potential" we kind of created on one of our podcasts a couple months ago when we were talking about working out. the phrase high potential is just a reminder to never use up all your potential in life because once you do, all your cards are on the table and you've shown everything you have to offer. If you work out a ton and get yoked, there's no room for imporvement so if you ever get un-yoked you look like an idiot. However if you always maintain a dad bod, you always have the potential to get yoked. The same goes with your job, if you come outta school and get a dope job, you;ve used up all your potential so if you settle for anything less in life, you look like a dink. If you keep you're potential high, anytime you screw up or get fat or whatever, you always have your potential to fall back on and can always claim the best is yet to come.

Now back to our boy Jake Owen. In mid March, outta nowhere, Jake unleashed the greatest song of the year, maybe even the greatest song ever with American Country Love Song. I mean this thing was fire flames on top of fire flames and had everything you could ask for in a country song. SO naturally when I heard his latest album, American Love, was dropping July 29th, I was STOKED. Counting down the days waiting for what should be the best album of the year, based off the small sample size that was ACLS. July 29th finally came around, I eagerly took a listen, and I was in shock. It was a complete MLB (Major League Bummer). All the hype going into the album was out the door. Jake made the classic mistake of not following the four golden words, low bar high potential. Jake came out guns BLAZING with ACLS and just could not back it up. Now I'm a firm believer in music being subjective* so I'm not gonna go out and say it stinks, but it kinda stinks. He went for a very funky, Cali sounding album (think his 2015 single Real Life) as opposed to his normal beach/rock country feel we're used to from Jake. Now if he had a few songs on the album with that feel I'd be totally cool with it, I'm all about artists trying new things and going with different vibes, but the entire album seemed a little too different for me. with that said, it sold 29,000 copies in the first weekend and has gotten good reviews, so the only thing I fault him on is not sticking to the golden rule, Low Bar, High Potential, don't release the greatest song of all time as the first single on a sub par album.

*Just paid 100,000 bucks for a college degree and still not entirely sure the difference between subjective and objective, but I think I nailed it. Way to go UMass