Genre-Blending Continues With Jake Owen’s Owl City Collab, “Back Home”

Owl City Mobile ORchestra

Owl City’s latest album, Mobile Orchestra, came out today, featuring artists including Hanson (yes, of former “Mmmbop” glory), Aloe Blacc, and country’s own Jake Owen. Owen defended the song a while back, saying that music grows and changes and that fan should embrace sonic diversity. The song definitely has a country flavoring to it – not in a Zac Brown/Avicii way – but in its visual imagery and melody. “Back home there’s a girl named Mary Lou / a diner off the highway with a corner booth / and every gravel road is a trip down memory lane / and back home where the corn grows 10 feet tall / every year’s measured on the pantry wall / the willow trees waving ’til we come back home again,” Owen sings.

The vocals on “Back Home” are heavily treated, which isn’t a surprise for an Owl City song, and it’s got a heavily processed sound, not dissimilar to the usually feature-artist-sung choruses in Colt Ford songs. It’s an interesting sound, but not one that particularly incites disgust or enthusiasm.

For those who still reminisce about Owl City’s “Firefly” glory days, fear not; one of the lines goes, “I’m headed back to tree lines, to free time and starry nights, to bonfire and fireflies.”

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