Carolyn’s Boy
Releasing his first solo album in six years in an homage to his mother and all the music she taught him to love – pull up a rocking chair, pour the sweet tea, grab a tissue, and call your momma, Darius Rucker has done it again.
Remember that hit from the early 90s, I Only Want to Be with You, delivered by distinctive, decade-defining lead vocals? That was Darius Rucker. Remember a couple decades later when crowds (not just country fans) were singing “rock me mama like a wagon wheel” at ball games, almost as rowdy as Sweet Caroline? That too, was Darius Rucker. He’d already caused a musical double-take in 2008 when he dropped his debut solo country single (Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It), winning CMA Best New Artist 2009. Wagon Wheel doubled down becoming a sort of national anthem in its year (2013) and is now one of the Recording Industry Association of America®’s (RIAA) top-five best-selling Country songs of all time.
Darius had done it – he’d become the “sound” of more than one genre in contemporary American music. Still, a few years back, when he found himself struggling with his place in country music, he landed on this simple truth: “At the end of the day, I’m just my mom’s boy.”
That was the seed that became his newest album, Carolyn’s Boy, released early fall 2023. His 8th studio album and his first solo album in six years, this tribute collection was inspired by the mother who never got to see his meteoric success, and who was the first and greatest to protect his unique musical ingenuity when he was “a kid listening to Kenny Rogers and getting made fun of for it.”
“I wanted to be Radney Foster since the day I first heard him,” says Rucker recalling the afternoon he discovered Crazy Over You by Foster & Lloyd. “I grew up loving Al Green, Charlie Pride, Kenny Rogers, Hee Haw, and I got teased,” he said of his Charleston SC childhood (and still rocking the 843 today), “but my mom wouldn’t have it. She always supported me and my appreciation for this music, and she’s so much a part of what it’s become.”
To honor that legacy fully, Rucker wanted to take his time pulling together this collection, writing thoughtfully, retrospectively, and with a carefully curated group of collaborators. “Being a successful musician,” Rucker says, “is all about the songs. I want to write songs that people can listen to, that can step into their lives, and that they can relate to and think, ‘I know that feeling.’”
Know and love, thanks to this set that includes true stories like Never Been Over and the Ed Sheeran collab Sara about a childhood girlfriend, old country bluegrass accents in songs like Sure Would Have Loved Her and 3 AM in Carolina, and the single Fires Don’t Start Themselves which is the namesake tune of his Starting Fires Tour, all with the right rhythm to rock your hammock.
The rising new Song of the South, though, is Beers and Sunshine. Already Rucker’s ninth number one hit on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart even before the full album released, readers of South know well the lowcountry love-language of lyrics that declare there’s nothing finer than “back porch nights in South Carolina.”
For the showstopper, imagine this immersive gem: Rucker’s resonant, reverberating vocals covering Rihanna’s Lift Me Up, taking the familiar refrain from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and soaking it in the sacred and sentimental spirit of an inspirational country ballad. A weeping steel guitar lends a shoulder to cry on. Cue gospel choir. Darius has done it again… and again, and again, and again …
The collection began with the hope of paying homage to Rucker’s extraordinary mother, playing for her the music she never got to hear but believed in and supported from the start. “I hope,” Rucker says with the clear heart of Carolyn’s Boy, “I hope I grew up to be the guy she wanted me to be.”
And then some.
