Album Review: Gabby Barrett - Goldmine (2020)

What's up guys, welcome back to Fire's Flaming Hot Takes, where I have another album review ready!! So, what album are we taking a look at?

Gabby Barrett - Goldmine (2020)

Okay, I'll be fully honest, the big reason I checked this album out was out of morbid curiosity. Gabby has faced tons of backlash for her music and her political views. That said, I still did want to give this album a spin because I'm willing to put politics aside and focus on the music. And even if I still hate "I Hope", I can't really judge an entire album based on one song, and even if it's ending up on way more worst lists than I was expecting, I don't really mind "The Good Ones", so, what did "Goldmine" give us?

Yeah, my morbid curiosity definitely got the best of me here because this album is awful.

Okay, let's break this album down a bit. Let's take a look at its lyrics. Okay, I'll freely admit, I'm not that big of a fan of Christian music. I just find it really difficult to truly resonate with them. Yes, there are some exceptions, like "You Say" by Lauren Daigle or "God Only Knows" by For King & Country that are able to properly frame the song so that it can resonate with a wider audience. That said, I do get the appeal of Christian songs, and I get that they have an audience, so while I'm not too big on "Strong", I get the appeal, it's just not for me. Beyond that, the lyrics aren't anything really special outside of a select few tracks in which my skin really crawls. And the biggest example is in the song "Footprints On The Moon", which is nothing more than a cheap, cliché empowerment anthem that’s so cheesy that even I can’t handle it, and this is coming from someone who unironically likes the High School Musical soundtrack! I'll stand up for "Fight Song" by Rachel Platten because at least she sounded sincere and honest and could sell an empowerment anthem well! Gabby doesn't have the vocals to sell this message, and it just falls flat on its face, we'll get back to this. Much of the same reasoning applies to “You’re The Only Reason”, which yeah, is more sincere which definitely puts this track higher than "Footprints On The Moon", but it's still painfully cheesy. And even if I, dare say, actually like “The Good Ones”, I can’t help but feel uncomfortable when she refers to her husband as “one of the good ones”, right?

But now, how cohesive is this album? I’ll be fully honest, I can’t really complain about how this album flows that much, but the thing is, this album just feels like nothing more that adult contemporary radio fodder to me, it falls into the background super easily and it only ends up becoming annoying to me if I pay attention to it. Though I will say that “I Hope” doesn’t match the rest of the content at all, and even if it did, which I mean, I could see how it could work, creating a nice story arc, putting both the solo and Charlie Puth remix on opposite ends of the album is an absolutely terrible idea. They're both equal amounts of horrible, and when I reached the Charlie Puth remix, I honestly struggled to even get through the song. I heard this song at the beginning of the album already! I don't wanna hear it again at the very end!

But really, the worst part of this album is the production. I've already spilled my thoughts on "I Hope" in my worst of 2020 list, but to keep it short, it's a gutless, poorly mixed song where Gabby Barrett cannot sell the anger that it needs. And that just brings me to Gabby Barrett herself, I’m sorry, but her vocals are very poorly mixed throughout these tracks, I feel them clipping the mix too often, which severely taints even the passable songs on this album like “Write It On My Heart” and “The Good Ones”. And on the topic of “The Good Ones”, good lord, this is probably the only song on this album that Gabby has the pipes to sell, yet THIS is the song where she has male backing vocals in the background!?!? Oh yeah, and there’s that squawking synth throughout the song that doesn’t match anything. That song is only saved by that admittedly really nice keyboard melody. And on the aforementioned “Footprint On The Moon”, Gabby Barrett doesn’t have the vocals to sell the message, as I said earlier. But the worst victim of this is the title track, “Goldmine”, where Gabby strains uncomfortably in the chorus to give this song the intensity that the instrumental can’t give her! The song was already terrible with that horribly gutless production, but the way Gabby Barrett proceeds to wail on TOP of that gives me a splitting migraine. It’s truly unlistenable for me, I can’t stand it at all. It sounds like she’s trying to blast her ex unsuccessfully rather than actually praising her husband like the song's supposed to be doing! This intensity is definitely done better on “Jesus And My Mama”, which is also a pretty bad song but in comparison to that atrocity, I mean, I guess I'll count for small blessings? And let me circle back to "I Hope" for a second, Gabby and Charlie Puth don't have good chemistry at all! And the other feature on this album, Shane & Shane on "Got Me", isn't that much better. Despite all my complaints about Gabby's vocal mixing throughout this album, she somehow manages to run circles around her features. That's not a good thing!!!!

So if you want my final thoughts...well, let me put it this way: this album as a whole sounds like it was specifically designed to serve as radio background noise, with vapid songs that have so little quality that they become annoying just off of a lack of good, regardless of how actively unpleasant the music actually is. Half of these songs sound like their production template was from "Believer" by Imagine Dragons, which at least was able to match the intensity that the song needed! Here, that aggressive intensity sharply clashes with Gabby's delivery and makes for a thorough earsore of a listen. Doesn't help that when the writing stands out, it's aggressively cheesy. And you know what, despite several of my complaints about "The Good Ones", it really is the best song on this album and the only legitimately good one on it, again, heavily carried by that admittedly really nice keyboard melody. I guess I'll give my honorable mention to "Hall Of Fame"...if you can't tell I'm grasping at straws right now, that song isn't even good but it's at least passable, and on this album, I'll take what I can get. As for the worst...somehow both versions of "I Hope" are dodging this, because I'm giving dishonorable mention to "Footprints On The Moon" for being painfully cheesy, and I'm giving the worst to the title track "Goldmine" for being fucking atrocious all the way around, if that ever gets pushed as a single and becomes a hit then it's easily locked for my worst list. And my final rating...mid 3/10, avoid this crap at all costs, this is a terrible album. Not a goldmine, more like a bad harvest.

So that's that, thank you guys so much for reading! I'm still not 100% sure what my next best or worst list is gonna be, but I'll be thinking. Also guys, happy 2022! I hope it's started off in a good way for you guys, only time will tell if it becomes as good of a year for me as 2021 has been, but until then, you've been reading Fire's Flaming Hot Takes, and I'll see you next time.