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Sorry You Couldn't Make It Image
Metascore
79

Generally favorable reviews - based on 8 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: The latest full-length release for the R&B/soul singer includes country music influences and features guest appearances from Polica's Channy Leaneagh, Jenny Lewis, John Prine, and Justin Vernon.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 8
  3. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. Mar 20, 2020
    82
    Sorry You Couldn’t Make It represents yet another late-career experiment in a lengthy one filled with them, a back-to-basics approach by an artist who’s seen it all. There’s no telling where Swamp Dogg goes from here, but if his most recent handful of releases are anything to go off of, it’ll likely sound nothing like Sorry You Couldn’t Make It. But it also means that no matter what genre he tries on next, the results will be astounding.
  2. Mojo
    Mar 5, 2020
    80
    An album of unashamed emotional purgation. ... Swamp's late renascence is wonderful. [Apr 2020, p86]
  3. Classic Rock Magazine
    Mar 5, 2020
    80
    Swamp certainly has a knack for the genre's heartbreak. [Apr 2020, p.89]
  4. Mar 10, 2020
    80
    Sure, he loves his horns, we all do, but his country roots are showing on this record, and it's glorious.
  5. Mar 17, 2020
    71
    His new album Sorry You Couldn’t Make It restores him to a more even keel, examining grief from greater distance while savoring life’s little sweetnesses. Billed as Williams’ country album, Sorry You Couldn’t Make It hits its thematic marks within funkified arrangements.
  6. Mar 5, 2020
    70
    Though it still flirts with the blues, soul and R&B that he's built his name on, the record has a country-fried warmth, coloured by slide guitar and Southern rhythms. That those Southern rhythms are played mostly by chintzy drum machine, that they're undermined by hip-hop-biting guitar samples or artificial horns, is the record's vaguely outlandish appeal.
  7. Mar 10, 2020
    70
    Sorry You Couldn't Make It declares there should be a place for Swamp Dogg in the country pantheon alongside Charley Pride, Stoney Edwards, Darius Rucker, and the other brave artists who've confronted the color line in Nashville.

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