There’s a certain type of pop song. Everyone knows them, but most people don’t know they know them. Sometimes, even the people who remember one of these songs forget they know it until they stumble into it in a random encounter. But then there are also the songs of this type that stick in your head for decades, whether you want them to or not.
It’s a type of song unique to pop music, because it’s a type of song that can only exist in the unique environment of mass-produced, mass-audience pop culture, created and designed to spread as many copies of itself to as many places as possible, to appeal to the personal tastes of as many individual consumers as possible, and to attract thousands of fans at a time to pack stadiums night after night.
These types of songs have incredibly long lifespans for pop music, even the ones that never become true classics nor have much presence in the cultural memory except for the exact moment you’re hearing one of them. Some of these songs are genuine classics, but most of them aren’t anywhere near remarkable or enjoyable enough for that. They’re popular, timeless, and good enough to stand out from the rest of their genre. And a lot of them are… just kind of awful and maybe need to go away?
They’re the songs you hear at the supermarket without realizing, until you catch yourself humming along; the songs everyone gets annoyed at when they hear them at a party, but will get you free cheers at karaoke. They’re the hit songs no one really cares about all that much, or that everyone hates or laughs at a year later… except for the ones that are stone-cold classics, or the ones that are complete embarrassments. But one thing all songs of this type do have in common, is that people still like them just enough for them to stick around. These songs still fit the mass audience’s emotional needs in some particular way, even if its only at a specific moment, or for every reason except whether or not they’re good songs.
In other words, these songs are everywhere; you can’t get away from them.
There isn’t really a good name for these songs. “Songs that won’t go away,” is probably the most accurate, but it sounds too negative and judgmental for songs deserving praise, or at least examination, even if only begrudgingly. “Songs that will never die” sounds both too negative and too positive; depending on how you read it, it can mean, “songs that transcend mere mortality and whose awe-inspiring power and magnificence are eternal,” OR, “songs that rise from the grave to terrorize the world once more.” Neither of those meanings are accurate descriptions of the type of songs we’re talking about. The term needs to make the songs it describes seem omnipresent and timeless, but without implying they deserve those things, except for when they do, or that these songs are worth the time to go out of your way for; except for when they are…
They’re the Songs You Can Never Escape.
CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE: THIS ESSAY IN NOT ACTUALLY ABOUT UNCLE KRACKER!
I mean, come on. He’s Uncle Kracker, the Joe The Plumber of 2000s pop music, if Joe The Plumber was the least interesting person ever. Plus he’s Kid Rock’s turntable-ist; how lame do you have to be to be the doughiest slice of white bread ever and still call yourself “cracker,” while spinning records for the most successful upper class swagger jagger ever? Kid Rock is so lame he had to rip off the look and culture of white poverty to then rip off hip hop slang and fashion through it, right as white boy frat bros acting like gangstas became the hottest trend in pop music (it was a dark time).
Now, imagine how lame someone would have to be to get famous by being a spinoff of Kid Rock. That’s how lame Uncle Kracker is.
Instead, we’re going to be talking about a guy named Dobie Gray, who is way cooler. He’s the guy on the right in the picture below, standing next to Monsieur Kraquer. He’s the one who sings the parts of “Drift Away” that aren’t sung by Uncle Krunker, the one with the amazing voice that’s rich and soothing in just the right ways a 70s soul singer should be to match the schmaltzy strings and Wall Of 70s arrangements. He’s also the only reason Uncle Kranky scored a radio hit with “Drift Away” that got big enough for anyone to notice it long enough to care; I can’t prove it, but how else can you explain it?
Most of importantly, Dobie Gray is the only reason Uncle Kanker sang “Drift Away” in the first place. Because “Drift Away” isn’t an Uncle Kracker song: it’s a Dobie Gray song. Yet somehow, Dobie doesn’t even get a guest credit on Uncle Kracker’s cover version, because Uncle Kracker really is that lame.
I’m not actually sure how many people below the age of Classic 70s know about the Dobie Gray version of “Drift Away”. I knew about it before the Uncle Kracker version came out, but that was by accident when I unknowingly downloaded a live cover version of “Drift Away” by The Rolling Stones off of Limewire, along with the hundreds of viruses that would eat the computer the mp3 was downloaded to from the inside.
I got curious, since “Drift Away” didn’t really sound like a The Rolling Stones song and I’d never heard it before, but I wouldn’t hear the Dobie Gray version until years later while sitting in a Taco Bell… and I didn’t like it very much. Hearing The Rolling Stones’ version first gave me a false impression of what the song would sound like; I was expecting the song that begs rock n’ roll to set its soul free to be a rock n’ roll song. By the time the song had finished, though, I’d realized it was kind of silly for me not to have realized earlier that “Drift Away” is a soul song from the 70s.
Except “Drift Away” is not a 70’s soul song; it’s a 70’s country song. If you listen to the instrumentation and the chord progression underneath Gray’s voice and the strings, “Drift Away” is very obviously a country song — the twangy guitars are probably the biggest giveaway. More importantly, “Drift Away” was written by a country songwriter named Mentor Williams. “Drift Away” is Williams’ best known song; the only other hit song he wrote was “When We Make Love” by the country band Alabama, which I’m not going to bother to look up because we’re not talking about Alabama.
I wouldn’t hear “Drift Away” again until years later, but would eventually find out that “Drift Away” is considered a minor classic of the early 70s (if you’ve ever heard what most early 70s pop music sounds like, you’ll understand why). But apparently “Drift Away” is the kind of classic that only exists in the popular consciousness of its original audience. Or at least that’s what I thought, until Uncle Kracker covered it and proved “Drift Away” was apparently popular enough for the lamest man on Earth to know about it and consider it worthy of his prodigious talents, and turn it into a lame faux-country anthem to the blue collar working man for an audience of Red State poverty tourists (just like his homeboy Kid Rock would have).
Anyway, I like “Drift Away” by Dobie Gray a lot. It’s the best version of the song, and there’s more versions than you think. Apparently Michael Bolton covered it in the 90s, and its the only version of “Drift Away” to chart in the UK? It also turns out Dobie Gray’s version of “Drift Away” is also not the original version of “Drift Away”, either; it was originally a swamp rock* song recorded by a guy named John Henry Kurtz, who you’ve never heard of because he’s just a footnote in the story of “Drift Away” and doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page. He still seems cooler than Uncle Kracker, though.
*think Creedence Clearwater Revival
Dobbie Gray’s “Drift Away” charted in both the U.S. and Canada; Britain was still saving itself for that Michael Bolton touch. Gray’s version of “Drift Away” reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, and ranked #17 on the year-end charts for 1973; it would also reach the Top 20 of the Adult Contemporary and Hot Souls Singles chart… but not the country charts. Yet “Drift Away” would still reach the Top 10 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles in 1973, anyway; right as Dobbie Gray’s version was fading from the pop charts, country singer Narvel Felts released his own cover of “Drift Away”, with the lyrics changed from, “I wanna get lost in your rock n’ roll,” to, “I wanna get lost in your country song.”
I really was not expecting this essay to require me to keep this much information straight.
Apparently, Uncle Kracker’s version of “Drift Away” came out in 2003? I was sure it had come out later than that, because I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear it until the 2010s? Thank God it turned out to be from the early 2000s, though; the thought of Kid Kracker being allowed to have a Top 10 song on the radio in the 2010s was extremely depressing and made me want to dislike “Drift Away” on principle. The more I write this out, the more I’m starting to think most of the reason I like this song is because every encounter I had with it for about 10 years stood out so much, it meant I had to think about “Drift Away” too much not to like it.
But I still like “Drift Away” by Dobie Gray a lot. The Dobie Gray version, specifically; it’s Gray’s voice that makes “Drift Away” sound special, and all you have to do to realize it is listen to any other version of “Drift Away”, from before or after Gray’s**. John Henry Kurtz’s original recording of “Drift Away” is the second best version, but it’s also the best example of what “Drift Away” without Dobie Gray sounds like — it’s pleasant enough, but you’ll forget about it before the song is over. Narvel Felts’ “Drift Away” is the third best, but it’s not good. Felts’ voice is hokey in the most irritating way possible, and the instrumentation is the worst kind of 70s Nashville cheesiness; the kind you expect from a 70s country singer named “Narvel”. Felts’ take on “Drift Away” isn’t even the fun kind of cheesy; despite having the most unique arrangement and instrumentation, Felts’ version of “Drift Away” is even more forgettable than Kurtz’s original.
**I thought about listening to the Michael Bolton version, but I listened to “Incredible Thoughts” from Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping instead, because listening to any of Bolton’s 90s covers of standards by black artists is not something I feel like subjecting myself to, and I want to still be able to laugh at “Jack Sparrow”; that might be mostly about spiting Johnny Depp, though.
That leaves us with the worst version of “Drift Away”, the one by that other guy.
Uncle Kracker’s cover of “Drift Away” is, hands down, the worst version of the song. And not just because it’s by Uncle Kracker, though that is a big part of it. The thing that puts Bungle Whacker’s version of “Drift Away” over the top is that it’s boring. Really, really boring. It’s literally just the Dobie Gray version, but with worse production and a charisma vacuum singing lead. The Country aesthetics of the song have been cranked up to cartoonish levels but still feel underwhelming and tacked-on, mostly because Uncle Kracker’s voice is so weak and indistinct he makes an actual, for-real country song sound like a gimmick that he can’t even hit the notes for. The production flattens all of the instrumentation and phrasing of the song into a dull, monotonous slog, which makes sense because it was co-produced by Uncle Kracker. At least the Narvel Felts version of “Drift Away” found ways to be boring that are distinct and kind of charming.
Buckle Clover even manages to take the joy out of “Drift Away’s” big, juicy hooks; when he’s the one singing them, anyway. That right there is “Drift Away” by Uncle Kracker’s only saving grace, and its only memorable feature: someone other than Uncle Kracker gets to sing parts of the song. Best of all, that someone is Dobie Gray, who sounded as great in 2003 as he did in 1973; I had to listen a couple of times to be sure it wasn’t one of those fake digital duets, like when Natalie Cole sings a song about wanting to bone with her dead father. Which was a silly thing for me to think: that would be interesting, and Uncle Kracker don’t fuck with no interesting.
It wasn’t listening to Dobie Gray’s version of “Drift Away” that made me decide he really was that good a singer; it was hearing the Uncle Kracker version. I recognized the intro and was a little excited to hear the song again after so long, but it also sounded wrong; it was so… boring. Really, really boring, in a way that made me wonder why I even remembered a song so bland. And then it got even worse when Uncle Kracker started singing. I didn’t know it was Uncle Kracker until the radio DJ told me once the song was over, because Uncle Kracker is too boring to remember, but I didn’t have to know who it was that was singing to resent them for invading my earspace. I was just about to change the station, ready to consign my curiosity with “Drift Away” to the “what was I thinking?” section of my brain.
And then the bridge started, and I recognized the new voice immediately. I didn’t remember Dobie Gray’s name — I had to look it up before I started writing this, in fact — but I knew the voice. By the time the chorus started, I remembered why I like “Drift Away” so much, and realized I’d probably always be a fan of Dobie Gray’s voice (I really feel bad about not knowing his name for so long; that’s why I decided to write this). When Dobie Gray sings “Drift Away”, “Drift Away” becomes a song so good even Uncle Kracker ruining the song can’t ruin it.
Dobie Gray had a couple more pop hits hits in the 70s, none of which charted anywhere as high as “Drift Away” or seem to be remembered even by the people who were alive at the time. Despite his version of “Drift Away” not making the Country charts, Gray had four minor hit Country singles in 1986 and 1987. Unfortunately, Gray’s original recorded material was likely lost in the 2008 Universal fire that is believed to have destroyed materials of hundreds of other artists. Dobie Gray tragically passed in 2011 during surgery to treat cancer, at the age of 71.
In 2007, Matt “Uncle Kracker” Shafer was charged with a second-degree sex offense in Raleigh, NC, after a woman reported Kracker had groped her at a club he was scheduled to perform at. Kracker pleaded to a lesser charge, but complained to the media on the day of his sentencing that it was unfair he had to take a plea deal to avoid the inconvenience of going on trial. Kracker went on to state it was wrong for him to be portrayed as a sex criminal because of his accuser’s claims he grabbed her crotch, when all he really did was slap her in the face.
As of last report, he still calls himself “Uncle Kracker.”
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