Reception
Billboard reviewer Ken Tucker, who gave I'll Stay Me a favorable review for its "unapologetically country" sound, described the song as a "down-home romper". Allmusic critic Thom Jurek referred to it as "line-dance swagger" that was "calculating" but "execute nearly flawlessly".
Brady Vercher of The 9513, however, gave the song a "thumbs down" review, describing it as "mindlessly list anything that could be superficially associated with being a country man". He also thought that the song posed a risk of typecasting Bryan as "the corporate manufactured country boy image" by following so closely on his debut single "All My Friends Say". Michael Sudhalter of Country Standard Time also thought unfavorably of the song, describing it as being "chock full of country clichés", although he called it "the only misstep" on the album.
Read more about this topic: Country Man
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)