Album Review: Brittney Spencer, My Stupid Life

Like a splash of neon paint against a blank wall, things just seem brighter and more fun the moment singer-songwriter Brittney Spencer opens her mouth. My Stupid Life, her debut long-player after several singles and a pair EPs, consolidates the Baltimore-reared, Nashville-based artist’s position as recognizably country yet working just outside its conventions, presumably owing both to her gospel background (oh those heavenly pipes!) and to her willingness to push the envelope sonically and lyrically. It is the 21st century, y’all.

Witness “I Got Time,” a kind of fizzy rap-country hybrid propelled, of course, by Spencer’s gargantuan voice but equally by her vividly upbeat chronicle of a summer day spent tearing up the asphalt. Elsewhere, country-codified boozing and bellyaching are swapped for girlfriends with agency opting to stay in, get high, wear sweatpants and watch “stupid shows… here on this couch” (“Night In”), while album opener “Bigger Than the Song” reflects on (I think) how music exalts the vagaries of life when not soundtracking them. That our girl namechecks Reba, Dolly, Aretha, Johnny and June and Alanis in the chorus serves as fair warning of what’s to come.

Ballad “My First Rodeo” is almost unbearably intimate as Spencer tallies her affection for her lover, and why that person stands heads-and-shoulders above the rest. It’s about time the shopworn theme of love ‘em and leave ‘em got a declarative counterpoint and it’s here Spencer’s roots in the church show most clearly. I could go on itemizing the sensorial joys of My Stupid Life and the myriad ways in which Spencer raises the game but that would cut into your listening time. And that would be a pity.

My Stupid Life was released January 19, 2024 on Elektra Records.
Listen to it here.