Old Dominion is a Country Music band which, as their name indicates, hails from Virginia. Members are Matthew Ramsey (lead vocals), Trevor Rosen (guitar, keyboards), Whit Sellers (drums), Geoff Sprung (bass), and Brad Tursi (guitars).
Initially, Old Dominion was formed to perform songs that their members had written. Tursi, Ramsey, and Rosen in particular had landed several cuts by famous country singers. An independent EP released in 2014 caught the attention of the Nashville community when "Shut Me Up" started getting radio airplay. As a result, the band was signed to RCA Records Nashville. Their first official single, "Break Up with Him", gathered traction on Sirius XM's "The Highway", and then on terrestrial radio as well.
"Break Up with Him" went on to become a #1 hit on Country Airplay, and it helped to move their debut album Meat and Candy. Also released from the album were "Snapback" and "Song for Another Time". Their second album Happy Endings includes the hits "No Such Thing as a Broken Heart", "Written in the Sand", and "Hotel Key".
The band's music is slick country-pop noted for its polished production and strong songwriting, usually from the band members themselves.
Albums
- Meat and Candy (2015)
- Happy Endings (2017)
- Old Dominion (2019)
- Time, Tequila & Therapy (2021)
Tropes present:
- Bowdlerise: All three singles off Happy Endings have had some form of this.
- "No Such Thing as a Broken Heart" muted "shit" in the lyric "All of this bullshit that goes down on TV".
- "Written in the Sand" changes "Let's cut through the shit" to "Let's cut to the quick".
- "Hotel Key" changes "Smokin' a little from a half-an-ounce" to "Stuck in the middle, loving every ounce".
- Early-Bird Cameo: Ramsey, Rosen, and Tursi all wrote songs for other artists before the band had any singles out. Even before that, however, Rodney Atkins tweeted that the band had a cameo in his "It's America" music video back in 2009.
- Entitled to Have You: "Break Up with Him" has a man trying to convince a woman to leave her current man in favor of him ("I know you say you're taken, but I say girl you're taking too long to tell him that it's over"), with no reasoning other than he wants her (i.e. it's not a Better Partner Assertion song).
- Misogyny Song: "Break Up with Him" sometimes gets accused of being this.
- The Power of Love: "No Such Thing as a Broken Heart":You know you can't keep the ground from shaking, no matter how hard you try
You can't keep the sunsets from fading, you gotta treat you love like
You're jumping off a rope swing maybe 'cause the whole thing is really just a shot in the dark
You gotta love like there's no such thing as a broken heart - Shout-Out:
- The video for "Break Up with Him" references Back to the Future.
- "No Such Thing as a Broken Heart" name-drops John Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane".
- "Song for Another Time" is a Song of Song Titles, as mentioned, but the bridge imitates the drum riff from "Paradise City" by Guns N' Roses, which is also name-dropped in the song.
- Song of Song Titles: "Song for Another Time":Let's be brown eyed girl, sweet Caroline
Free fallin', small town Saturday nightnote
Before you lose that loving feelingnote
Let's go dancing on the ceiling
Keep on living that teenage dream
Paradise city where the grass is green
Pretty soon I'll be so lonesome I could crynote
But that's a song for another time - Visual Pun: The cover for Meat and Candy shows a female soda jerk serving strange hybridized dishes of, well, meat and candy.
