Music Review // Julian Robia "Roll Them Pretty Eyes"

 

Just saying the title "Roll Them Pretty Eyes" has me knowing this is going to be a country song before I hear it.   I cannot say the title without having a little bit of that southern twang in my voice.   It's the closest you can get to putting "y'all" in the title without having it there.  And as I suspect before finding the video, this is very much a guitar twang sounding country song.  It has a moderate pace and picks up near the end as well.

What gets me about this song is that at first listen people might take it the wrong way.   After singing to "Roll them pretty eyes", the next line is "I can't help feeling like a child", which just kind of shows how the singer is both taken back to that age of wonderment but also maybe a little bit immature.   This comes through further with the lines: "You look mad as hell this time / So I try and hide my smile" which can be taken different ways.

No one should be smiling at someone else's pain, but I don't think that's what this song is about.  I'm the type of person that someone could be really upset with me and tell me "It is your duty to..." and I would just be thinking "Heheheh duty".   So I get the idea of wanting to smile when someone is upset, but some people might now.  Julian Robia also understands what role this plays, as he has the line "Famous last words from me".

In some ways this song is about poking the bear.   It's about knowing that you shouldn't ask a woman what's wrong when they're upset because it'll just make things worse but you can't help but do it any way.  Although the intentions here aren't as blatant, it's more of a reflex than something deliberate and if we can just all spend more time in life laughing rather than fighting it'll be better for everyone.