Music Review // Rob McNelley "Circus Is Leaving Town"

When it comes to music, you can hear the musical aspect of a song and be transported to a certain period of time but when the lyrics also line up with that time frame it makes the overall experience feel even better.  On "Circus Is Leaving Town", Rob McNelley captures both the era of the 1970's going into the 1980's in a musical sense but also with the lyrics of this song as well.

With big guitars and those church-like organs, Rob McNelley has a sound that can take me back to that "Cocaine" time for Eric Clapton mixed with the early years of Tom Petty (I'm not sure why, but with Tom Petty I think of "Runnin' Down A Dream")  The lyrics within here even feel like the type of song that song at this time would've made because it just fits that general idea.

As someone like Tom Petty had a flair for creating enticing music videos, I also believe that if this was set in those early days of MTV then Rob McNelley would have a music video with a big budget and a circus feel to it, complete with the entire circus packing up and shown driving off into the distance by the end of it.  Everything about this song just comes together and works so well on every level.

The chorus has the lines: "Trying to keep my world from crashing down / Every time I turn around / the jugglers and clowns have torn it all down"  Who is the circus in your life?  I think we all have one.  It might in a relationship with another person in a more personal sense, but even just to think about the government and how you feel like once you know the rules and figure out the system they change it up on you.   Regardless, I enjoy that this song has a nod to the circus but also can just be interpreted in different ways as well, through that guitar-driven rock n roll.