For My Sunday Song #270, we are discussing the final song in the Will Hoge series, “Sweet Magdeline”. The song is off the his self-released 2001 album called ‘Carousel’. The album didn’t chart, the song wasn’t a single and yet it is still all fantastic. A deep cut that is better than anything on the album for me. I believe the song was written by Will Hoge and Dan Baird frontman of the Georgia Satellites. Dan signed on as Will’s lead guitarist for this album so that is a nice endorsement.
The song is about a young girl named Magdeline who wasn’t so sweet anymore. She fell hard and deep into to drinking and that grew in to drugs and some not so nice things she did to get those drugs. The drug references are throughout with phrases like “altered dreams” and “needle and silver spoon” and the bad things such as “she is going down” to her medicine man. I don’t know if she made it back to the sweet side, but it doesn’t sound promising.
Vocally, Will sings in a more rocking style, loud and gritty. On a couple lines Will does something he hasn’t done frequently and that is sing in a high falsetto voice which comes out of the right speaker and sounds like a turned down low radio before fully filling the speakers and back to rocking it out. Musically, it is a rocker with some great guitar work by Dan and the drums are slamming. This album is a far cry from where he is style wise now and if you like his rock side more than that country/southern rock side, then this one will be perfect for you.
2 Loud 2 Old Music 