See Thomas Rhett Play Daredevil in ‘Vacation’ Video
Thomas Rhett takes vacationing to the extreme in his new video for the funky rump-shaker, “Vacation.” The track comes off his soul and R&B peppered second album, Tangled Up, as Rhett leads up its September 25th release with a series of new videos.
The “Vacation” clip is chock full of adrenaline-pumping getaway activities — skydiving, skim boarding, cliff jumping, dune buggies and underwater make-out sessions — all while Rhett and his wife Lauren kick back in Hawaii. But “kicking back” doesn’t really seem to be on their agenda, or their playlist.
With rhythmic verses full of aw-shucks, good-ol’-boy humor, a raise-the-roof chorus and a ton of forward-driving momentum, “Vacation” falls firmly into the uptempo, new-school category of country, feeling like a countrified remix of Jock Jams and War’s iconic cruising anthem, “Low Rider.” The melodic guitar hook is actually so similar to “Low Rider” that Rhett and company decided to bring the band in as co-writers, preventing a potential Marvin Gaye vs. Robin Thicke situation and maybe bringing the Seventies funk band some added exposure in the process.
Writing credits for the track now read like a book — including Rhett, Sean Douglas, Andreas Schuller, Joe Spargur, Ricky Reed, John Ryan and eight members of War — but during a preview interview of Tangled Up in July, Rhett told Rolling Stone Country he’s proud to have the big crew involved.
“A buddy of mine played me this unfinished track while I was on the road, and we ended up writing ‘Vacation,'” Rhett said. “We got back and played it for the label and management and it was like ‘Yeah, it’s definitely got a little “Low Rider” in it,’ so we went to the guys in War and they are now songwriters on the record. I love telling that story because that’s probably the last band I would have ever imagined be co-writers on a Thomas Rhett record, but it’s really cool to say that.”
“Crash and Burn,” the equally funky first single from Tangled Up, is currently at Number Four and still rising on Billboard‘s country airplay chart. The album comes out September 25th, and then Rhett will join Brett Eldredge and Danielle Bradbery for CMT on Tour starting October 29th in New York City.