See Frankie Ballard Serenade a Stripper in ‘Cigarette’ Video
Earlier this week, Frankie Ballard released his new video for “El Camino,” the kickoff song from this summer’s El Rio. Today, he’s moving down the track list with the album’s second track: the taut, guitar-heavy “Cigarette.”
Although written by the country dream team of Chris Stapleton, Kip Moore and Jaren Johnston, “Cigarette” is perhaps the most heavy rock & roll song Ballard has ever cut, driven forward by a slapback guitar riff and a rapid-fire vocal delivery. It’s appropriate, then, that more than half of the song’s music video is set inside a strip club, where the object of his affection spends her evenings dancing under blue stage lights. Intercut with performance footage of Ballard and his live band, it’s a simple, straightforward clip, relatively low on narrative but high on slightly NSFW energy.
Moore’s presence is certainly felt, too; close your eyes whenever Ballard hits the screen, and “Cigarette” could pass as an unreleased stadium rocker from Moore’s Wild Ones, another album that found one of country’s leading men turning to the epic sweep of Eighties rock for inspiration.
El Rio is scheduled to be released on June 10th, and its lead single “It All Started with a Beer” is still climbing Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart.