Meet Eric Ethridge and His "Dream Girl"

Canadian country artist Eric Ethridge is at it again.

The former chiropractor-turned-country-music-star has been pleasing fans across North America since 2014. With his EP tearing up the Canadian iTunes country chart, a spot opening up for Florida Georgia Line, and his recent 24 weeks on SiriusXM's tastemaker program "On the Horizon," Ethridge is turning heads. To keep that momentum going, he just released a fresh single, written by Dan + Shay, and it deserves a listen right now.

A synth swell brings us into the song, quickly giving way to the more traditional country trappings of reverb-heavy plucked banjo and slide guitar. It builds rapidly to a full on pop chorus with distorted power chord punches. Ethridge sings in quick snatches about losing his "Dream Girl." Through clever wordplay, we hear this dream girl turn from personified perfection into a make-believe character that only exists in dreams. The track steadily expands with emotion, while the soundscape turns the echoes of the past into instrumental delay and volume swells. The song, like its subject, eventually fades away into memory.

Eric Ethridge has produced a solid piece here. While it doesn't break the mold or redefine the genre, it plays exceptionally well with the pop country toolkit, and a track like this is likely to be an easy crowd-pleaser. It's not difficult to picture this being played at a festival, with couples hugging and dancing to it as the sun sinks below the horizon. It's fun and flirty, with just the right amount of melancholy, enough pop for the mainstream crowd and enough twang for country fans. Listen up and sing along, because these lyrics are about to find a permanent home in your brain.

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