Vince Gill’s voice sounds like the truth. like, The Truth. it’s soaring, clear, and it sounds like angels singing to you from on high. in this sense, i don’t trust it one bit. it may be beautiful, it may be enjoyable, and i may admire it, but its polished perfection reads as more than a little suspicious to me.

which makes “When I Call Your Name,” for me, the perfect Vince Gill song. because it is just unbelievably full of shit.

“When I Call Your Name” is another in the long country tradition of songs where the singer’s mate has left them. it’s extremely straightforward: he/she left, and he’s sad, because he/she is no longer there to answer when he calls their name. it kind of depends on the listener’s familiarity with these types of songs, skipping over most of the particulars and just wallowing in the pain. this is the source of both the song’s strength and its ridiculous, laughable weakness.

at the song’s start, the narrator sets the scene:

I rushed home from work like I always do
I spent my whole day just thinking of you

maybe it says more about me than the song, but i already don’t like this guy. just do your job, bro. i would hate to work with this guy if he’s just mooning over his partner all day, rather than paying attention to his work responsibilities. the fact that he characterizes this as his default (“like I always do”) seems to suggest that either 1.) he has a potentially unhealthy obsession with his partner, or 2.) he’s talking shit.unfortunately, things are about to go bad for our devoted narrator:

When I walked through the front door my whole life was changed
Cause nobody answered when I called your name

with this development lurking, the opening lines make a little more sense. we needed to understand the narrator’s devotion for the devastation of the loss to register. with that in mind, it’s a pretty economical (if melodramatic) way to accomplish that goal. but that doesn’t make it any less cringeworthy. from here, though, it really starts to get sketchy:

A note on the table that told me goodbye
It said you’d grown weary of living a lie

this is where the song really starts to lose me, lyrically. the narrator seems to want the listener to believe that this development came out of nowhere, that it was a complete shock when he arrived home and no one answered when he called their name. but the note that’s left for him (the only instance of the object of the song being allowed to speak in any way) disputes that. if his partner really felt that they were ‘living a lie,’ it’s hard to believe that the narrator had no idea. people in a relationship voice dissatisfaction in myriad ways, they don’t just decide one day that they’re living a lie and then leave. that this narrator had no idea strongly suggests that one of two things is going on here: 1.) he’s oblivious and uninterested in his partner’s thoughts and feelings in the extreme, or 2.) he’s full of shit and trying to garner sympathy from the listener by painting himself as a victim. neither of these is a good look.

Your love has ended but mine still remains
But nobody answers when I call your name

though i have serious questions about the quality of this guy’s ‘love,’ i guess i believe this, but i also wonder why he’s still calling his partner’s name, since he knows they’re gone. but poetry is poetry, and melodrama is melodrama, so it’s whatever.

Oh the lonely sound of my voice calling
Is driving me insane
And just like rain, the tears keep falling
Nobody answers when I call your name

actually, these last six lines are really fine. if it wasn’t for the super creepy stuff that comes before them, these lyrics would work. but the narrator just can’t help himself, and he compulsively disclosed his creepiness. it’s like he wants to be caught.

those last lines, though, are really powerful. their sentiment- one that has been repeated for decades in country music (and popular music overall) -combined with the power of Vince Gill’s soaring, beatific voice are truly awe-inspring, and the song’s strategy of depending on the listener to fill in the narrative and character blanks by cutting out almost everything but that sentiment almost works.

the problem with that strategy, though, is if someone decides to pay attention. Vince Gill’s voice is as shiny of an object as you’re likely to find, but when you pay attention to what that voice is saying, in this song, it’s some real bullshit. this narrator is either an obsessive weirdo or a manipulative creep, and you don’t have to look too closely at his account of things before it starts to look funny.

on the other hand, it’s pop music. Vince Gill’s voice + an easily recognizable and relatable feeling + ??? = profit. none of this matters. but still: when something is presented to you like it’s the one and only truth, it’s some bullshit. so this song, like most things, proved what i already knew.