Beer in Mexico

Chesney's most self-aware beach song, and the loneliest. It's a road-fatigue confession dressed as a vacation number: a man who has just come off a tour of arenas full of people who love him, driving south until the cell signal dies, sitting at a Mexican bar where nobody knows who he is. The production is warmer and grittier than his radio hits — a slack, sun-bleached guitar figure, brushed rhythm, a little accordion and horn color drifting in from across the water, a mix that lets air sit around the vocal. He sings it low, tired, almost mumbled in the verses, saving the lift for a chorus that isn't triumphant so much as relieved. The genius of the lyric is that it names the cost of the lifestyle the rest of his catalogue sells: crowds every night and no one to talk to, so the fix is deliberate anonymity and a cold bottle. Released on The Road and the Radio in 2005 at the absolute peak of his stadium ascent, it reads now as a working document of burnout in country's biggest touring act. Best heard by anyone who just finished something exhausting and wants to disappear for three days.