There’s something so undeniably earnest and unforgettable about a great country track. With Ricky Forest’s new single “Honey Please Come Home,” it scratches every itch regarding the genre and then some. It’s a heartfelt love track with fantastic instrumentals and a gorgeous voice at its core, but there’s a tinge of comedy in the lyrics even still, giving the track a fantastic world to play around in.
There’s a definite built-up musical background evident in Ricky Forest’s past from the moment “Honey Please Come Home” starts. The musicality of the track is sensitive, with its warm guitars and twinkling piano complementing Forest’s rich vocals and seizing the exact definition of what it means to be a classic country music song — the emotions on display are raw, stuffed full of bravado without sacrificing vulnerability, and the duality of carrying such a full vocal tone while balancing the lyricism so delicately makes “Honey Please Come Home” a single that checks all of the boxes.
Listeners will be able to tell that Ricky Forest has been writing songs for two decades; his rich array of songwriting skills feels genuine and like something you can only grow with age. The attention to detail in the lyrics gives the impression that Forest is writing from a place of deep inspiration, and almost everything about “Honey Please Come Home” feels so real, almost as if Forest has lived it. The sign of a true and good singer-songwriter has to come from a place of lived experience, and even when you haven’t lived it, you have to be able to convey the emotions as though you have. Forest achieves such emotional depths with this single and adds another star-studded track to his ever-growing list of accomplishments.
From his influences, Ricky Forest cites Elton John, Paul McCartney, Prince, Michael Jackson, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Al Green. The “love song” angle of Elton John and McCartney is particularly clear on “Honey Please Come Home,” but the country twang and direction give the song notes of Creedence that other artists wouldn’t think of adding into the mix. The array of influences comes together nicely and gives listeners a song they might have never expected.
Ricky Forest puts every ounce of his musical background into “Honey Please Come Home,” and the way that the song communicates such earnest feelings while never losing itself in the mix is an impressive feat. It’s country music at its finest, and everything Forest gives to the single feels like the culmination of several years of hard work and dedication in the music industry coming full circle. There’s no word yet if the single is attached to a larger album, but as it stands, “Honey Please Come Home” is a fantastic new entry from Forest’s catalog, and will certainly remain one of the highlights of his recent work. Modern country music can be hit or miss, but with Ricky Forest, he’s only concerned with the “hit.”
Cleopatra Patel