And the Fandom Rejoiced: Nothing Like This, their first album for Big Machine, strips away most of the bombast, overproduction, oversinging and lightweight lyrics, returning them to their earlier sound.
"Bless the Broken Road" had been recorded by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Marcus Hummon, Melodie Crittenden and Sons of the Desert before Rascal Flatts released it. Crittenden's version was also a single in 1997.
"What Hurts the Most" has also been released by Jo O'Meara and Cascada. Mark Wills originally recorded it and almost released it as a single in 2003, and Faith Hill turned it down at the last minute.
Thanks to its appearance in Cars, their cover of "Life Is a Highway" is more familiar than the the Tom Cochrane original, especially to Country Music audiences.
Critic Proof: Every Lyric Street album from Me and My Gang onward has largely gotten mediocre-to-negative reviews for being lightweight, bland and overproduced on most of the songs. Unstoppable in particular was derided for sounding way too much like the last two albums.
Crowning Music of Awesome: "Bless the Broken Road," "I'm Movin' On" and "What Hurts the Most" are generally well-loved for being weighty, sensitive ballads.
Narm: Almost all of their material ever since Me and My Gang, the first album that Dann Huff produced. Most of their Huff-era songs rely on lightweight, trite lyrics that are given a wall-of-sound production drenched in strings, piano and guitar.
Although it was their last single before Huff, "Skin (Sarabeth)" is a particularly Narmy little song about a girl who frets about going to the prom with no hair after cancer treatment... until she meets a boy who shaved his head out of sympathy and they go to the prom together.