Jason Isbell's "Something More Than Free" Quiz

Answer: Pop

The album debuted at number one on Billboard's Top Folk Albums and Top Rock Albums charts. It debuted at number two on the Top Country Albums chart and peaked at number five on the overall Billboard 200, much higher than Isbell's previous album, "Southeastern," which landed at 23 on the Billboard 200.

Answer: wine

The singer wants her "out of here" because "she won't stop telling stories, and most of them are true. / She knew me back before I fell for you."

When discussing this song with "Stereogum," Jason Isbell said that he's changed since becoming sober and is closer to who he was as a kid: "I am different now [. . . ] That's not me anymore. The only thing that truly matters is who I am now."

Answer: 2015

The album was released on July 17, 2015 by Southeastern and was produced by Dave Cobb. It followed Isbell's 2013 album "Southeastern" and preceded his 2017 album "The Nashville Sound."

Answer: 24

The title "24 frames" alludes to the 24 frames per second that pass before a camera in video technology. The chorus to this song is:

"You thought God was an architect
Now you know he's something like a pipe bomb
Ready to blow."

Caiitlin White writes in a review of this song on "Stereogum": "Do I even need to explain to you that most people can't write songs like this?"

Answer: heart

Isbell paints a striking picture of this distant couple, continuing, "And they're sitting there a thousand miles apart." The signer doesn't want to "ever get that way." Instead, he swears, "I'll say whatever words I need to say."

On October 19, 2017, Isbell released a version of this song recorded live from the Ryman at his sold-out show in Nashville.

Answer: disappear

The chorus of this song runs:

"I got too far from my raising, I forgot where I come from,
And the line between right and wrong was so fine.
Well I thought the highway loved me,
But she beat me like a drum.
My day will come, if it takes a lifetime."

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit recorded "It Takes A Lifetime" for "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" in February of 2016.

Answer: Children of Children

The song opens with stark imagery that paints a picture of a young mother:

"Pictures of the farm before us,
Old men in a gospel chorus, sepia
And saddle horses, easy on the reins.
Eighty-one a motor and your mama's seventeen again,
She's squinting at the dusty wind,
The anger of the plains."

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit closed out their live performance with an extended version of this song at Bonnaroo in June of 2016.

Answer: Commodore

"She just wanted to ride in a Delahaye 135.
She just wanted to ride in a Hudson Commodore,
No need to worry anymore."

Produced from 1941 to 1952, the Commodore was the largest of Hudson's models. The song "Hudson Commodore" describes a woman in the 1940s. Jason Isbell told NPR that this character "came from thinking about, 'Okay, what was it like to be my grandmother in the '40s and be independent but not really be allowed much independence?'"

Answer: Speed Trap Town

The next line contains the title of the song: "Everybody knows you in a speed trap town."

The song is set in a small town that makes its money through speeding tickets. The narrator's father is a cop until a heart attack lands him in the hospital. In the song, the singer describes his realization that it's time for him to move on:

"But it never did occur to me to leave 'til tonight,
When I realized he'll never be alright.
Sign my name and say my last goodbye, then decide,
That there's nothing here that can't be left behind."

Answer: Waiting tables

The narrator imagines a day when he won't have to work so hard:

"When I get my reward, my work will all be done,
And I will sit back in my chair beside the Father and the Son.
No more holes to fill, and no more rocks to break,
And no more loading boxes on the trucks for someone else's sake."

The song also uses railroad work as a metaphor:

"You see the hammer finds the nail,
And a freight train needs the rails."

"Something More Than Free" describes a man exhausted by hard physical labor who is nonetheless grateful for the dignity that work affords:

"I don't think on why I'm here or where it hurts,
I'm just lucky to have the work.
Sunday morning I'm too tired to go to church,
But I thank God for the work."

The work is worth it to the narrator, because what he's "working for is something more than free." He believes "the day will come" when he'll "find a reason" for all his hard work, "somebody proud to love a man like me."

Answer: tattoo

The father who is in the ICU is described as follows:

"Was a tough state trooper 'til a decade back
When that girl who wasn't mama caused his heart attack
He didn't care about us when he was walking around
Just pulling women over in a speed trap town."

In "The Cavalier Daily," Ben Hitchcock writes, "Those four lines have more character development than some novels."

Answer: The Bell Jar

Jason Isbell sings:

"Who are you if not the one I met?
One July night before the town went wet.
Jack and coke in your mama's car,
You were reading The Bell Jar."

"The Bell Jar" was Sylvia Plath's only novel. The somewhat autobiographical novel describes the main character's descent into mental illness, and the author committed suicide a month after its publication in the U.K.

Answer: South Carolina

The title of the song ought to offer a clue, as the palmetto tree is part of the seal of South Carolina. In the 1920s and early 1930s, South Carolina was known as "the iodine state" because of the elevated levels of iodine in its produce. The slogan was part of a marketing campaign.

Answer: Head

These are lines from the song "Flagship." Hilton Head Island is a resort town that is a part of the Lowcountry region of South Carolina. The song is about making the effort to stay connected and remain in love in a relationship.

In discussing this song with "Stereogum," Jason Isbell said, "I always thought I'd never find somebody who satisfies me; I'd resigned myself to that." He went on to say that when he met his wife, Amanda Shires, "it was funny because I simultaneously realized two things: One, just how many people there are in the world, odds are pretty good that you're going to find somebody that works for you. But I also realized how fragile that discovery can be."

Answer: Yes

"Something More Than Free" won in the Best Americana Album category at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards held in February of 2016. Other nominees in the category included "The Firewatcher's Daughter" by Brandi Carlile, "Mono" by The Mavericks, "The Traveling Kind" by Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, and "The Phosphorescent Blues" by the Punch Brothers. Meanwhile, "Rolling Stone" named "Something More than Free" one of the 40 best country albums of 2015.