It’s rare for a viral sensation to stick around as long as Mason Ramsey has, especially in the music world. Usually, the gimmick runs out or everyone forgets about you or both. If you can believe that Ramsey’s viral moment—a video of him singing Hank Williams’s “Lovesick Blues” in a Harrisburg, Illinois Walmart—happened over six years ago, then you might be shocked to know that he is still kicking up a fuss at the age of 17. Ramsey’s ascent over a half-decade ago likely stuck because he was a sweet, good-intentioned and not-yet-corrupted kid with an old soul and a yodel that could break glass. He made an appearance on Ellen, made an appearance on stage at Coachella and then, in April 2018, inked a record deal with Atlantic and Big Loud. He had a Hot 100-charting song before he was a teenager, as “Famous” peaked at #62 on the pop chart and then soared to #4 on the U.S. country music chart. Ramsey performed at the Grand Ole Opry, too and then hopped on Lil Nas X’s third “Old Town Road” remix with Billy Ray Cyrus and Young Thug in July 2019 and performed it at the Grammy Awards with them that following year.
But Ramsey went on a hiatus in 2019, spending his teenage years being a teenager. He came back into the public eye in 2022 when “Before I Knew It,” an old track from his Twang EP, went big on TikTok, leading to the reveal that Ramsey had been working at a Subway. The charming little kid who wore boots taller than his knees and a belt-buckle the size of his head had started growing up, his voice deepening and his face covering up with acne. I remember, as “Before I Knew It” was gaining steam online, wondering if Ramsey would still have those glass-breaking pipes once the puberty that bites us all began knocking on his doorstep. (I also, to this day, contend that “Before I Knew It” is a certified bop, and you’re a Grade-A liar if you say otherwise.) A new single in 2023, “Reasons to Come Home,” was fine, as was “She Got It Outta Me,” but he was struggling to release impressionable, impressive material. That changed in January 2024, when he put out “Blue Over You,” a track so stunning that it stopped me in my tracks. Mason Ramsey, the yodeling kid whose pixelated, foot-tapping Walmart video wouldn’t leave my social media feeds for weeks when I was 20 years old, made this?
He did, and he made 13 other songs for his debut full-length album, I’ll See You in My Dreams. Now, I am not here to report that this record will change your life or that it is some unbelievable feat of music-making, but one thing needs to be said: Mason Ramsey is going to be a big, big deal one day. I saw someone say that I’ll See You in My Dreams is the best country album of the year, and while my opinion is that that title belongs Mr. Sturgill Simpson, I can safely agree that Ramsey’s output is a much-needed breath of fresh air after the back-to-back disappointments that were Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene and Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion. Released on the same day as Katy Perry’s 143, it’s striking what the difference in quality is between her sixth album and Ramsey’s first. They are two completely different projects, of course, but how they measure passion couldn’t be more connected—and for every moment Perry spends phoning it in or regurgitating her own outdated, redundant tones, Ramsey takes another step toward finding his voice.
Mason Ramsey is an old soul, and you can hear his affinity for oldies stations in the cadence he sings in on “Blue Over You,” which begins with the kind of vocal gesture you may have heard in an Elvis song circa “If I Can Dream” in 1968. I grew up on the same music Ramsey grew up on, and it has so often become a balm worth revisiting. There’s tranquility in the country, rockabilly and gospel of yesteryear; music of that time period is worth remembering because someone turned the knob toward a frequency we’d end up cherishing for decades to come—even if a song like “Cowboy Always Come Home,” despite its use of long-canonized western tropes, does start to peck away gently at something that could be considered a “modern sound.”
I’ll See You in My Dreams does not dare to exist anywhere close to 2024, though, and that’s okay. Did anyone expect the first full-length of an artist who got famous from singing a Hank Williams song to sound anything like something contemporary? Ramsey wrote the record with his producer Dan Fernandez, who has worked with Lola Kirke and X Ambassadors in the past and is a notorious sync-merchant, scoring placements in Lethal Weapon and Pretty Little Liars, among other titles. His job with Ramsey wasn’t a hard one to fulfill, as the recipe practically writes itself: come up with anything remotely pleasant and old-school. Ramsey is one of the lucky ones, as his voice has aged alongside him. He is not unlike Stephen Sanchez, who spins once-archaic musical tropes into pleasant, present-day intrigues. On “All the Way to Memphis,” he croons over a bright string of guitar notes that surely came from a Fender Telecaster. Slight orchestral textures unravel behind him, like a choir slowly building toward a climax that doesn’t fully arrive—because the focus is on Ramsey’s voice. It’s always been about that voice.
I don’t think you’d be wrong to expect a record full of Ramsey resting on his laurels, aka 14 songs bursting at the seams with the very same kind of yodeling that made him famous in the first place. But he doesn’t do that. Whatever his interests in Hank Williams were six years ago have been relegated to the background now. On “Prettiest Girl at the Dance,” the arrangement marries a big, waltzing, Vegas-style swing with some baroque set dressings. “Trouble Is” is textbook honky-tonk, as Ramsey conjures jazz, blues and cowboy chords all at once. His register lowers and the hip-shaking melody leaps out of the speaker. Horns ensconce Ramsey’s vocal, and a piano chugs through intervals of pizazz and decor. He hasn’t yet reached a place in his artistry where his pipes are ready for the bombastic, theater-filling sounds that most of I’ll See You in My Dreams demands of him, but that’s okay—you’re allowed to swing and miss on your first trip to the plate.
But where Ramsey really shines is on a tune like “Something You Can Hold,” as the arrangements slow down and he can really stretch his voice out into something ubiquitous and comforting. “Come Pick Me Up” is similarly pensive, and Ramsey is similarly splendid on it. When he sings “There’s a comfort that I find when I look into your eyes / Pull me close, sweet surrender, let’s get lost tonight,” it doesn’t, not even for a second, sound like a 17-year-old stepping into a pair of shoes a few sizes too big for his feet. Ramsey is worth rooting for when there’s a stillness nurturing his vocal—when the focus is, like I mentioned earlier, on that voice.
I’ll See You in My Dreams is reminiscent of those session band country records from way back when—Nashville sound-era albums with grand, sophisticated arrangements lingering behind a well-mannered mouthpiece singing smooth, well-tempoed hits and inoffensive, well-constructed tracks that could, if needed, fade into the background of any kind of hang. The title track especially flashes a melody full of lightly-plucked strings and teardrop piano notes, as Ramsey trades his yodel in for a warble that Roy Orbison probably would have admired the potential of. Even when his old-soul persona nearly sounds like a lampoon of the very musicians he grew up idolizing, like it does on “Joy” and “Lies, Lies, Lies,” Ramsey cuts through the schtick with meritable reverence for his own costume changes. Hey, if a record like this inspires a couple of kids born post-9/11 to stumble into the discographies of Gene Vincent and Carl Perkins, what’s the harm?
After getting famous and taking a hiatus just to be a kid, get a low-paying job and exist far away from the stage—which, in an industry that demands so much out of its artists so quickly, is a gift itself—it’s clear that Ramsey is being guided by forces of decency who want to rise to the energy and musicality he dreams of putting back into the world. There are consequences in rushing young performers into their craft—JoJo Siwa’s recent debut EP is a prime example of that—so what step Ramsey makes next will likely shape the rest of his career. Will he forever be just a child star tailing the momentum whenever his virality returns to a boil, or will he grow into the kind of performer who takes risks and parses through all the glamor and cliché? I’ll See You in My Dreams doesn’t move the needle toward something daring or unexpected, no matter how delightful “Blue Over You” is, but it’s an album that makes good on what we’ve known for six years: Mason Ramsey has an unmistakable talent he doesn’t seem keen on wasting anytime soon. When he finally figures out who he wants to be and settles into whatever niche best serves that beautiful, God-given voice, he is going to make us all feel lucky that we were glued to our phones in 2018.
Matt Mitchell is Paste’s music editor, reporting from their home in Northeast Ohio.
