Released 21 years ago today, Bullet is the debut album from Mat Kearney, a singer-songwriter who likes to blend genres. I first heard of Mat Kearney a few years before when he spit a verse on a hip-hop mixtape album, so I expected a bit of hip-hop on his debut. This album mixes Coldplay-esque pop with hip-hop and spoken word verses on songs like the title track, "Trainwreck" and "Girl America". On other songs, it's just Kearney crooning with an acoustic guitar and a few other instruments, singing beautiful love songs about life, and songs like "Call Me" and "Won't Back Down" show a musician that has lots of promise from the start and continues to write great music over 20 years later. 18 months after this album's release, he released Nothing Left To Lose on Columbia Records, which takes 6 songs from this album and adds 7 new ones, and that is now widely considered Kearney's debut album, as Bullet is not available on streaming and is mostly forgotten. So you might have to find a CD copy of this to give this album a listen.

Release Year: 2004