The Mockingbird & the Crow

The Mockingbird & the Crow (styled as the mockingbird & THE CROW) is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Hardy. It was released on January 20, 2023, through Big Loud Records. The album features a mix of country music and hard rock music. Hardy co-wrote all seventeen songs on the project and co-produced with Joey Moi and Derek Wells. "Wait in the Truck", a duet with Lainey Wilson, is the album's first single. While receiving mixed reviews from music critics, the album debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200 with 55,000 album-equivalent units, making it Hardy's highest-charting album.

Content
Hardy first announced the release of the album on October 10, 2022. He told the blog Taste of Country that he intended to include influences of both country music and rock music on the project, and that he considered the songs on the project among the best he had written. Prior to the album's release in 2023, Hardy released the lead single "Wait in the Truck", a duet with Lainey Wilson. Also released prior to the project were "Sold Out", "Truck Bed", "Here Lies Country Music", and the title track. Other tracks on the project feature vocals from Morgan Wallen and Jeremy McKinnon. Dan Hyman of Spin noted influences of both country and hard rock in the album's sound.

The closing track is a ballad titled "The Redneck Song" which is a Halloween pirate metal sea shanty with redneck lifestyle-related lyrics and is a spoof on "The Pirate Song" by The Beatles. It also references a few elements from the theme park ride Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland, as well as the song Dead Man's Chest from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

Bobby Moore of the blog Wide Open Country noted themes of alcohol consumption and deconstruction of country music clichés in the first half of the album's tracks, particularly in "Red" and "I in Country". Moore also thought the title track showed influences of nu metal and marked the transitional point between country and rock sounds on the album. Hardy wrote every song on the album, in addition to co-producing with Joey Moi and Derek Wells. David Garcia, Jordan Schmidt, Ben Johnson, Andrew Wade, Jeremy McKinnon, and Cody Quistad also produced individual tracks.

Critical reception
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic rated the album two stars out of five, as he thought the more country music influenced tracks on the first half sounded more like Southern rock and Kid Rock than country music, while also noting "cliché" lyrics in several tracks and comparing the more rock-influenced tracks unfavorably to nu metal. Anthony Fantano of The Needle Drop was more negative in his assessment, saying the album reduces the country genre to its "dumbest, lowest, common denominator elements", and would later rank the album as the third worst of 2023. Note: All reviews are opinion-based, and opinions are entirely subjective.

Track listing
Notes
 * Tracks 1–8 stylized in all lowercase; track 9 stylized as "the mockingbird & THE CROW"; tracks 10–17 stylized in all caps.