Rolling Country 2009 Thread

why are people who are inclined to hate nashville auto-twang country interested in Miranda Lambert?
is she better than everything else?

is she really better*

She's an angel fell to earth, and exactly what nu-country needs right now. Not a song about tequila in sight. I'm quite fond of the ground she walks on.

Just heard a tune by Jimmy LaFave - who I've never heard of before. The song is called "Car Outside" and it detours from the usual Texas yallternative style (which I admit I've a soft spot for) with a chorus that's more Stones than Robert Earl Keen. Awesome tune - wonder what the rest of his stuff is like?

1000 words I wrote about Brad Paisley):

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-10-13/music/brad-paisley-is-ready-to-make-nice/

(The headlines weren't mine, however.)

He must've been into Merseybeat for a long long time. For the past couple of years he's continually been on in the guitar mags about his old Vox amps and newer small manufacturer-made buys which recreate the circuitry.

Said he was inspired into the tune by someone older who had a similar backline at a time, probably the late Eighties or early Nineties, when everyone else was using Fenders.

It does contribute to his tone, which is immediately recognizable, and distinct from everyone else.
A lot, if not all of that tends to come from your fingers, but your fingers and ears have an almost unconscious ability to pull the best tones possible for specific amps, the better you get.

CMT blog talks about Chuck Eddy's Brad Paisley Voice article
http://blog.cmt.com/2009-10-14/village-voice-fills-the-page-with-brad-paisleyisms/#more-3235

When the story finally comes to an end, I think you're supposed to draw the conclusion that Eddy's Paisley article is good. So while there were words to the contrary spinning in and around every paragraph, the writer ends by saying that Eddy says that Paisley is indeed the "big ol' wuss...

xhuxk, I think you are on a roll with that Jypsi and Those Darlin songs. (Anyway I like both of them a bit, even if they don't sound anything like Miranda Lambert.)

(Not that you said they did--that was just some sort of joke.)

Richard Heene -- "The Contractor"

http://www.tmz.com/2009/10/20/richard-heene-balloon-boy-reality-show-theme-music/

Jimmy Draper just emailed me that Emma Jacob (18-year-old country singer whom I'd not previously heard of) covers Hope Partlow's "Crazy Summer Nights" on her new album. It's first up on her MySpace, and unfortunately it's really weak, but "Juliana" and "Shotgun" are better, and "Wrong" is better than they are. Jacob doesn't seem distinctive, and I think she needs stronger arrangements, but her voice is warm; she comes off better being sad and mushy than rocking, but the weakness of the latter may be owing to her arrangements, or the MySpace rips. Worth keeping track of.

Here's the MySpace of Angie Aparo, who co-wrote "Crazy Summer Nights"; from the tracks I'd describe his genre as singer-songwriterish Adult Top 40, though with rock-leaning arrangements. Something in his voice reminds me of Harry Chapin: a slight vibrato and a tendency to end lines emphatically. He lists himself as rock-indie-pop.

And the MySpace for Kevin Kadish, the other writer of "Crazy Summer Nights." From the evidence his own voice is blah, but he's mainly a writer, arranger, and producer and has posted OK Stacie Orrico track. Besides "Crazy Summer Nights" his other teenpop credits (that I know of) are as co-writer of Lucy Woodward's "Dumb Girls" and "Trust Me."

Interesting mixed-reaction Ben Ratliff NY Times review of Brad Paisley live at Madison Square Garden, focused on his guitar playing as much as his songwriting. Also says he covered "Boys Of Summer" there:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/arts/music/24paisley.html

Also been wanting to ask whether country radio has seemed as boring everywhere else these past couple months as it's seemed here (which is to say, maybe even more boring than the rest of music radio has been.) Don't see many promising songs climbing the country chart now, either, though "Chasing Girls" -- my favorite track on Rodney Atkins' current album (which I now admit is fairly mediocre) did enter at #56 this week.

Speaking of mediocre, I think the new Toby Keith album might be his most marginal of the '00s, if not his career, even despite how much I like the title track "American Ride." Only other song on that level seems to be the unplayable-on-radio (because it contains the words "asshole" and "son of a bitches") Middle-Eastern-tinged martial-folk soldiers-in-Iraq number "Ballad Of Balad" ("featuring the Hogliners," whoever they are); a couple years ago, Toby would have called it a "bus song," but now he just closes with it and leaves it there. "Gypsy Driftin," "Every Dog Has Its Day" and the smooth-jazzed Wayman Tisdale eulogy "Cryin' For Me" I can live with, so it's still a keeper in my book, but then I got it for free, and none of thoese rank anywhere near his best work. Curious if anybody else hears anything that I don't. My gut feeling is that producing himself has weakened the quality control process, either that or Toby's just run out of ideas (note that the hit isn't even a song he wrote), but I could be wrong.

Actually, guess another possibility is that this album was just rushed onto the market to capitalize on "American Ride"'s success as a single -- didn't hear much prior notice about it before it came out, but then again Toby's always been a clockwork-reliable album-a-year kind of guy.

Also, last year's That Don't Make Me A Bad Guy (also self-produced) was no monster, either, more evidence for my theories above.

from Ratliffs Paisley piece:

But the lonely insight and the self-deprecating boast aren’t stadium moves. Running between four microphones spaced hundreds of yards apart, and playing thousand-noted solos: these are stadium moves. This tough reality poses a problem, though it’s hard to imagine Mr. Paisley seeing a problem as anything but an opportunity.

stadium country is the new stadium rock?

is this a relatively new thing, Chuck, or has it been going on for a while now?

(and yes, i know about Willie in Texas during the '70s and Farm Aid later on, thanks. i'm just wondering if this is a new approach/opportunity(?) for top forty-type country stars.)

Not since Garth Brooks it's not. (I mean, there may have been others, too. But people always said his live shows owed as much to Kiss and Journey as to, say, George Strait. So anybody's to credit or blame, he is.)

although the Willie shows were outdoor festival-type events, right? so they probably don't count as stadium shows, even if he did get hundreds of thousands of people showing up.

xp

d'oh! yer right, i forgot all about Garth.

He made it to the middle of the arena, then returned to the microphone, still soloing. It was an accomplishment, but a cold one, no better or worse than any other solo he’d played.

Mr. Paisley is a guitar geek posing as a dry wit. His pose is terrific; it just doesn’t adequately conceal the geek. Lots of us put on a blithe and blasé front to hide our inner compulsions, and for a good reason: not because they’re embarrassing, but because they’re dull. Over two hours, Mr. Paisley’s guitar playing — fast, fluid and voluminous — lost its flavor completely. There was just so much of it (mostly on the Telecaster; Mr. Paisley’s style is a monument to that instrument’s lean, percussive sound and country-music tradition) that it stole power from the lyrics.

Fairly accurate. But anyone who's been reading the guitar mags for the last couple years knows it already.

And the CMT concert that aired quite a bit a year or two ago showed he's been doing the arena rock pandering as soon as he got to the arena.

And Keith Urban's live shtick probably preceded that by a couple.

Another way of saying this is that Paisley's instrumental album is never going to be a country pop equiv to Jeff Beck's Blow by Blow, the guitar player's album which probably got the warmest reception from general critics and, for the time period, was never strongly criticized for being dull.

Only hear country radio when my friend Leslie, the structural engineer originally from the Detroit 'burbs, is driving me around, and lately she's found an '80s oldies station that she'd rather play. At home, the only radio I've been listening to has been hip-hop/r&b, though I'm mainly doing that to torture myself, since this is the worst year for that ever; though it is giving me more of a sense of why they Black Eyed Peas are hitting so big. Their stuff stands out on the radio in a way it doesn't amidst all the weird stuff I listen to over my headphones. And the older songs that get played on the hip-hop/r&b stations (more and more of them because artists are forgetting to create new ones) also stand out. But I'll probably be jumping to KYGO (country station) soon for home listening, for a while.

Funny thing is, usually in late November every year I'm saying, "OK, time to really catch up with country music, since I've only got, like, five songs that are top-ten worthy for my country ballot." Whereas this year I've already got 25 songs that are top-ten worthy for my country ballot, without even looking for them. I guess not a lot of them were hits. Caitlin & Will, whose "Even Now" will be in my top ten, never even got their album released, so they called it quits. A shame.

...why the Black Eyed Peas are hitting so big...

At home, the only radio I've been listening to has been hip-hop/r&b, though I'm mainly doing that to torture myself, since this is the worst year for that ever; though it is giving me more of a sense of why they Black Eyed Peas are hitting so big

You and Sasha Frere-Jones (see thread on him linking to his recnet New Yorker piece) hating on current hip-hop. The Black Eyed Peas only seem to get played in DC on crossover pop top 40 stations while the hiphop/r'n'b ones play Drake, Lil Wayne, and Jay-Z with Rihanna "Run This Town." I don't find any of the latter torture.

You can have the Peas.

Definitely find the Peas's singles considerably more bearable than Drake's singles (not that either of them have anything to do with country, unless somebody explains how otherwise.)

John Darnielle on Drakar Sauna, whose new album (and previous albums) I briefly found vaguely interesting in parts, but ultimately too thin and cutesy to stomach. (I don't know who Sex Clark Five are. When I listen to Drakar Sauna I think "Kaleidoscope" once in a while, but it's been two decades since I heard a Kaleidoscope album so I'm probably wrong):

http://www.lastplanetojakarta.com/2009/10/sometimes_you_dont_really_know.html

Speaking of Darnielle, he and I were disagreeing somewhat on a different thread yesterday about just how American country music is. Discussion starts at the link below; scroll down for my reply, his reply to my reply, and other people piping in with their two cents:

What is the one true American Music?

And here's a review of Tim Carroll's album (which I like, but haven't written about anywhere) from the often endearingly curmudgeony Austin freebie paper 3rd Coast Music:

TIM CARROLL
All Kinds Of Pain
(Gulcher)

Connecting vintage Chris Bouchillon/Woody Guthrie-style ‘talking
blues,’ Midwest punk and the Grand Ole Opry may sound like a
challenge, but actually it’s pretty easy, just think Tim Carroll.
Starting out as lead guitarist with The Gizmos, Carroll, though long
based in Nashville, where’s he’s ‘won’ a couple three ‘Best Unsigned
Artist’ awards and has played guitar at the Opry countless times
behind his wife, Elizabeth Cook, never turned his back on his Indiana
punk roots. Indeed his eighth album is on The Gizmos’ hardcore label,
which, let us say, doesn’t put out a whole lot of 3CM type records.
Carroll’s lo-fi aesthetic isn’t just the poor man’s way, it’s an
integral element in his music, as is his wry, worldly sense of humor.
Playing everything but drums, which are handled by Marco Giovino, even
providing his own backing vocals, Carroll’s distinctive standouts here
are the drawling, conversational Educated, That’s What I’m For, Poor
Man’s Way, the title track, You Got Me and If I Could, but his more
rocking stuff, notably Can’t Stay Young (“but you can stay cool”) and
Run For Love, isn’t far behind. There are various other ‘underground’
Nashville artists who share some traits with Carroll, such as Paul
Burch, Tommy Womack and Will Kimborough, but none are as consistently
interesting and entertaining.
John Conquest
3rd Coast Music

I know nothing about Chris Bouchillon, Paul Burch, Tommy Womack, or Will Kimborough, or at least I don't think I do; worth checking out?

Also want to mention that both the best new country album and best new hard rock album I've heard this year might be Kentucky Headhunters' Authorized Bootleg: Live/Agora Ballroom Cleveland, Ohio May 13 1990 (Mercury), which I nonetheless may opt not to vote for in any year-end top-ten polls since it was recorded almost 20 years ago, even though there's lots of songs (from Doug Sahm, Larry Williams, Free, Robert Johnson via Cream, Norman Greenbaum, etc) that I'm pretty sure the Headhunters have never released any versions of before. (Or maybe I will vote for it; haven't decided yet. Opinions welcome.)

http://www.countryuniverse.net/2009/10/21/the-worst-singles-of-the-decade-part-1-50-41/

Country Universe is doing the 50 worst Country songs of the decade. #s 50-11 so far.

#50 Mark Wills, “19 Somethin’”
#49 Toby Keith, “Who’s Your Daddy?”
#48 Halfway to Hazard, “Daisy”
#47 Martina McBride, “(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden”
#46 Rascal Flatts, “Revolution”
#45 Joe Nichols, “If Nobody Believed In You”
#44 Miranda Lambert, “Dead Flowers”
#43 Lady Antebellum, “Lookin’ For a Good Time”
#42 Billy Gilman, “She’s My Girl”
#41 Sammy Kershaw & Lorrie Morgan, “He Drinks Tequila”
#40 Kenny Chesney & George Strait, “Shiftwork”
#39 Anita Cochran featuring The Voice of Conway Twitty, “(I Wanna Hear) A Cheatin’ Song”
#38 Billy Dean, “Let Them Be Little”
#37 Montgomery Gentry, “She Couldn’t Change Me”
#36 Sarah Johns, “The One in the Middle”
#35 Chuck Wicks, “Stealing Cinderella”
#34 Faith Hill, “The Way You Love Me”
#33 Tracy Byrd, “Drinkin’ Bone”
#32 Jo Dee Messina, “Biker Chick”
#31 Buddy Jewell, “This Ain’t Mexico”
#30 Terri Clark, “Dirty Girl”
#29 Jamey Johnson, “The Dollar”
#28 Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood, “Love Will Always Win”
#27 Darryl Worley, “Have You Forgotten?”
#26 Clint Black, “I Raq and Roll”
#25 Shania Twain and Billy Currington, “Party For Two”
#24 Martina McBride, “God’s Will”
#23 Brooks & Dunn, “Play Something Country”
#22 Jason Aldean, “Johnny Cash”
#21 Gretchen Wilson, “Red Bird Fever”
#20 The Lost Trailers, “Holler Back”
#19 Trailer Choir, “Rockin’ the Beer Gut”
#18 Bucky Covington, “A Different World”
#17 Toby Keith featuring Krystal, “Mockingbird”
#16 Billy Ray Cyrus featuring Miley Cyrus, “Ready, Set, Don’t Go”
#15 Blake Shelton, “The Baby”
#14 Neal McCoy, “Billy’s Got His Beer Goggles On”
#13 Gretchen Wilson, “All Jacked Up”
#12 Brad Paisley, “Ticks”
#11 Trace Adkins, “Swing”

Ha ha, I like too many of these to even list.

Totally rooting for "Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy)" to finish #1 now. (You can tell there's gonna be some Big N Rich in the Top Ten.)

Best song on their list so far (and probably one of the best country hits of the decade) = Montgomery Gentry, “She Couldn’t Change Me.”

(And they did still manage to include some stinkers, obviously.)

I'm permanently off the Brad Paisley bus after getting an eyeful of his "Welcome to the Future Video", and advertisement for the wonders of consumer electronics, Japanese karaokers doing Brad Paisley and the Asimo robot which should never be seen again.

From "Alcohol" to "On-line" to this, a steady vigorous gold-medal ready dive into really slick and professional crap for product placement endorsements.

If he thinks he's buried a message in this one he's seriously deluded.

Many rotten debacles on CMT Top 20 thisafter. Brooks & Dunn's jumping up and down in the mudpuddle with Billy Gibbons making a cameo, Jesse James' girl-in-leather-mini shtick "My Cowboy" late Eighties sub-Blue Murder cock rock with gratuitous banjo & fiddle glue-on paste jewelry plus Jason Aldean's 16th or 17th Bad Company trip, "Green Tractor."

Music without limits, sez the host. As unintentionally ridiculous and shitty as the Republican Party they so love to say their proud members of.

Music for the college football stars who always mention Jesus at the postgame interview, the Colt McCoys and Tate Forciers and Matt Barkleys, although Jesus wasn't listening to the latter two yesterday when they
were having new holes ripped in their asses by the competition.

I'm lobbying for this being renamed as what it is, truth in advertising law: Shitty Propaganda Hard Rock
for those who haven't yet been fired or foreclosed upon.

Without my knowing it (because I don't own a TV), Jace Everett's "Bad Things" - which was first released in 2005 and which we (well, Roy and Matt and Xhuxk) talked about on Rolling Country 2006 (and Edd and I talked a little bit about Everett, I think agreeing with Xhuxk that Jace was getting over on his songs more than on his singing), and then I brought it up again on Rolling Country 2007 to point out that the way Miley sings "I just can't wait to see you again" is fairly similar to how Jace sings "I wanna do bad things with you" (not that she and Armato & James copied it but that they and Everett were pulling from the same rockabilly model) - well, without anyone telling me about it, Jace Everett's "Bad Things" became the theme song to HBO's True Blood, and, presumably related to this (and for all I know someone sang it last week on X Factor, though Google doesn't seem to think so, or maybe True Blood is breaking big overseas), it rose this week to #49 on the British pop charts. Good little record; I had it number 20 on my top country singles list for 2006 (four spots lower than Everett's "That's The Kind Of Love I'm In").

This is the second song this year that I know of to debut on the British charts four years after getting its first release (the other is the Veronicas' "4ever," released in Australia in 2005 and released here in the U.S. in 2006, becoming my single of the year, and hitting #17 last month in Britain).

Everett's done two albums since then, neither of which I've heard. Red Revelations was released in June.

I recall that ilX was down in late 2006, and a lot of the Jace Everett conversation between me and Edd was via email. Iirc, I said that I liked Everett's songs but that he had a mannequin voice.

Interesting -- I had a minor hunch this week that something might be going on with "Bad Things," but I had no idea what. Last week, on a different ILM thread, somebody whose name I didn't recognize named the song as having one of the best guitar solos of the '00s, which inspired me to pull out my copy of Jace Everett's CD, which still seemed okay but vocally meh and didn't blow me away. ("Bad Things" was the best track, does have some good dirty twang to it.) Then, Saturday night, I went to a Halloween party, and the aging Austin psychobillies who lived in the old-monster-movie-decorated house had instruments set up in the living room, and played stuff like "Whole Lot Of Shakin' Going On," "Rumble," Sam the Sham's "Little Red Riding Hood," assorted Wanda Jacksony and Crampsy and Etta Jamesy things I couldn't place off hand, and, uh..."Bad Things." Which on one hand fit right in (Frank called it Roy Orbison type rockabilly when it came out), but on the other hand felt out of place, 'cause since when do old psychobillies pay attention to current Nashville country? But if it's now a theme to a TV show involving vampires, it all makes sense. (More than the Veronicas, the analogy I might draw is when A3's "Woke Up This Morning" hit in the US years after initial release, when it became the Sopranos theme. Can imagine the two songs appealing to some of the same people, too.)

Meanwhile, I have now given it to Lady Antebellum's current late-night drunk-dialing schmaltz duet "I Need You Now," recommended by Frank above. Something about its sound reminds me as much of '80s quiet storm AC R&B as county, oddly, which turns out not to be that bad a thing.

(Or, uh, who knows, maybe it's not the best track on his album, which I wasn't attending to all that close when I had it on last week. Guess I should go back and listen again to the track that Frank ranked higher on his '06 singles list...)

Kat Stevens reports: "True Blood is indeed now a Thing over here thx to the gateway drug of Twilight."

Here's a stream of "That's The Kind Of Love I'm In" over on Yahoo: Byrd's jangle mixed into basic guitar groove; unassuming and nice. Would like to hear what Tom Petty could do with it.

Byrds jangle, that is (meaning McGuinn, not Tracy).

Listening to it on the CD now; it's good and jangly, right, though I definitely prefer the slimy moodiness and kingsnake crawling of "Bad Things." So does anybody know who plays guitar on those particular Everett tracks? On one photo inside the CD cover, Jace is pictured with a guitar itself, but I'm guessing it might be just a prop. CD credits list Radney Foster, N. James Lowery, and Chris Raspante as playing acoustic; Eric Borash, JT Corenflos, Russ Pahl, and Chris Raspante as playing electric. Doesn't break it down song by song, though.

I don't own a TV

But wait, having you been doing epsiode by episode rundowns of Buffy on your livejournal, Frank? That's a neat trick - Do you just go watch it on the TVs at Best Buy, or where?

Oh wait, duh -- People play DVDs on their computers now. Doh. (I know I sound out of it, but actually that's what we were doing until a couple months ago, when we got a good cheap TV to replace the one we'd gotten rid of before leaving New York because it was too heavy to move.)

And people also download TV shows. (Though I've never done that myself.)

And you can watch TV shows on Hulu, but I haven't yet and suspect that my DSL modem isn't fast enough to handle it. (Is only sometimes adequate to YouTube or MySpace.) But obviously I could hunt down this show or that, but "hunt down this show or that" is a different psychology from "turn on TV and get a sense of what is there" (though that distinction will probably disappear soon enough). But one reason not to have a TV is to not spend time hunting down this TV or that when I need to be concentrating on other stuff. (Hmmmm.)

That "one true American music" thread was pretty frustrating, since it followed the venerable ilX strategy of "Let's say provocative things but never focus or follow through on our ideas," then devolving into embeds and wisecracks.

One reason to have a TV instead of relying on the Internet is so not to add more annoying steps in between watching what you want to watch. Although now made digital for everyone on cable, TV is still less complicated and error prone than an Internet connection. Although the distinction is being made blurry by the usual raft of predatory US business practices, not to mention -- for example -- Charter cable which is doing everything in its power as a Paul Allen company to make TV-watching as crash and glitch filled as Microsoft software.

It's funny how analog TV used to work perfectly. Then all the business writers began telling everybody totoal digital conversion would change all that, like they told everyone the ownership and riches society was here, and when it arrived, it turned out to be different.

Wait til we get to go back to the old Compuserve method of web access, which was to meter it for everyone, like gas. Spend an hour or two on YouTube every week and get driven into bankruptcy. While the rest of the westernized nations are moving to make Internet a right, we'll get Internet like bank industry
financial products and services.

EORant.

The top 10 Country Universe worst songs list:

http://www.countryuniverse.net/2009/11/01/the-worst-singles-of-the-decade-part-5-10-1/

#10 Alan Jackson, “www.memory”

Wasn’t there anyone who could tell him that this wasn’t going to work? It’s a terribly awkward effort to force a classic concept into a current framework. (See also: Lorrie Morgan, “1-800-Used-To-Be”)

#9 Reba McEntire & Kelly Clarkson, “Because of You”

This could’ve been great. Two great singers, one great song. The fatal flaw is that it just doesn’t work as a duet. The lyrics don’t make sense when it’s two people singing to each other.

#8 Lonestar, “Mr. Mom”

Mr.Mom was the first movie that I saw in theaters. Back then, the concept of a stay-at-home Dad was novel. By the time this song rolled around, it was hard to even take the conceit of the song seriously. This guy’s not struggling because he’s a guy. He’s struggling because he’s a bumbling fool.

#7 Kenny Chesney, “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy”

The song that made Chesney a superstar doesn’t involve him lounging around on a tropical island, but it sure does make me thankful that he stopped singing about country living.

#6 Kellie Coffey, “When You Lie Next To Me”

It’s rarely the prototypes that are terrible. It’s usually the copies. By the time “Where Were You” became “I Raq and Roll”, the post-9/11 song was insufferable. Here’s what “Breathe” finally devolved into: a schlocky mess that is such a lazy copy that “Just breathe” becomes “Just be.”

#5 Toby Keith, “Stays in Mexico”

Though it’s a fairly tasteless song to begin with, production choices sink this one in the end. Silly sound effects and a backing track that makes “Hot! Hot! Hot!” seem subtle and understated push this dangerously close to novelty status.

#4 Rascal Flatts, “Bob That Head”

A desperate attempt to come off like edgy rockers.

#3 Taylor Swift, “Picture to Burn”

Criticizing Swift for being an irrational teenager is like criticizing water for being wet. But this really is Swift at her absolute worst. Not only is a juvenile lyric coupled with a disastrous vocal performance, both of which are bad enough in their own right. But the underlying message that most of Swift’s songs send to her teenage girl audience is on most naked display: Your happiness and self-worth are solely determined by the men and boys in your life.”

#2 John Michael Montgomery, “The Little Girl”

The most horrific “inspirational song” that I’ve ever heard is directly ripped off from an urban legend that showed up in songwriter Harley Allen’s inbox.

#1 Chad Brock, “Yes!”

Nothing captures how country music embraced mediocrity better than this Chad Brock single, which actually spent three weeks at #1. The storyline is completely unbelievable, the production is as generic as a Karaoke track, and Brock’s performance is so faceless that it might as well be a demo recording.

As awful as some of the other songs on this list are, they at least aspired to make a larger point. Spectacular failures can still demonstrate a noble ambition. “Yes!” aspires to be nothing more than radio filler, and it succeeded in dulling down the radio dial during its entire run. Hearing it again on satellite radio last month was the inspiration for this list. The song’s only indication of personality being the exclamation point in the title? That secured its place atop the list. It truly does represent country music being drained of all of its heart and soul until just a token fiddle is all that’s left to identify it as such.

No Big N Rich??? I'm shocked. Anyway, even when I disagree with him, that guy's disses are frequently quite pithy, and sometimes funny. My favorite of ones I've read so far (which I don't totally disagree with):

#44
Miranda Lambert, “Dead Flowers”

Person #1: “Wow, this song has no melody at all.”
Person #2: “Did she just compare herself to Christmas lights?”
Person #1: “And it just goes on forever. Who’s singing this anyway?”
Person #2: “It’s by….Miranda Lambert.”
Person #1: “Miranda Lambert?…..It’s…..brilliant!”
Person #2: “Yes. Brilliant!”

New Xgau Consumer Guide on MSN expresses several mixed feelings about the Avett Brothers (who I've yet to hear anything I liked by.) (Also, for the first time on that CG site, I didn't get a virus message.)

Ones I like on this 50 Worst list: Miranda, Paisley, Jason Aldean, Jamey Johnson. Most of the others are mediocre to awful. The Brooks & Dunn & Neal McCoy are major offenders. And the cover of "Revolution" redefines clueless. But the worst is that Clint Black travesty. So bad it'll make you stomach Darryl Worley's jingoism. And the best write-up is on the Bucky Covington one.

Well, only two of his top ten worst ever made my country critics ten best ("Stays In Mexico" and "Because Of You").

I talk about the six new Taylor Swift tracks here (though one of the new tracks has been floating 'round the Web in an inferior rip for the last two years).

"But the underlying message that most of Swift’s songs send to her teenage girl audience is on most naked display: Your happiness and self-worth are solely determined by the men and boys in your life.”

This is an astoundingly dumb comment.

Comment not just dumb, but within it is an astounding (ok, not astounding, but rather, utterly predictable and conventional) contempt for the critical skills of the gullible teen girl audience he is supposedly exhibiting concern for. Which isn't to say that the guy isn't putting his finger on what's a hot-button issue for Taylor, i.e., boys - see my own Country Critics ballot which is either somewhere upthread or at the end of last year's - but his only bothering to notice one side of what's a powerful tension in Taylor and not bothering to notice the other, that's something I have contempt for. Making "worst of" lists does tend to throw people into that kind of a trap, however.