Rolling Country 2009 Thread

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift - Fearless (Platinum Edition)
2. Ashley Monroe - Satisfied
3. Martina McBride - Shine
4. Pat Green - What I'm For
5. Brad Paisley - American Saturday Night
6. Miranda Lambert - Revolution
7. Collin Raye - Never Going Back
8. Holly Williams - Here With Me
9. Willie Nelson - American Classic
10. Charlie Robison - Beautiful Day

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2009:

1. Love And Theft "Runaway"
2. Jamey Johnson "High Cost Of Living"
3. Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me"
4. Sarah Buxton "Space"
5. Lady Antebellum "Need You Now"
6. Caitlin & Will "Even Now"
7. Sarah Borges And The Broken Singles "Do It For Free"
8. Taylor Swift "White Horse"
9. Brooks & Dunn f. Reba McEntire "Cowgirls Don't Cry"
10. Jack Ingram "Barefoot & Crazy (Double Dog Dare Ya Mix)"

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2009:

--

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:

1. Ronnie Dunn
2. Toby Keith
3. Jamey Johnson

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Jamie O'Neal

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2009:

--

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Ashley Monroe
3. Brad Paisley

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2009:

1. Brooks & Dunn
2. Caitlin & Will
3. --

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2009:

--

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Ashley Monroe
3. --

I don't stand by my albums list, since most everything after the McBride has only four or five tracks I like more than a little. Might possibly have rated Collin Raye as high as three, for being the most interesting, but then my ballot would have looked too much like Xhuxk's. And I wouldn't normally have rated something so non-audacious as the McBride as high as three, except I was fed up with everyone else's inconsistency. Wish I'd gotten around to listening to more of what the rest of you recommended.

Actually, the Pat Green album is pretty good from start to finish. I never got around to the Dierks Bentley album, but Green did well in the congenial rocker category. Has more sociological restlessness than Dierks.

My ballot ended up looking like this. Skipped a few categories that I just couldn't decide on an answer for -

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2009:

1. Brad Paisley, American Saturday Night
2. Those Darlins, Those Darlins
3. Keith Urban, Defying Gravity
4. Miranda Lambert, Revolution
5. Carolyn Mark and NQ Arbuckle, Let's Just Stay Here
6. Ashley Monroe, Satisfied
7. Luke Bryan, Doin My Thing
8. Eric Church, Carolina
9. George Strait, Twang
10. Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel, Willie and the Wheel

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me"
2. Living For The Night - George Strait
3. Jamey Johnson, "High Cost Of Living
4. Brad Paisley "Welcome To The Future"
5. Keith Urban, "Sweet Thing"
6. Love And Theft "Runaway"
7. Kenny Chesney "Out Last Night"
8. Do I - Luke Bryan
9. Caitlin & Will "Even Now"
10. Toby Keith, "Lost You Anyway"

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:

1. Brad Paisley
2. Jamey Johnson
3. Keith Urban

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Ashley Monroe

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Brad Paisley
3. Jamey Johnson

o god should i get the taylor swift album?

Yes.

Judging from Frank's comments, I probably used his all-albums-are-EPs rule on my Nashville Scene list more than he did this year.

Jon Caramanica put Justin Moore's debut album in his '09 top 10 in the NY Times. That's the guy who did the country back-that-thing-up song (with country back-that-azz-up video) last year, if nobody remembers. The single or two by him I heard since went in one ear and out the other, but I'm curious now if anybody else heard the album. (I didn't.)

Caramanica's writeup:

9. JUSTIN MOORE (The Valory Music Company) Modest but by no means dull, the debut album by the Arkansas country singer Justin Moore has traditionalist bones holding together bursts of wry cowboy humor and eyebrow-raising salaciousness. Mr. Moore isn’t winking while playing to type; rather he realizes that there were always winks to begin with, and everyone else has forgotten.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/arts/music/20caramanica.html

He also calls San Fran indie band Girls' album "country rock," which makes no sense judging from the song or two I've heard (neither did the comparisons people make to Elvis Costello and Graham Parker), but maybe it still excuses linking to the Singles Jukebox review of "Laura" here:

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=1506

He also calls San Fran indie band Girls' album "country rock," which makes no sense judging from the song or two I've heard (neither did the comparisons people make to Elvis Costello and Graham Parker), but maybe it still excuses linking to the Singles Jukebox review of "Laura" here

I like that band a lot, and I like country music a lot, and I hear no connection. For what it's worh I hear no Costello or Parker in them either. It's more dream-pop/JAMC/shoegaze from people who also listen to a lot of '50s vocal pop, teen idol ballads, Beach Boys, etc

A poll:

2009 country #1's

On which thread an interesting question is raised:

is the co-ed country band (sugarland, lady antebellum) a relatively new phenomenon? i'm trying to think of precedents. i guess it's an outgrowth of the long history of duets, but in terms of an act that has both men and women i can't think of many.

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 22 December 2009 20:23

xp Well, Trick Pony was one. And now there's also Little Big Town, and Gloriana, and Jypsi. (Probably plenty of others, if I give it a little more thought.) But yeah, there do seem to be more out there lately.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 22 December 2009 20:30

And actually, obviously, the co-ed country band is a tradition dating back to the Carter Family, and there have definitely been family acts in recent decades (for instance, The Whites). Curious whether anybody else has opinions on whether it's a legit trend or not now in Nashville.

I finally tracked down a copy of Bobbie Cryner today in a second-hand store, an album I haven't heard in 15 years. Holy...if there was a better trad country record made in the 90s, I'm unaware of it. "He Feels Guilty" and "I Think It's Over Now" are devastating, and the Buck Owens cover with Dwight beats the original.

I've never heard it, but Xgau was a big fan:

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=bobbie+cryner

Speaking of '90s country, I killed that country #1s thread last week with the following spiel, which will probably prove just as un-fruitful here, but then again maybe somebody'll have thoughts on it, who knows:

I honestly think what's missing in most discussions of the evolution of Nashville country (and this goes for me too) is that there's this huge historical gap where almost nobody who writes about rock and pop music was keeping tabs on the stuff. Outside of Garth and Shania and a couple others, I'm still fairly clueless about most pop-country from the mid '80s to early '00s -- when, I assume, lotsa evolving was going on.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:07 AM

I sort of have this theory that Garth and Shania figured out how to make real consistent and varied country albums, like rock bands had been making for years (and had pretty much stopped making my the mid '90s to my ears), and once they did it the rest of Nashville caught on. Which would explain why so many of my favorite '00s albums were country. But it might be just as likely that great pop-country albums were being made in the late '80s and '90s, and I just wasn't hearing them. Not that I've had much luck trying to figure out what they were.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:17 AM

I mean, obviously there were great country albums before Garth and Shania, going back to the neo-trad and outlaw eras and way beyond. But I definitely got the idea in the '90s (or maybe at least starting back with the urban cowboys in the early '80s?) that even most albums with a catchy single or two on them just tossed in nine perfunctory filler tracks and got it over with. But somehow, for me anyway, that changed. (One change may have been that country started sounding more like the hard rock I grew up with, but going back now and listening to say the Kentucky Headhunters, I'm wondering if that was new in the '00s at all.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:23 AM

I'd pretty much concur with your theory; I'm having a tough time thinking of 90s pop-country albums where any artist's personality was allowed to shine beyond a couple of tracks. Terri Clark, Martina McBride maybe. A lot of that had to do with the more restrictive (i.e. "uplifting") lyrical themes that radio was demanding.

Justin Moore self titled album reminds me of Gary Allen or Jason Aldean in many ways, except for the lack of any ballads. Almost every song is an assertion of County livin'. Not enough songs about broken hearts for me.

County=country

Not that affriming ones country roots and way of life in music is a bad thing, but a whole album gets tiring.

Speaking of '90s country, I killed that country #1s thread last week with the following spiel, which will probably prove just as un-fruitful here

Yes, I predict that this thread has but a few days to live.

there's this huge historical gap where almost nobody who writes about rock and pop music was keeping tabs on the stuff. Outside of Garth and Shania and a couple others, I'm still fairly clueless about most pop-country from the mid '80s to early '00s -- when, I assume, lotsa evolving was going on.

Yes. John Morthland's Best of Country Music Guide came out in 1984, and I don't know if any other rock critic tried anything like it subsequently, or what or where Morthland's been writing since then. His book is very good, but on the evidence of it he's probably not the one to appreciate current Nashville trends.

There's a Rough Guide to Country Music that was published in 2000, according to Amazon, and the All Music Guide to Country was in 2003. I've never looked at them. You might want to ask Doug Simmons or Eric Weisbard, since they'd have been keeping their eye out for people to potentially write for the Voice about country in the late '80s and late '90s, respectively. One of the first things Doug asked me when I started submitting stuff to him in 1987 was whether I listened to country.

My source in the '90s for what was happening in country was you, basically, since I wasn't spending much time listen to country radio.

wasn't spending much time listening to country radio, that is

Anthony Easton posted his overall ten bests on my livejournal, included only two country items, Lyle Lovett's Natural Forces album and Corb Lund's "Losin' Lately Gambler" single, which I assume is an alternate title for "A Game In Town Like This," which looks like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITyn99Oa3u4

Seems more bohemian folkie than actual country, which is to say that its aural mannerisms peg it as literary even before I pay attention to the words. Of course, some of my favorite Bob Dylans and Holy Modal Rounders were bohemian folkies at some point in their careers, but it's not a style that's held on for me, even if a Charlie Robison or a James McMurtry makes my country ballot every now and then. Here's what Anthony wrote about the Lund song:

Corb continues to add to the narratives of classic country--as the last album worked through new soldier songs and new horse songs, this one has farm songs and card songs. This is the card song, and it is about betting on home and therefore need to bet from going away. Aside from the world weariness, the sadness of the vocals, the perfect guitar work, there is a processing of the domestic and local over the international. He lives in Alberta, which is losing money and people, and where the money is disappearing, and where the recession is hard. Best song about the disaster of imminent poverty.

Anthony had talked a little bit about Corb Lund a few months back, in the comments section of some folkie's Singles Jukebox review (actually, one wherein Frank had inquired of Anthony about current folk music, but the singer's name slips my mind.) I got the Lund album in the mail, and really wanted to like it -- the idea of some guy (allegedly, anyway) detailing the minutiae of hardscrabble Alberta and Saskatchewan life in his songs really appeals to, uh, the Northern Exposure fan in me I guess. Problem is, as far as I can tell, like so many recent alt-country folkies who may well me good songwriters in recent years before him, Lund sings with no expression whatsoever. He just sounds really wooden and dry -- to my ears, anyway. And like so many good alt-country folkie songwriters with bored demo-singer voices before him, maybe I should have given him more of a chance. I liked a Si Kahn album once, after all. (At least for a year or two, anyway -- Home, from 1979; Doing My Job from 1982 also said to be worthwhile.) But more likely, I'll never latch onto a Corb Lund song until somebody from Nashville covers one. Which may be a doggone shame.

I'm having a tough time thinking of 90s pop-country albums where any artist's personality was allowed to shine beyond a couple of tracks.

I can think of a handful, beyond the obvious Shania and Garth: Mindy McCready If I Stay The Night (1997); Tim McGraw A Place To Land (his best album, 1999); Collin Raye Extremes (1994, just heard it this year); Kentucky Headhunters Electric Barnyard (1991); maybe Joe Dee Messina Joe Dee Messina (1996) and I'm Alright (1998); maybe Brooks & Dunn Hard Workin' Man (1992). Toby Keith Dream Walkin' (1997) is pretty good, if not close to many of the '00s albums. Probably a couple others I'm not thinking of.

Just got into Aaron Tippin (who is basically a honky-tonking hard-country neo-traditionalist I guess, but still) this year, and wrote about him upthread somewhere; his Greatest Hits...And Then Some is really good. But I've never heard any of his regular issue albums.

My favorite country album from the '90s is probably K.T. Oslin's Songs From An Aging Sex Bomb (1993), another best-of. But most if not all of its tracks date from the late '80s, so it shouldn't count.

One guy who wrote pretty well about country in the early '90s, fwiw, was Ken Tucker (the future Entertainment Weekly/NPR Ken Tucker, not the future Billboard Ken Tucker); he did a one-time country-only Consumer Guide in the Voice that I really liked, and wish I still had a copy of. (He was the first critic I read who actually wrote interesting things about Brooks & Dunn.) Also wrote a very entertaining lead Voice review called Country's Sophomore Class: Flex Them Neck Muscles, Boys, rounding up Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle -- but that was 1987, a little early, and those dudes aren't exactly "pop"-country.

Suspect James Hunter wrote some smart things about country back then, too. And in the early/mid '80s, at least, maybe also Davitt Sigerson, when not recording great Xmas songs for Ze. ("It's a Big Country" on the Ze Christmas Record, 1981 -- if you haven't heard it, you should. I play it several times every year around this time, and it always choke me up. Never heard his album, which came out in 1984.)

But it wasn't until Metal Mike Saunders did a roundup of CMT videos for me (around 2000, I guess) that I obsessively started paying attention.

And uh...how good were Leann Rimes's '90s albums (and does her personality shine through those?) I've always assumed that her albums improved drastically when she sold out to dancier pop structures in the '90s, but I'd be willing to hear somebody try to convince otherwise.

Also, Dixie Chicks' Wide Open Spaces was 1998 and Fly was 1999. so those count. (Have never heard their earlier bluegrass albums.)

"...sold out to dancier pop structures in the '00s," I meant. (Albeit very early '00s, apparently -- Coyote Ugly soundtrack, with "Can't Fight The Moonlight", came out in 2000.)

Really like Confederate Railroad's 2000 best-of Rockin Country Party Pack too, fwiw; they had a bunch of ace hits in the '90s for sure. But don't think I've ever heard any of their regular albums from then.

x-post Speaking of Travis, Yoakam, etc. Those neo-trad guys may not have been pop-country, but they--along with Clint Black, George Strait and others--sold a ton of albums in the late 80s. I'm not positive, but I think Storms of Life might have been the all time biggest selling Country (non-greatest hits) album at one point. Perhaps when Nashville saw that they could make as much money off of albums as they did from singles or compilations they started taking the LP more seriously. And Garth definitely started out in the neo-trad vein.

I suppose the idea of having artists put out an album packed with five or more potential singles became popular in the 90s because some of the artists were becoming international superstars and needed more time to tour the world before they could go back to the studio. The record companies could keep releasing single after single to radio in the year or two it took for a new album to be readied. It seems the norm today, but I don't know how many artists got that luxury in the 90s.

xp McGraw's 1999 album was actually A Place In The Sun, duh. (Title I listed above belongs to Little Big Town, eight years later.)

Also like The Tractors' debut album, from 1994. (Not sure where they fit into this. Seems like there might've been some kinda mini/semi/lite-Western-swing-rock revival on the country charts in the early/mid '90s. Which reminds me I also don't know the Mavericks' individual albums, but their Super Colossal Smash Hits Of The '90s best-of is good.)

In pre-'90s news, here is the very approximate order of how much I've (so far) liked a bunch of old vinyl country LPs I bought for $1 each in the past six months or so:

1. (Various) Motels And Memories (Warner Special Products 1981) (100% country cheating songs, from the mid '70s to early '80s)
2. The Delmore Brothers - The Best Of (Starday 1975)
3. Charlie Rich - I Do My Swingin' At Home (Epic 1973)
4. O.C. Smith - Hickory Holler Revisited (Columbia LP, 1968)
5. David Allan Coe - Longhaired Redneck (Columbia 1976)
6. George Strait - Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind (MCA LP, 1984)
7. The Forester Sisters - Perfume, Ribbons & Pearls (Warner Bros. 1986)
8. Georgia Satellites - Georgia Satellites (Elektra/Asylum, 1986)
9. Gene Watson - The Best Of (Capitol 1978)
10. Jason & the Scorchers - Lost And Found (EMI 1985)
11. Billie Joe Spears - Blanket On The Ground (United Artists 1975)
12. Billy Swan - Rock N Roll Moon (Monument 1975)
13. Merle Haggard and the Strangers - I Love Dixie Blues (Capitol 1973)
14. Bobby Bland - Get On Down With (Dunhill LP, 1974) (w/ covers of Merle Haggard and Charlie Rich songs)
15. Keith Sykes - I'm Not Strange I'm Just Like You (Backstreet 1980)
16. Rattlesnake Annie - Rattlesnake Annie (Columbia 1987)
17. Gary Stewart - Your Place Or Mine (RCA LP, 1977)
18. Dobie Gray - From Where I Stand (Capitol 1986)
19. Hank Thompson - Movin' On (ABC 1974)
20. Gary Stewart & Dean Dillon - Brotherly Love (RCA 1982)
21. Marshall Chapman - Marshall Chapman (Epic 1978)

Marshall Chapman and Stewart/Dillon went right into the "sell" pile; still on fence about the (presumably way past his prime, and not nearly Western Swingy enough) Hank Thompson. The rest appear to be keepers.

Oops (again), actually that Chapman LP (on which she lifelessly interprets both "I Walk The Line" and Bob Seger's "Turn The Page") is called Jaded Virgin; just hard to tell by looking at the cover.

And Stewart's Your Place Or Mine might objectively deserve to be higher on that list, except that I've owned its two best songs (title track and especially "Ten Years Of This") on his 1981 Greatest Hits (one of my favorite country albums of all time) for decades, and most of the rest doesn't leave as much of an impression as I wish.

I'm almost positive Marshall Chapman was marketed primarily to mainstream pop and rock. I remember seeing that LP cover in ads in many places.

Produced by Al Kooper
Album of the Year - Stereo Review

It sez on her website. Not much kindness meted out by Christgau, even on the follow-up in
1979. Course that means they might actually, in fact, rock.

The one I bought sure doesn't. (Interesting, though, who Xgau compares her too: "a lot more confident, clever, and animated than such Northern counterparts as Ellen Foley and Ellen Shipley, but she's a fairly one-dimensional conservative compared to Pearl E. Gates or Chrissie Hynde." But apparently she was based in Nashville, and I'd say she sounds more country than rock -- though I'm saying that with 2009 ears, of course.)

One guy who wrote pretty well about country in the early '90s, fwiw, was Ken Tucker (the future Entertainment Weekly/NPR Ken Tucker, not the future Billboard Ken Tucker); he did a one-time country-only Consumer Guide in the Voice that I really liked, and wish I still had a copy of.

I lurk/skim this thread and I was thinking of mentioning that Ken Tucker was writing about country back in that period you mentioned, but then I thought, nah, they probably don't like the way he covered it or something.

I'm confused by your comment though in regard to whether or not he is still active. I thought he was, but maybe I've been seeing this other Ken Tucker? There are two? I remember Ken Tucker from way back when Fresh Air first started up. I used to listen to it after school, in high school. (Thank god I was doing something intelligent instead of wasting my time feeling up high school girls or going down on them in their parents' garage!)

Sorry to burst in as a "country hater" and everything (although one who will be voting for Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift in this year's ILM poll, which is more than I can say for any rock acts).

Yep, definitely two Ken Tuckers out there -- (maybe even three or four!) And as far as I know, they're both still active (don't think I ever said otherwise, though maybe something I said was ambiguous.) I'm not sure whether the EW/NPR Ken still writes about country, though.

Trisha Yearwood and Lorrie Morgan a couple more '90s country stars who compiled best-of CDs worth keeping in the '00s. (Trisha's is more consistent than Lorrie's, but I was a big fan of Lorrie's '90s "Send In The Clowns"-bombastic marriage-on-skids cabaret-country wardrobe-closet ballad "Something In Red", and also her cover of Journey's "Faithfully" and her new wavey Roxette haircut. Didn't hate the albums I heard at the time, but also didn't like them near enough to hang on to them. But even more than Trisha she was clearly going for the desperate exurban housewife demographic, whose tastes I should probably bend to more.)

John Morthland's Best of Country Music Guide came out in 1984, and I don't know if any other rock critic tried anything like it subsequently

David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren put out Heartaches By The Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles in 2003. It's a good book, and definitely includes assorted late '80s and '90s records, and they make good cases for pop crossover throughout (though they have a definite grudge, it seems, against the Urban Cowboy era.) So there's that. I'd also be surprised if there weren't certain country critics writing intelligently about country; more like, I just wasn't following them. And country records -- especially the more pop kind -- certainly weren't doing very well in, say, the Pazz & Jop poll at the time. (They're still not, but they do better than they used to.)

Relistening to that Corb Lund gambling song from the video that Frank linked, I'm thinking his singing is not as incompetent and wooden as I implied above. It's...functional. But plain, kind of lazy, and not exceptional in any way. He sounds more or less in the same category as any of the (right, mostly folkie/bohemian) "red dirt" guys that I hear on the more alternative-leaning country stations in and around Austin --Jason Boland, Robert Earl Keen, Randy Rogers, Ryan Bingham, those sorts of cowpokes. If I heard that song on the car radio (and around here, if he was from Texas, that'd be possible), I might be less bored by it.

Only '90s LeAnn material I've heard is the stuff on her Greatest Hits, which, to my surprise - it being a hits record - isn't as good as her regular '00s albums. I do like "Blue" and "How Do I Live" and "Can't Fight The Moonlight (dance mix)," which are the first three tracks on Greatest Hits. And as you say, "Moonlight" is 2000, and maybe even 2001 for the dance mix.

Amazingly (to me anyway), Billboard says that Taylor Swift being 2009's Billboard artist of the year (based on cumulative success on chart positions throughout the year) makes her "the first solo female or country act to earn the honor since 1997. That was when Leann Rimes, then herself a young country crossover star, took the honor home."

What's amazing about it is that I feel like I was more or less oblivious to Leann Rimes -- and definitely to how huge a crossover star she allegedly was -- in 1997. (This goes along with something Frank wrote this week on his blog, about how, even with really popular music, you can miss it if you don't make an effort to keep up with it.)

Btw, another '90s country star who put out a solid best-of CD in the '00s is Travis Tritt. I suspect he may have made solid albums in the '90s (and ones that presaged this decade's country-rock crossover), but if so, I don't know that I've ever actually sat through any of them.

I still have Billy Ray Cyrus's Some Gave All (1992) on my shelf, though. As I recall, it's not bad. I should put it back on sometime.

Think I still have Kenny Chensney's 2000 Greatest Hits CD around here somewhere, too; he'd apparently put out five albums by then, none of which I've heard. I get the idea that Chesney and McGraw and Keith didn't really evolve their personalities on record until at least the tail-end of the '90s, but they were around for a while before then. So maybe the country audience detected personalities I didn't.

I was oblivious to Leeann back in the 90s too. It looks like in 1997 she had 2 #1 albums of cover songs, one "pop" and the other "inspirational"--so perhaps she was that era's Groban or Buble (or Streisand.)

Also, Montgomery Gentry's debut Tattoos And Scars was 1999. And though they made albums I loved more later, this is still a real good one, and seems like their personalities were in place from the git-go. (First rock critic I know who noticed them was Joshua Clover, who did a short single review of "Daddy Won't Sell The Farm" for me at the Voice.)

And duh, they just keep coming -- Speaking of Leeanns, Lee Ann Womack's Some Things I Know was 1998. Possibly my favorite album by her, though she got way more acclaim and respect later; definitely has my favorite song she ever did, namely "I'll Think Of A Reason Later."

I still pull down the John Morthland book whenever I come across some artist that I'm not familiar with. But even he dismisses the Urban Cowboy era (and that era was still ongoing when his book came out in 1984)and/or Country Pop crossover one. In a section called Countrypolitan, he says not to look for any info on Kenny Rogers, Alabama, Oak Ridge Boys, John Denver, etc. There is a review in his book of Ronnie Milsap and Eddie Rabbitt, mostly praising their early stuff but looking down on the Pop hits.
BTW- the Countrypolitan artists he does like: Crystal Gayle, Anne Murray and Glen Campbell. But that section of the book is very brief.

There's also The Blackwell Guide To Country Music, edited by Bob Allen, from 1994. I use it as a reference on occasion, but keep it on a secondary shelf in another room for good reason. Anyway, I should re-read Allen's "The 1980s And Beyond" chapter (which does seem to include writeups of several recommended albums toward the end) in the next couple days, but to give you a clue, here's how it starts: "The very early 1980s were, at least from a creative standpoint, a period of relative bleakness in country music." Later; this is awesome: "An even more disturbing barometer of how dismal and directionless country's commercial mainstream had become by the early 1980s was the LA-to-Nashville 'bimbo' invasion. During those years, any number of modestly talented but nubile Southern California pop songstresses recorded half-baked 'country' records which, remarkably, made minor dents in the country record charts. (A California singer named Carole Chase even had evanescent success with a Los Angeles-produced LP of 'country-disco' dubiously entitled Sexy Songs)." Ha -- dollar bins, here I come!

hey chuck this isn't country related, but i asked my parents/friends for stairway to hell for christmas, and they couldn't find it. is it out of print or something? i'm just curious, so as to see if i could find it somewhere else

Loooong out of print, but isn't it on Amazon for really cheap still?

Uh, guess it's considered "collectible" now; wtf?? Hey, I'll sell my copy for $133.75 + $3.99 shipping if somebody will pay me that.

http://www.amazon.com/Stairway-Hell-Chuck-Eddy/dp/030680817X

I wonder what dumb people pay for the first edition these days.

Hey $40 (second edition) on ebay. (Amazon's got several a lot cheaper; I just wanted to brag about that expensive one).

http://cgi.ebay.com/Stairway-to-Hell-:-Chuck-Eddy-(Paperback,-1998)_W0QQitemZ341320660834QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20091216?IMSfp=TL091216217001r32542

haha alright thanks, i checked amazon after christmas, and they had used copies, but i wasn't sure how much i trusted that, quality wise, i mean, but they are cheap, so i might just go ahead and buy one of them. thanks

But they are not cheap anymore! That was my point! I'm not sure when the prices went up. It's not my fault, honest.

Back to hillbilly music -- there is a Link Wray album in that book. And sundry '70s Southern Rock LPs. If I were to update it now, though...

Btw, another '90s country star who put out a solid best-of CD in the '00s is Travis Tritt. I suspect he may have made solid albums in the '90s (and ones that presaged this decade's country-rock crossover), but if so, I don't know that I've ever actually sat through any of them.

Tritt's best album was Down The Road I Go from 2000. It's All About to Change from 91 was his biggest seller - it's the one with "Here's a Quarter". Great voice, but I generally found his choice of material pretty bland.

Actually, come to think of it, calling even Tritt's The Very Best CD (Rhino, 2007) "solid" is stretching it -- at 20 songs, including stinkers like "Can I Trust You With My Heart" and "Tell Me I Was Dreaming," it's about twice too long. (My favorite tracks, last time I checked, were "Where Corn Don't Grow" and "Lord Have Mercy On The Working Man.") I might have even liked his indie-label The Storm album from the same year more, actually -- even had a pretty great Nickelback cover, in "Should've Listened." I'm guessing he's one guy who may have been freed up to do stuff more in tune with what he's best at when he stopped having big hits in Nashville. (Kentucky Headhunters, this decade, would be another one, though as I said their turn of the '90s hits were pretty good at the time. And nobody's mentioned John Anderson, who made consistently great albums in the early '80s, and has made sporadically real good ones since, as a star and then as a post-star -- I assume Seminole Wind would have to rank as one of the best country albums of the '90s, though I don't actually own a copy.)

Rolling Country 2010:

Rolling Country 2010