Rolling Country 2009 Thread

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.

Also, it's odd to pick a song where Taylor happily throws a guy out of her life as one's example of her contending that happiness and self-worth are determined by the men and boys in your life. Which isn't to say that the song, like most of hers, isn't set within the romance cycle (songs occurring anywhere in the cycle from meeting to pursuing to being pursued to yearning to getting together to not getting together all the way through to long-time love to happy reminiscence to bittersweet reminiscence [her very first single!] to embittered recollection to revenge etc. in about eighty different varieties), but that's true of the vast majority of songs in English-language popular music of the last one hundred years. The reason the issue feels so hot-button in Taylor's music isn't just that her artistry makes it vivid but that she's layered onto it the singer-songwriter romantic* idea of the quest for self and the story of growth by way of those personal relationships. She's portraying a lot of her material as autobiographical, part of the Taylor Swift adventure. Whereas "Stays In Mexico" and "She Couldn't Change Me" and "Independence Day" and "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" aren't purporting to be actual events in the singer's life - which doesn't mean that the singers aren't just as committed as Taylor is to the attitudes and experiences and the worlds of their songs, but a lot of it is expressive fiction, "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" even announcing itself as a type of song. (As does Taylor's "Love Story," telling us not that Taylor's lived that story but that this is the type of story she carries with her.)

But what made me see red from that writeup was that it was the only blurb in the top ten to claim that the song was bad for what it was doing to its audience. Not that one shouldn't think about audiences - I think about people who might be reading me, for instance, though I should probably expend more thought on how better to harm them - but concern for the (supposed) listener is a shtick in criticism of teenpop that you don't get nearly as much elsewhere, is an excuse for not truly engaging with the music. As Dave has pointed out, stories about and concert reviews of the White Stripes, for instance, don't generally concentrate on the people in the audience in the way that stories about and reviews of High School Musical do. There should be more written about the White Stripes' audience, probably, but not to the exclusion of engaging with the music as listeners ourselves. It's through my ears that I take in the music, after all.

*In the sense of "romanticism" or "the romantic era," not "a romantic evening."

A good convo over on Lex's lj a couple of months ago - unfortunately under flock - among Lex, Cis, and Alex O. as to whether or not Taylor Swift is princess pop. I'd say "Yes, but..." the "yes" being that yes indeed she plays to the five-year-old girls with unicorns on their walls and their (Cis's words) "disney and dress-up and the 'some day my prince will come' construct," and the "but" being that those girly-girl aspirations are actually all over the place and require you to say "I'm not a princess" and in Taylor's case are accompanied by anger that's even more viscerally palpable than Miranda Lambert's. And you've got Taylor on the borderline, both embracing and being at odds with the story and playing the story you tell off the life you actually live (seems to me that in "You Belong With Me" the self-esteem is very much there, boy or no boy, but there's her frustration in regard to when are the boy and the world going to get in line with the esteem and why do both boy and world prefer getting ground into dirt to soaring with her). And it mixes in with her other stories, the romantic quest for the female self but also country's reaching backward as well as forward. What I wrote on Lex's thread was "The country stream that feeds into her ocean has a history of busted romance songs and also has her doing songs about siblings and intergenerational continuity and cross-generational commonality," the last several tracks on Taylor Swift, for instance, and "The Best Day" on Fearless.

Speaking of cross-generational commonality, there's nothing wrong at all about two women singing "Because Of You" with/to each other given that the song is about a daughter repeating her mother's bad patterns (and who knows how many generations that can go, backward and forward). The video works this by having Kelly playing Reba's mother as a young woman in flashback, and adult Reba back there too, observing but unable to change what happens.

The Reba/Kelly vid. (And actually the lyrics are ambiguous as to whether the patterns are being repeated or are being shunned in a totally destructive fashion. The daughter claims at the beginning that she's being careful not to make the same mistakes the mother had, but in the middle she's crying in the night for the same damn thing anyway.)

(My sentence itself was ambiguous: I meant that it's the manner of shunning that's destructive, not the ambiguity that's destructive.)

New Robert Christgau article on Brad Paisley
http://bit.ly/46vsUS

CMA Awards are on right now. Lefsetz has been posting that everyone's voices will be autotuned to sound good, because Taylor Swift's live vocals on the opening of Saturday Night Live were thin with little range.

Miranda Lambert sounded good but not great on "White Liar," likewise with Brad Paisley on "Welcome to the Future."

Is there any big country act not performing on the show?

Look, there's Kid Rock on guitar dueting with Jamey Johnson on "Between Jennings and Jones."

Taylor Swift just sang in the round surrounded by young high school girls singing along, watching worshipfully, or nervously smiling.

Anybody else watch any of this or check later to see if some of it is on youtube or elsewhere?

Taylor Swift cleaned up in the award categories. Btw, while her vocals weren't great on Saturday Night Live, too many years of listening to bad rock singers and to punk rock meant that it did not irritate me, plus it was a jokey song about Kanye and other stuff so I figured she was purposely not really pushing hard. She used a Kanye joke at the CMSa also--thanking everyone for not rushing onto the stage.
She's the first female CMA entertainer of the year in 10 years for what's that worth.

Anybody else watch any of this (Taylor Swift thing in the round) or check later

Yes. Halfway through I switched away to Nip/Tuck. The LATimes' Calendar section ran an
unusually grovelling/swooning hagiography of Taylor Swift in the morning, so after reading about 2/3's of it, I've really had more than enough of her to last a year or two.

Kid Rock, as usual, proved he really likes classic southern rock with the thing with Jamey
Whathisname, but he can only barely sing, which plants him firmly as a novelty granted way too much charity. I suppose likeability goes a long way, sort of like "drinkability" in the Bud Light commercials. Yes, it's got drinkability, as compared to fizzy water with a fly floating in it.

Liked Brooks & Dunn with Billy G -- it rocked and had almost the entire ZZ catalog of vintage guitar fills in it. Musta been fun to do.

I'm feeling pretty burnt out on country lately, so I skipped it (though given what I've seen of Nip/Tuck, I probably would've opted for the CMAs as the lesser of two evils.) Will try to catch the highlights on youtube, if I ever manage to get around to it. (And I may have the same excuse for cutting Kid Rock's iffy vocals slack, in general, as curmudgeon notes for Taylor. In his biggest hits, I swear, his non-singing can be very effective for me in practice even if logically I can't justify it. Someday I'll try to figure out how he pulls that off.)

Anybody been keeping up with these stories in the past week about how George Jones claims Taylor and Carrie etc aren't actually country, and should come up with a different name for the music they make? I haven't, but I keep seeing headlines on line about it. A summary would be welcome (though I'm pretty sure I'd know which side on come down on, not having cared about a George song for three decades or so. Though then again I have no interest in hearing Carrie's new album, either.)

Their sure wasn't anything country about Carrie on the award show. She was so OTT, Paisley made something of a veiled dick joke about the effect of her hot pants.

'Course, Paisley was only country when he ad-libbed and the performance of his wonder of
consumer electronics songs came off like Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, which isn't bad but...

The LATimes in nothing if not reliable in its hagiography. Ann Powers was unleashed on CMA to this effect. However, even she couldn't ignore Taylor Swift's affinity for bum notes in live
performance anymore, all the more remarkable for her being in a setting where the women performers hardly ever hit bum notes.

Swift was "universe-shifting" in one sentence, and "off-tune, a consistant a characteristic" in another.

Brad Paisley's gee-whiz tune to the alleged wonder of consumer electronics was "an ode to tech-inspired liberalism."

No mention of the appearance of the Little Jimmy Dickens perv, Paisley's human prop for sneaking fat girl and dick jokes onto the ends of his records.

Tuscaloosa Ann, on the job.

about the effect of her hot pants.

For those who didn't see it, came in the performance segment, where she came off a fuck-me
lounge, surrounded by Weimar Republic-era dancing girls in black lingerie and nylons. There was a lot of pelvic thrusting and shimmying-like-snake going on.

Xhuxk, I'm curious why you have no interest in hearing the new Underwood. There's no reason her songwriters might not come up with another "Before He Cheats."

That said, I got the album two weeks ago and haven't listened yet because I forgot that I had it.

As an aficionado of live Taylor Swift cover songs on YouTube, I will say that whether she's in tune or not is a crapshoot, but that she gets there sometimes. Award shows are where she wobbles most. She does have my favorite singing voice in the world right now, so hurray for the recording studio.

No doubt I've posted this before, but here's her "Take A Bow"; her pitch is in the same shooting range as the target for the first two-thirds, then wanders off, along with her faith in men, and this barely bothers me at all on a clip I'm not listening to every day. Her skinny wavering nasality delivers the song's bitterness far more effectively than Rihanna or Ne-Yo did.

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

(But iirc Ne-Yo sang the song in first-person not second, so the song for him isn't bitterness but embarrassment.)

Oh, and this is what I wrote about "Fifteen" in my weekly roundup (also talked about Rihanna, whom I've been talking about here, there, and everywhere, to strangers on the street and customers at fast-food joints):

Taylor Swift "Fifteen": Lots of this is obvious and wide-eyed, just as it intends; the events and insights are normal enough, less varied and restless than her real fifteen was, I'm sure (I can't imagine that anyone who is fifteen has no thoughts about, e.g., global warming and one's place in the cosmos not just in the sight of boys) but there's art in when and how Taylor places her observations. "You're gonna be here for the next four years" has the right mixture of anticipation and fear. Lots of joy in this, the whoosh when she sings "He's got a car and you feel like you're flying." But the line that everyone remembers, me included, what the whole song seems unable not to be leading us to, is "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind" - though what actually catches me in the throat is the next line, "We both cried," one girl's heartbreak directly transmitted to another. TICK.

Lots of good commentary on the Jukebox about Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now." Read through to the comments, where everyone who'd not previously heard the band had simply assumed they were emo from their moniker.

Xhuxk, I'm curious why you have no interest in hearing the new Underwood

Because I wound up considering the single a major annoyance (which makes me not have very high hopes); because I never return to her first two albums even though they seemed good enough at the time; because listening to new country albums is starting to seem like work, so I'm spending more and more time listening to old '70s hard rock and '80s electro-funk albums. Of course, if a copy fell into my lap, I'd probably get around to putting it on eventually. Though I've had a copy of the new Gary Allan album here for a week (due out early next year), and I haven't put that on. A passing phase, maybe? We'll see.

Taylor Swift will, in my mind, always be from the suburb of Reading where I spent many weekends seeing the Dead End Kids, a seminal but formally unacknowledged band that had a lot to do with US glam metal in the late Eighties. They furnished many of the most volcanic rock 'n' roll shows I've ever witnessed.

So Taylor has always been been fairly lame in terms of what the region was capable of -- particularly in bowling allies in the Seventies -- with regards to high energy, sparkly strutting stuff. About the same as a singer as the DEK guys, certainly not better or
worse.

I put her as writing a song or two better than Herman's Hermits -- on the order of "Mrs
Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter," "Henry the Eighth," "No Milk Today," but no cover as good as "Sea Cruise." Taylor is doing decent pop rock but nothing as good as the Monkees' TV show theme, Stepping Stone, Last Train to Clarksville, Pleasant Valley Sunday, Valerie, etc...

After fifteen years, maybe something as memorable as Stepping Stone, a bit better than the
Porpoise Song, Tom Petty after "Damn the Torpedoes" and the big jangle, some extra points for allegedly being empowering for all US teenage girls who wish to sing along with her. Was there a US guy band that mustered the same past the Monkees as far back as the Seventies? The Rollers? I don't think so.

Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" has become my favorite country single of this year. Maybe because my sweetheart is another state away..

Anyway, she's as overexposed in the way that only the US media can provide, a year or two after Miley peaked for the same reasons. Demi Lovato's fallen through the cracks and what happened to the Wreckers?

xp So anyway what's kind of weird is that my (at least temporary) tiring of listening to country has bizarrely coincided with my move to Texas (albeit alt-country Austin). Which means that it's very possible that the most country-obssessed period of my life might well wind up being the time I lived in New York! Figure that out. Maybe I'm as contrarian as people say I am, and I just don't know it.

Anyway. Some Metal Mike Saunders stuff on proto-Taylor 1999 teen-pop country, which he posted, um, somewhere (Myspace maybe?) then emailed out. Cryptic as usual, but as usual that's also part of the fun. No idea if the youtube links will work; if not, just cut and paste them obv(the youtube comment toward the bottom is one he found, apparently):

November 18, 2009 6:55 AM
the point here (below) is that....uh...oh, that the 1964 barry-greenwich HOF writing team could have cranked out timeless hit songs for Jessica and/or Alecia that would have been remembered forever and played on oldies stations beyond that.

nashville 1999 on the other hand couldn't figure out how to wipe their own butt if given three hands and a team of "handlers." even after shania/mutt lange had written them an entire TEMPLATE on how to write/produce country/pop/rock crossover hits.

the Lila McCann "With You" video was pretty great (and probably LMc's best song) though!
huhh, doesn't exist on Youtube (like the jessica andrews videos/embedding) -- WMG group are still doing their nazi-purge of everything that surfaces.

there's two horror-show youtube clips of Lila howling live, but i'm not in the mood to kick puppies or throw kittens into trains right now. it will have to wait a bit. (her mangling a Disney tune sitting on a piano bench is a real wtf wtf wtf vocal, i mean the average 10 year old would even start yelling "stop! stop! make it stoppp!" flat/ sharp/sharp/flat, everywhere imaginable but in tune. and without any pattern or rhythm or reason to the tonally homeless wandering. i believe the word "TONE DEAF" is in the house here. (lots of famous singers sing a little flat; occasionally one would even sang chronically sharp -- Linda Ronstant mid-70's, painfully hideously so). (When Will I Be Loved / everly brothers cover might be the most hideous kill- me- right- now-make-it-stop out-of-tune vocal ever on a pop hit song, way past the point of simple pain). but flat/ sharp/sharp/flat, all over the place, even from line to line -- just doesn't happen outside of karaoke bars.

November 18, 2009 6:00 AM

Who Am I live/CMAs the entire performance of this was one of the greatest live-TV vocals i've heard in my entire life, chills-down-back crazy great

(1st album hit, lame song/ballad but sung acapella shows her very tight/nice vibrato)

= fabulous huge voice that Nashville totally wasted/blew it -- J/A didn't get even 5 first-rate strong songs in her entire aborted career ((and tw of them were on/from the first album, ie non-single title-track Heart Shaped World and You Go First (Do You Wanna Kiss)). fuuuck, retarded! coming up in the 50's, she would have wound up cutting at least a half dozen strong honky-tonk/hard country albums like Kitty Wells, Jean Shepard, and had the same kind of 20-year recording career.

November 18, 2009 5:57 AM
Alicia Elliott ("I'm Diggin' It") was an even better singer and an even bigger Nashville fiasco (the completed second album never even came out) -- the I'M DIGGIN' IT album was one notch short of wonderful, and i still pull/pass on copies of it (out of the 50 cent bins) to anyone to this day.

the class of '98-'99 female singers, Lila McCann (after the pretty good first album, gold like the followup -- see J/A comment -- crap material and no A&R clue) / Jessica Andrews / Alicia Elliott -- is an eternal black mark, whatever, in the lists of musical crimes against mankind (mishandling of young talent being a big one).

as i was sayin

classic hard-country voice, born/raised in MUSCLE SHOALS alabama and (fact) influenced by the town's 60's soul-music legacy -- it shows up in both her vocal sound (unique) and phrasing. half country / half black, whoa and wow.

the I'M DIGGIN' IT album sold really well (but didn't crossover pop into the britney/backstreet tsunami that the videos were angling for -- the single itself stalled just outside pop Top 40) and the backstory of whatever the hell happened (that the completed second album was never released) (in-house label "reference copies" supposedly exist) has never surfaced to this day. both Jessica Andrews (who got at least to cut four? albums, each one crappier with lamer-material than the last. no, i only have three i think -- the lead single to no.4 didn't hit, so the album was shelved or not even finished) and Alecia Elliott are the great lost country-singers (incredibly young when their first HIT albums came out) of last decade turning Y2K -- they should've been Brenda Lees (with crossover hits) but instead Nashville turned their careers to shit (J/A) and worse, stillborn (A/E).

November 18, 2009 5:55 AM
both You Go First (Do You Wanna Kiss)

http: / / www. youtube. com/ watch?v=eVMaLMnp4uw

(no embedding / definitely the coolest amusement- park-setting video ever) and I'm Diggin' It are two of my favorite/upbeat/fun videos of their era, or maybe ever

http: / / www. youtube. com/ watch?v=lBlDlodGkck (no embedding)

I'm Diggin It (lead single, w/"rock/dance remix" long version also on the CD-single, and great) (best use of colored I-Macs in a pop/rock video, by a mile)

http: / / www. youtube. com/ watch?v=gUneUGZfGRM

You Wanna What? (second single from the album) (15-year-old elliott co-wrote it, probably the lyrics)

YOUTUBE COMMENT:
marcometer (3 months ago)
i had such a crush on her (Jessica Andrews) in high school. her LeAnn Rimes and Lila McCann were the reasons why I had a small country phase from 1999 & 2000 when I was in high school. Now I just can't listen to country anymore, I'm just not feelin' it anymore.

oh good lord, Lila McCann. couldn't hit a note in tune if it was the size of barn and she had all day with a shotgun. wonderful sounding voice but one of the most off-key (outside the studio) singers EVER. "acoustic" live TV footage of her (from 1998-1999) is like bizarro-world music, vocals so flat she drove off the ditch, over the hill, and off the cliff in a tractor with no brakes.

You'll have to parse out the spaces in those URLs if you cut and paste. Some have probably figured that out already.

Notable recent Hot Country Songs debuts (and where said songs are on said chart this week):

#41 Keith Urban "'Til Summer Comes Around" (best song on his current album, or at least I thought so the last time I listened to the thing.)
#53 Montgomery Gentry "Oughta Be More Songs Like That" (which raises the inevitable question, "like what?" I almost don't want to listen to the song to find out the answer.)
#56 Houston Country "I Can't Make It Rain" (clearly an answer to all the gross r&b and rap hits from the past couple years about "making it rain," whatever that means -- people seem to disagree on the issue.)

Got my Nashville Scene Country Music Critics Poll ballot in the email a couple months ago. Curious what other people might be voting for. I sort of lost track somewhere along the line, I think, but my top albums and also rans at the moment (without going back and doublechecking their worth lately, and without probably having time to do so again before I send my ballot in) look something more or less like this:

1. Collin Raye – Never Going Back (Time Life)
2. Brad Paisley – American Saturday Night (Arista Nashville)
3. Miranda Lambert – Revolution (Columbia Nashville)
4. Mac McAnally – Down By The River (Show Dog Nashville)
5. Pat Green – What I’m For (BNA)
6. Ashley Monroe – Satisfied (Sony)
7. Phil Vassar – Traveling Circus (Universal Records South)
8. Eric Church – Carolina (Capitol)
9. Tim Carroll – All Kinds Of Pain (Gulcher)
10. Charlie Robison – Beautiful Day (Dualtone)

11. The Boxmasters – Modbilly (Vanguard)
12. Megan Munroe – One More Broken String (Diamond)
13. The Flatlanders – Hills And Valleys (New West)
14. Blackberry Smoke – Little Piece Of Dixie (BamaJam)
15. (Various) – The Man Of Somebody’s Dreams: A Tribute To The Songs Of Chris Gaffney (Yep Roc)
16. Sarah Borges And the Broken Singles – The Stars Are Out (Sugar Hill)
17. Toby Keith – American Ride (Showdog Nashville)
18. Rufus Huff – Rufus Huff (Zoho Roots)
19. Buckwheat Zydeco – Lay Your Burden Down (Alligator)
20. The Bottle Rockets – Lean Forward (Bloodshot)

Eli Young Band's Jet Black And Jealous would probably make my top ten if it hadn't come out a couple months before January 1, and thus be disqualified. Phil Vassar could move up or move down; it's not out yet, and I've only listened to the advance twice. Etc etc etc.

Er... actually, got the ballot in the email a couple days ago, not months. Thinking about these ones below for reissues, though all but one probably stretches the definiton of "country" (and that one actually stretches the definition of "reissue," but the ballot defines a reissue as "any album where at least 50% of the performances are more than five years old," so the Headhunters definitely qualify):

1. Richard Thompson – Walking On A Wire Discs One And Two (Shout! Factory promo reissue)
2. Kentucky Headhunters – Live/Agora Ballroom Cleveland, Ohio May 13 1990 (Mercury reissue)
3. (Various) – Winter Dance Party: 50th Anniversary Special: The Day The Music Died (El Toro reissue)
4. The Scene Is Now – Burn All Your Records (Lexicon Devil reissue)
5. 16 Horsepower – Secret South (Alternative Tentacles reissue)

Singles. Probably missing a zillion of them.

1. Jamey Johnson – “High Cost Of Living”
2. Love and Theft – “Runaway”
3. John Rich – “Shuttin’ Detroit Down”
4. Sarah Buxton – “Space”
5. Rascal Flatts – “Summer Nights”
6. Caitlin & Will – “Even Now”
7. Lady Antebellum – “Need You Now”
8. Toby Keith – “American Ride”
9. Brad Paisley – “Welcome to The Future”
10. The Flatlanders – “Homeland Refugee”

11. Taylor Swift – “You Belong With Me”
12. Phil Vassar – “Bobbi With An I”
13. Keith Urban – “’Til Summer Comes Around”
14. Billy Currington – “People Are Crazy”
15. Jace Everett – “Bad Things”
16. Krista Marie – “Jeep Jeep”
17. Jypsi – “Mister Officer”
18. Brooks & Dunn – “Cowgirls Don’t Cry”
19. Sarah Borges And The Broken Singles – “Do It For Free”
20. Eli Young Band – “Guinevere”

21. Montgomery Gentry – “Long Line Of Losers”
22. Trace Adkins – “I Can’t Outrun You”
23. Collin Raye – “Midlife Chrysler”
24. Jessica Harp – “Boy Like Me”
25. Brooks & Dunn – “Indian Summer”
26. Taylor Swift – “Fifteen”
27. Kenny Chesney – “Out Last Night”
28. George Strait – “Living For The Night”
29. Rodney Atkins - "Chasing Girls"
30. Kid Rock – “Blue Jeans And A Rosary”

31. Megan Munroe - “Moonshine”
32. Gloriana – “How Far Do You Wanna Go?”
33. Trace Adkins – “Marry For Money”
34. Lady Antebellum – “I Run To You”
35. Heartland – “Mustache”
36. Jason Boland and the Stragglers – “Comal County Blues”
37. Pat Green – “What I’m For”
38. Miranda Lambert – “White Liar”
39. Alan Jackson – “I Still Like Bologna”
40. Montgomery Gentry – “One In Every Crowd”

Discounted a few Southern Soul singles and the Love Willows' "Falling Faster" from this list as "not country enough," though I might be able to be convinced otherwise, if anybody has a strong opinion on the issue.

Eh, Vassar album's not top-ten material, actually. (His transvestite single might be, but probably won't quite make it.) Also considering bumping Toby a few notches (on both lists) for dumbo politics and being stuck in a mediocre-album rut and for his best song this year being one he didn't even write himself. We'll see.

My own Nashville Scene Ballot. Reissues were tough to come by this year. I was interested in that Dolly Parton box set, but have put off buying it for now. The John Rich single probably would have been #11. As for albums, just missing the cut were Holly Williams, Boxmasters and Eric Church.

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2009:

1.Brad Paisley - American Saturday Night
2.Miranda Lambert - Revolution
3.Buddy & Julie Miller - Written In Chalk
4.Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel - Willie & The Wheel
5.Elvis Costello - Secret Profane and Sugarcane
6.Flatlanders - Hills & Valleys
7.Otis Gibbs - Grandpa Walked A Picketline
8.John Anderson - Bigger Hands
9.Dailey & Vincent - Brothers from Different Mothers
10.Phosphorescent - To Willie

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2009:

1. Brad Paisley - Welcome to the Future
2.Taylor Swift - You Belong To Me
3.Flatlanders - Homeland Refugee
4.Zac Brown Band - Toes
5.Miranda Lambert - White Liar
6.Keith Urban - Kiss A Girl
7.Darius Rucker - Alright
8.Billy Currington - People are Crazy
9.Lady Antebellum - Need You Now
10.Carrie Underwood - I Told You So

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2009:

1.Elvis Presley - From Elvis In Memphis
2.Jayhawks - Anthology
3.Leon McAuliffe - Tulsa Straight Ahead
4.Woody Guthrie - My Dusty Road
5. Randy Travis - Inspirational Hits of

Assuming anybody's still out there, here are a couple country-related issues that have been raised on other threads in the past week or so; might make sense to pick them up here. Or then again, might not.

In the middle of a Kentucky Headhunters discussion started by George:

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

it's still kind of amazing in retrospect that the Headhunters actually ever had country hits. Weirder still: 1990, when that live set was recorded, would have been exactly in the smack-dab middle of their commercial prime, between '89's Pickin' On Nashville (which I've never heard) and '91's Electric Barynard (which is a good record, but not nearly as boogie-rocking as the live album.) Makes me curious about when country music videos and CMT actually may have nudged butt-ugly acts off the air (which, wow, might be an obvious parallel to what had happened with MTV in respect to '80s rock radio.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 1 December 2009 16:31

Arising out of a mostly typically frursratingly ignorant discussion of Toby Keith and whether current commercial country is worthless or not:

Btw is there any modern country employing virtuoso steel pedal players and fiddlers?

― Adam Bruneau, Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Can't think of many current fiddle or pedal steel virtuosos on the country charts (though ha ha, Keith Urban and Brad Paisely are real good guitar players.) There are tons of crack sessionmen in Nashville, obviously; just not sure how much space they're given on actual albums. (Paisley hands over space on most of his albums to some old-style jamming. But I can't think of the last big virtuoso bluegrass crossover -- Ricky Skaggs, maybe? And he was a while ago. Of course people like the Dixie Chicks have crossed from the bluegrass world, though I'm not sure to what extent they'd be considered virtuosos. But I tend to virtuosophobic, so maybe I'm neglecting somebody obvious.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, November 24, 2009

toby keith's 'american ride' video

Good point, re: ugliness, from George:

In the hit-with-the-ugly-stick department, don't see how the Headhunters have anything on Zac Brown or Jamey Johnson.

And there were probably some unpretty rock guys who survived MTV's great early '80s Foghat purge too, come to think of it -- most obviously ZZ Top, I guess, though they learned to make a joke out of it. (Actually, though, I do suspect country still has more tolerance for ugliness than popular rock or pop have in the past 25 years or so.)

So I just figured out (after hearing it several hundred times, probably) which '80s pop records Brooks & Dunn's "Ain't Nothing 'Bout You" from 2001 sounds like. Frank has always said Londonbeat, which may well be possible (haven't heard them in ages), but what I hear now is "Midnight Blue" by Lou Gramm in the rhythm, and, uh, "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley in the melody. At least that's what I heard when I heard it on the radio this morning. Next time might be different.

So when are other folks besides jetfan going to post their country favorites of the year here? I've been relistening to albums after all the past couple days -- Mac McAnally, Ashley Monroe, Tim Carroll, Rufus Huff (see Rolling Hard Rock for more new discussion of that record), Blackberry Smoke, Megan Munroe, and Charlie Robison all hold up better than I'd expected. Eric Church bored me more than I thought he would. All of which means there'll be stiff competition for the lower rungs of my ballot top ten -- a lot of those albums seem neck-and-neck, quality-wise. Also, I somehow missed including Those Darlins above; probably they belong in my top 20. Seriously doubt they'll make Top 10, though.

Haven't heard some of the albums that jetfan listed. Tried the John Anderson a few months back, and I'm a fan, but it struck me as pretty subpar; definitely thought his version of "Shuttin Detroit Down" didn't match John Rich's. And I think I gave cursory listens to those Buddy & Julie Miller and Otis Gibbs albums, or a few tracks on each of each anyway, way back at the beginning of the year, and they struck me as really drab. But maybe I should've given them more time; who knows.

the Buddy & Julie Miller was pimped by a lot of friends, and, yeah, it bored me too. Well-intentioned, etc.

And relistening to Those Darlins now after a few months not, their routine is hitting me as more irritating than fun. Good chance that's also how I'll feel about the King Khan and BBQ Show in six months. At the permalink below I try to explain why I think their new album isn't worthless, after which George and Scott set me straight (and George points out that they're touring with the other band in this paragraph):

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

So yeah, as much as I like the idea of Those Darlins, truth is they just sound too tinny and thin (at least on record, but in most live clips I've watched too) to manage the wild and raucous stomping their songs clearly strive for. You could blame that on production budget, except that white country blues guys like Charlie Poole and Frank Hutchison (whose "Cannonball Blues" they cover) somehow managed to get a raucousness into their sound that Those Darlins don't --- even though those guys were limited to the recording technology of the '20s or '30s (Alternately, play Those Darlins' "DUI Or Die" against either Bo Diddley's or the Dolls' version of "Pills" -- which it basically rewrites. They're not even close to the same league. I wish they were.)

New Xgau CG -- Honorable mentions for Joe Nichols and Black Crowes ("Finally the lyricism their South deserves--sometimes even the songs" hmmm -- haven't heard it, but now I'm at least slightly curious); Big Dud for new Skynyrd though he says one cut would make a decent Darius Rucker B-side (haven't heard that either); handful of choice cuts from Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift ("Jump and Fall" -- zzzz), and, surprise, Toby Keith -- "Ballad Of Balad" (which is pretty awesome actually, middle-eastern tinge on up, and would've been a "bus song" in earlier days) plus the smooth-jazzed eulogy for Wayman Tisdale (which is kinda sweet).

http://music.msn.com/music/consumerguide/

(Link will switch to a new guide next month, like always)

The 9513 is listing their top 100 Country albums of the decade:

http://www.the9513.com/top-country-albums-of-the-decade-100-91/

Looking over the list so far, I realize I have no Dale Watson CD's in my collection, yet I've always wanted to buy something by him. I've heard enough to be curious, but years pass and I forget about him. Still, I'm intersted in the 2006 album that the 9513 site ranks.

Have barely skimmed their list, but I assume that'd be Whiskey Or God? That's from 2006, anyway, and it's the one I'd vouch for -- made by Nashville Scene list, and almost my Pazz & Jop, that year. I've heard a couple others by him, though, that'd didn't quite cut it.

Yeah, it's Whiskey or God. I think I'm going to go look for a used copy of it. Has me intrigued. Thanks.

They've also got From the Cradle to the Grave on there.

I'm really liking Keith Urban's 'Til Summer Comes Around.

I think it's his strongest single from his new album, which I haven't felt compelled to play much.

Yeah, I thought it was the best song on the album, which I haven't felt compelled to play at all since I reviewed it for the Voice when it came out. The previous singles have done absolutely nothing for me.

In other news, I think I have my Nasvhille Scene ballot figured out, but I'm procrastinating on sending it in, in case anybody posts lists here containing songs or albums (or better yet, songwriters) that somehow have slipped my mind. Sadly, that seems increasingly unlikely at this point. But I'll give it a couple more days, I guess.