Rolling Country 2009 Thread

Oops, correction -- Lalena says the song she heard was actually "DON'T TOUCH My Willie," by Kevin Fowler. Whole lotta willies going on apparently.

(And I meant "no kruat, wtf?", obviously.)

Also better than those Buck Cherry albums (which were ridiculously spotty, truth be told -- they could use a best-of someday if that ballad hit last year didn't suck so bad): Michael Stanley Band, Heartland (1980, $1). George had made me a real good CD-R called The Thumbnail Michael Stanley a few years back, highlighting what I took to be his hardest rocking songs, but the only one from this LP that's on there seems to be his early-Bryan Adams/Rick Springfield-type hard pop smash "He Can't Love You" (Stanley's biggest hit -- went to #33) -- which might not even be the best track here, and definitely isn't the hardest rocking. Really like the tough Diddley beat "Working Again," the even bigger-rhythmed "Voodoo," and the midwestern praire rocker (as in Head East/REO) "Save A Little Piece For Me" (where "save a little piece" sounds more like "sentimental bitch"). And "All I Ever Wanted" hits me as some kind of middle ground between Mitch Ryder (he's listening to a Detroit station, like when Mitch covered the Velvets' "Rock and Roll") and Eddie Money nostalgia classics like "Take Me Home Tonight" from a few years later. A couple extremely furry mustaches in the band, too. Still doesn't seem to have broken them far beyond Cleveland much more than momentarily, though. (On the CD-R that George made, last time I checked, my favorite tracks were "Rosewood Bitters" -- Joe Walsh on guitar I believe, "Heavy Weight," "He Can't Love You," "Hard Time," near-hit "My Town," and "Fire In The Hole.")

(Oops, that was meant for the rolling hard rock thread! Still kinda applies here though, in a way.)

In 70s Guide, xgau called the Michael Stanley Band "Cleveland's answer to Pere Ubu." Also, QuantumNoise, thanx for the fresh 'grass link, and speaking of that and Rounder, here's an early example of something much rarer at the time, 'tude-wise, and also rare at any time, xgau-bluegrass-approval-wise: (this is an excerpt)
"Breakfast Special:(s/t)(Rounder '79)...among citybilly archivists (bluegrass)only magnifies the usual folkie escapisms---purism and pastoral nostalgia---by encouraging mindless virtuosity. Which makes this virtuosic but eclectically streetwise record a small miracle that should delight anyone more spiritually attuned to the genre than a faithless wrietch like me. B+" So prob A- for others, unless it's been surpassed by updates. Oh yeah, and that Amazing Rhythm Aces LP I was thinking of is Stacked Deck, def the one to start with, though I liked Too Stuff To Jump more than xgau, made me think of a prematurely country radio-aimed Steely Dan (thinking a country alt-univese path for first-album-maybe-real-band Dan)

http://www.lefthip.com/albums/1187

So, here's the "what the fuck is happening with John Rich" link that Anthony posted to from poptimists. Haven't read it all (and have no idea if any of it is true), but Anthony's right -- it's pretty juicy:

http://www.nashvillegab.com/2009/03/john-rich-in-action.html

My favorite part of the recording is the end when Rich tells the guy, "Pay your taxes!"

Finally saw the "Shutting Detroit Down" video: the whole pore ole man gettin' canned bit slopped a ton of sobs on, cos lay-off of a younger guy (or gal) just wouldn't have conveyed the true sadness. And jeez, Kristofferson's played many a cooler geezer (shoulda made the foreman his final stop on the assembly line)

Agree with Don. Song's fine, video is mediocre. Kristofferson playing a wounded fired old man -- now that's a stretch. And Mickey Rourke doing a body block from "The Wrestler." Must've taken all of thirty minutes to write, block and shoot.

The entire thing was too scruffy. The plants are very modern and robotic now. Video seemed a bit like the look from "Roger & Me," only not really as good. Only "Roger & Me" was lefty voxpop and John Rich is righty voxpop, correct? Hmmm, now I'm all confused. Or more likely country is more confused, kind of like Republicans, not really getting that it's been the mass voting for right-wing policy and worship of entirely unregulated markets, crony big business and capitalism for the past eight years that's built the mess Rich is singing about.

That said, the video is great cornpone mythology for CMT and GAC.

Speaking of "Roger And Me," there was an interesting piece in the Times the other day about how Flint wants to condense its mostly barren 75 neighborhoods in 34 square miles into just a few neighborhoods to save money on municipal utilities, etc., and bulldoze the rest and reforest it. The mayor and city council members are proposing to offer that the city relocate to bigger homes residents who are still hanging on in doomed 'hoods.

Heard the Flatlanders' great Guthrie-flip-flopping recession song "Homeland Refugee" on an actual commercial radio station today (an Adult Alternative station, but still), which means it now officially qualifies as a 2009 country single by my definition (even if it's quite possibly not being played anywhere else -- in Austin, the Flatlanders count as a local band). Still haven't heard "High Cost Of Living" on the radio even once, fwiw. Also heard Pat Green's "What I'm For" for the first time on the radio today; sounded real good segued into a a live Merle "Okee," then Confederate Railroad's "Trashy Women," which has got to be most bawdily sung male country hit of the past 20 years or so, with burlesque-grind lyrics about brazen broads to match.

Alabama singer-songwriter Mac McAnally's Wiki page informs that his connection to country music is basically that he had one top 20 country hit in 1983, four singles that charted between 62 and 72 country in the early '90s, and a guest spot on Kenny Chesney's chart-topping cover last year of his #70 1990 hit "Down The Road." Before he had any country hits, he had one pop hit -- "It's A Crazy World," #37 in 1977. Dave Marsh called him "typical self-pitying country-inflected singer-songwriter wheeze." Christgau called his '77 debut outspoken and compares him to Joe South and liked the rape-victim revenge song, but gives a B-. Anyway, bought his 1980 LP Cuttin' Corners for $1 at a thrift store yesterday, and it took me a couple listens, but I like it -- yeah, some James Taylor/Croce-type self-pity, but warmly and expressively sung, with memorable melodies and some clever wordplay and passably eccentric yacht-loungechair arrangements that remind me of Steely Dan sometimes. He tries bluegrass once, and a sort of Diddley-beat white light funk (somewhere in between the Dead and Dave Matthews maybe) a couple times, notably in "Party," which is about the Republicans and Democrats not constituing good enough choices for the 1980 presdiential election: "It takes a whole lot less to feed a donkey than an elephant/But a donkey he's more likely to forget." Not sure what he's getting at there, to be honest. Wonder if he wound up voting for Reagan, or who. Best song titles: "It's My Job" (about how songwriters can't complain but sometimes he still does), "Cuttin' Corners (Advanced Geometry)," "Trying To Make The Yellow Lights," and "California Is a Mental State," which sounds like "Jackie Blue" by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.

Actually think the album's better than my hacked-out description makes it sounds; I wasn't taking notes. Anyway, one reason I looked up McAnally's country credentials is that the LP doesn't sound especially country, except for the obvious hippie bluegrass move. So maybe country is something he crossed over to. Turns out he's later written lotsa hits, for Jimmy Buffett (who covered "It's My Job"), Steve Wariner, Alabama, Ricky Van Shelton, etc.

Just got done seeing John Rich and his vid at the end of Hannity. Fairly twisted, since
Hannity has always been typically right wing in his union workers hate. So all of a sudden he starts yapping about how heart-breaking Rich's video is with Kris K. getting fired and having a heart attack and all the money is being given to AIG but none for ... wait for it, the small business owners of America. Which should've provoked gales of laughter but didn't because it was time to cut away to the Geraldo Rivera show. Yeah, that vid's so about the small business owners of America who aren't getting any breaks.

Well, GM's doing small business these days, sales-wise, anyway. Unfortunately the MacHit written to go that's stayed with me is the one for Cletus Judd's Christmas album, "Rudolph The Alternative Lifestyle Reindeer." Stayed not cos it's so good or even bad, but truly out-of left(actually right, in this case)-field gratuitous (I hope some giggling adults, if any such there were, had to explain to their kiddies, but prob the latter had already absorbed such family values, at least on the playground, or behind the barn)(Where is ol CJ? I miss him. Last I heard, he'd decided to leave off the meds for bipolar, just leave it in the Lord's hands. Roky tried the same thing, and sometimes it's worked--but his condition doesn't seem to have been bipolar, judging by the DVD-extras documentary etc)

Like if Roky's tag read "schizophrenic," he might've gradually spontaneously remitted with age, as seems to have happened with John Nash(never made it through the movie of A Beautiful Mind, but the book is an awesome social map; read it about five times, and that never happens).

Noticed this on the R&B/Hip-Hop Song Chart this week: What, a New Orleans Bounce Rap cover of Gary Allan covering Vertical Horizon? Or just a remarkable coincidence?

78 NEW 1 Best I Ever Had, Drake
Not Listed (Not Listed ) Cash Money PROMO SINGLE | Universal Motown |

I actually thought Allan's version sounded pleasingly hair-metal last time I heard it on the radio, btw. Haven't heard Vertical Horizon's in a really long time; I assume it's a lot worse though.

Lex made this connection over on lj:

Do you know Bobbie Gentry's 'Fancy', btw? Struck me today - no idea why I didn't think of this earlier - that The-Dream's 'Fancy' is basically the same story taken up from a different character's viewpoint at a different point in time. (Destiny's Child's 'Fancy' could be the Greek chorus of the Moral Majority singing their disapproval.)

Lex is going to interview The-Dream in three weeks, and will ask him about it.

(More of the convo here.)

The order of how much I liked the seven '09 country albums (one of which I haven't mentioned here before, and deals with divorcing a Dixie Chick) I relistened to today (not what I would've predicted):

1. Collin Raye – Never Going Back (Time Life)
2. Pat Green – What I’m For (BNA)
3. The Boxmasters – Modbilly (Vanguard)
4. (Various) – The Man Of Somebody’s Dreams: A Tribute To The Songs Of Chris Gaffney (Yep Roc)
5. Charlie Robison – Beautiful Day (Dualtone)
6. Eric Church – Carolina (Capitol)
7. The Flatlanders – Hills And Valleys (New West)
8. Rodney Atkins -- It’s America (Curb)

Ballads on the Collin Raye album just sound like really pretty Eagles ballads in the background. I still haven't attended to their words yet.

Favorite non-single on Pat Green's album: "In This World."

Not entirely sure why the Rodney Atkins album is starting to fading on me -- Seems a little too four-square, somehow. Too normal. So I'm kinda not buying it. Though maybe that's only temporary, who knows.

The Flatlanders album seems increasingly beautiful.

(I meant eight albums not seven, obv. And "starting to fade on me." I should clearly go to bed.)

Robison's always struck me as smugly slack, except when he seemed like he wanted to strike somebody connected to the Biz. Called Austin the "velvet coffin" for musicians, and I've heard that before, it's a sweet trap for some (just sweet home for others, later for TrashVegas. but he gave it a shot, sorta. So cranky in interviews; hope he channeled that on into more-than-self-righteous songs, but not the ones I've heard, muttering in their sleep.

Oh yeah, I saw the Rich vid again, and thought the Kristofferson character might seem appropriate in a way unintended: like, some might say," Yeah, that's GM, a breakin'-down old man, and let's pull the plug"--especially since that's done in non-unionized places, before they work there long enough to be eligible for alll the benefits (hell, the cutoff point used to be just under a certain quota's first year, at a certain superstore, much less Kris's decades,courtesy of, yeah, the aforementioned evil unions--wonder what Rich thinks of those). Was already thinking along those lines before I heard an axpert on Public Radio's "Marketplace," making succinctly obvious points about GM closing down Pontiac, and not stretching resources too far--then he suddenly ran with/for the lifeboat analogy, and what if everybody gets some of the rations, but everybody's starving slowly, and--the host somoothly thanked and cut him off before he got to "Granpa's gotta go!" but we'll be hearing some of that spelled out, especially when Obama gets to Social Security this summer (although it might be a prob for Rush etc since the diehardcore conservatives aren't getting any younger)

See, there's the thing: the Republicans now stand for everything illogical, whacking people with union jobs, whacking Social Security, etc... And until Obama the parties constituents in those demographics illogically voted for policy makers most likely to smight them. But now thing's are different because you can't blame the huge holes blown in the economy on non-whites, homos, union men, and pro-abortionites. And everytime I see a newer country video there's this cognitive dissonance thing going on, that they now know they're nostalgia trip and white indentity rural mythology has been ripped apart, stomped on and brought close to destruction by, well, the "flag-wavers" and "America-love-it-or-leave-it" hypocrites who were in power for the last decade.

So John Rich has been on Hannity more than once but his sentiments, unless he's always drunk, nuts or both, make no sense in the context of that program. It's sort of like Erwin Rommel finding himself a national figure and stuck with the Third Reich goons hell-bent bent on self-destruction in 1944. In this case, the suicide pill is being Sean Hannity's pal.

I'm happy the country video people can still have their fantasies, videography and, after all, very nice tunes. But that stuff just doesn't look or wear good anywhere else right at the moment. Neither, however, does ol' Shakey. Really, a concept album about him making his flivver into an electric car. Or how 'bout Bruce, wha'do his tickets cost these days? And is he going to wash away all the pain with a stadium show?

Paste is streaming the new Dylan album. I'm listening as I catch up on this thread. First four songs are hard blues, hazy old pop, hazy blues, accordion roll. Sounds comfortable, though the Paste reviewer, who listened hard to the lyrics, didn't feel it was comfortable at all.

I'll check that out; think I sent you the RCRDLBL.com or however it's spelled of "Beyond Here Lies Nothing," didn't I? Sonically, seemed to be all about not, just the grain but the whisker of the voice "Every Grain of Sand," that's a good old Dylan song, from the 90s, isn't it?), with the band like a scoop of gumbo scudding around the steam table, and gumbo shouldn't lump enough to scoop like that, but it could've been my radio (since I still haven't listened to the mp3). But that doesn't mean the rest of it isn't good, anyway.

In 70s Guide, xgau called the Michael Stanley Band "Cleveland's answer to Pere Ubu."

Can't find this at robertchristgau.com. Also, since Pere Ubu are also Cleveland, I can't quite make sense of this statement.

It's not on his website because it's only in the "Distinctions Not Cost-Effective (Or: Who Cares?)" appendix of Xgau's '70s book. And since he obviously knows Ubu were from Cleveland, I always just took it as a silly joke -- and a fairly funny one, at that, even if it did let him off the hook from listening to Michael Stanley, who was good.

Marianne Faithfull's version of "Down From Dover." (Xgau gave the album a full A, which I'll have to hear to believe.)

Caitlin of Caitlin & Will seems to have the last name of "Lynn," and that's what their MySpace and her Twitter say, but I've also seen her referred to as Caitlin Fisher. Is that an earlier name? an alternate name? It's how CMT lists her on its Can You Duet clips.

I thought this was the best of their Can You Duet performances:

"Like We Never Loved At All"

Ah, Caitlin Lynn Fisher decided to shorten her stage name to Caitlin Lynn. (If you ask me, "Caitlin Lynn" is redundant, but nobody asked me. Maybe her full name is Caitlin Kate Lynn Fisher.) Also, she used to be ska-punk rock girl.

http://www.hometownglenburnie.com/news/mdgazette/2008/06/25-31

If I know absolutely *nothing* at all about pop country music, but have been given a CD featuring the songs "Last Name" by Carrie Underwood, and "Long Time Gone" by Dixie Chicks, and I find myself enjoying them quite a bit, what are 5 more songs along these lines that I should purchase from the iTunes store?

Speaking of "Roger And Me," there was an interesting piece in the Times the other day about how Flint wants to condense its mostly barren 75 neighborhoods in 34 square miles into just a few neighborhoods to save money on municipal utilities, etc., and bulldoze the rest and reforest it. The mayor and city council members are proposing to offer that the city relocate to bigger homes residents who are still hanging on in doomed 'hoods.

xhuxk, not to get off topic, but this is a very interesting concept that's been slowly gaining ground in the industrial north (a.k.a. rust belt), where both of us grew up, I believe. (I'm originally from central New York.) A few years back the Cleveland Scene ran a piece on Youngstown's young, go-getting mayor who was elected, in part, on the concept of downsizing. His argument was this: The industrial north is never going to be what it once was, so instead of trying to revitalize a crumbling infrastructures, why not dissolve these cities and in essence, return them to their pre-WWII states? This idea is going to take years to test, but it is rather intriguing. At first, folks around the country laughed this guy off, but hey, nothing else has worked so why not?

Okay, back to country...

Well, the only thing wrong with the idea is that you have to have something for the people to do when you dissolve the city, or you just have 'em in a brokedown destitute less urban setting, like West Virginia or Schuylkill County, PA. Part of the problem has been the getting out of the business of making stuff, which was OK as long as you could make prices lower and lower by moving it all to China, picking up jobs as middlemen, and the credit and business bubble didn't
bust. So now global demand for goods, except necessities, is way down and no one to make anything in the US -- except weapons and high-end goods -- when some demand gradually comes back.

Yeah, I guess the real problem with the plan is long-term -- There are very good reasons that populations in cities like Flint have plummetted, and there's no good reason to think that trend won't continue; moving the remaining hangers-on into less abandoned neighborhoods isn't the same as creating work for them when the jobs they have now (assuming they're working) disappear. I'd be curious if there's some way to deal with that, in the plans being proposed by mayors in Flint and Youngstown. (I've spent nights in hotels in Youngstown -- it's the closest thing to a viable halfway point when you're driving from Philly or NYC to Detroit -- and it definitely had the hellhole feel of an industrial city that had seen better days.) The NYT piece (linked below) also mentioned Indianapolis and Little Rock:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/business/22flint.html?_r=1

As for George's post above about country music, like the Republican Party, representing (or feigning to speak for) a increasingly insignificant cultural segment that realizes its on its last legs by its own doing but needs somebody else to blame, I've been thinking that all year. It's possible the music's boxed itself into a corner. And, like I think Anthony suggested here last week, it's probably one reason that Nashville music isn't really resonating all that well right now. I assume a lot of people in Nashville know that the music has to somehow shed its small-tent-in-a-small-town mindset and prejudices, but I don't think country has really figured out how to do that, and I'm not really sure it will. Darius Rucker doesn't quite cut it. So know-nothing tea-party quasi-populism could be a natural way out, but that's hardly a long term plan either, and I'm not sure country as a whole has the stomach for it -- Toby seems to like Obama too much, and I have a feeling that Sugarland might too. Right now, the two biggest songs on the country chart -- Rodney Atkins' explicitly if accidentally bigoted "It's America" and "She's Country" by the seemingly not-too-bright Jason Aldean -- feel like dead ends to me, like something hanging on from an older era already, even though I basically like the Atkins album and I think Aldean stole a hot riff as usual. Though then again, it's not like pop or r&b or commercial rock sound notably more brilliant right now. And I probably listen to country radio in the car more than those other formats. But then I'm in its demographic, after all.

There's some potentially interesting movement further down the chart -- "High Cost of Living," which I'd assumed had stalled out, somehow climbed 40 to 39 to 35 in the past couple weeks. Seems like a textbook love-it-or-hate-it potential turn-the-station song to my ears; I wonder where it's getting played. And Love and Theft's "Runaway" is up to 38, after a couple weeks at 43. Lots of placements being shaken up at the bottom of the chart, too, though I'm not sure how good any of these are (and I don't expect they'd add up to anything, even if they were):

55 59 2 Dead Flowers, Miranda Lambert
F.Liddell,M.Wrucke (M.Lambert ) Columbia PROMO SINGLE | 55
56 NEW 1 Dreaming Love, Kate & Kacey
J.Stover (K.Coppola,K.Coppola,D.Myrick ) Big Machine DIGITAL | 56
57 NEW 1 Bobby With An I, Phil Vassar
P.Vassar (P.Vassar,C.Wiseman ) Universal South PROMO SINGLE | 57
58 NEW 1 Heart Like Memphis, Carter Twins
F.Rogers (B.Daly,A.Gorley,L.T.Miller ) CMT/Meteor 17 DIGITAL | CO5 | 58
59 NEW 1 Six-Foot Teddybear, Richie McDonald
J.Stroud,R.McDonald (R.McDonald,R.Harbin,P.Douglas ) Stroudavarious DIGITAL | 59
60 RE-ENTRY 2 She Never Got Me Over You, Mark Chesnutt
J.Ritchey (D.Dillon,K.Whitley,H.Cochran ) Big 7 DIGITAL | Lofton Creek | 60

Never heard of Kate & Kacey or the Carter Twins, and don't know when I'll have the energy to youtube them, though their names suggest more Can You Duet types. Never heard of Richie McDonald, either, but "Six-Foot Teddybear" is a pretty icky title.

"Last Name" by Carrie Underwood, and "Long Time Gone" by Dixie Chicks...what are 5 more songs along these lines

I don't want to ignore this question from Shannon, either (hi Shannon!), but I'm not sure where to go with it -- There have to be Sugarland or Shedaisy or Mindy McCready or Joe Dee Messina or Martina McBride or Taylor Swift songs that fit the bill, right? I'm just stumped right now about which ones they'd be...

assume a lot of people in Nashville know that the music has to somehow shed its small-tent-in-a-small-town mindset and prejudices, but I don't think country has really figured out how to do that, and I'm not really sure it will. Darius Rucker doesn't quite cut it.

Well, there's no reason to fail music just made to melodically make people happy. Staying away from the mythology and any deeper meaning or shibboleths... Anyway, Adkins' "Marry for Money" fits a long tradition, a good rip on "First I Look at the Purse," although much less frantic.
It will always be timeless.

And buying sex and booze ... those are still necessities of US life no matter your demographic.

But the "we drove giant pick-up trucks" shtick just seems stupid. Yeah, been layed off, am upside down on my auto loan. Hey, come to think of it, -that- is a great idea for a country song. Thing is, most of these current records were made when no one had any idea how fast problems would change the entire landscape, so they're not really to blame for being stuck with lyrically awkward material.

I'm not sure country as a whole has the stomach for it

Partly because, as much as I love a lot of what comes out of Nashville, it does tend to hedge its bets -- even on the right-wing side. Which might partially explain John Rich, besides the fact that I doubt even he knows what he really thinks. These guys probably understand that, if they swing too far to the right, especially now, they risk losing their audience share. So at least now, compared to the Republicans, country actually feels pretty moderate. And I'd love to see Tim McGraw or Pat Green or even Toby himself take on the Hannitys and Limbaughs in a song, but I'll be very surprised if it ever happens. But right, lyrics about getting laid off and having trouble paying bills seem like a no-brainer now. And maybe we'll start hearing more in coming months.

Adkins' "Marry for Money" fits a long tradition, a good rip on "First I Look at the Purse,"

Or "I've Come To Wive It Wealthily In Padua," from Kiss Me Kate.

Lotta lends naturally to country, especially in California. You can now easily wind up paying more in auto-insurance per year than yer car's actually worth if it's between 5-10 years old, depending on the model and your driving record. And you easily wind up being really downwardly mobile in living arrangment if you have to give up your house because of unemployment because -- no one -- in nicer areas will rent to anyone who's unemployed. Leading you to lie on your application or try to come up with a way to show fraudulent pay stubs or bank deposits.

One of the thing's common now is the daily demonstration that there's absolutely NO MERCY to be had in the American way of doing things, Barack Obama or not. It would take years of a president ramming through expansive agendas to get even a fraction of consideration back. For a country where the people think they're generous and giving, we're definitively ungenerous in practice and programmed to be that way on the mythology of taking personal responsibility.

I guess Pete Seeger had something going -- maybe country could identify with.

That said, I like Jessica Harp's slut rock number, "Boy Like Me," but I'll be damned if I know what it has to do with country other than it being on cable music video and having some country instrumentation appliques added to it like sequins.

If I know absolutely *nothing* at all about pop country music, but have been given a CD featuring the songs "Last Name" by Carrie Underwood, and "Long Time Gone" by Dixie Chicks, and I find myself enjoying them quite a bit, what are 5 more songs along these lines that I should purchase from the iTunes store?

Shannon, I'll take a shot at this. Basically, most of the teenpop-leaning country lasses are children of Natalie Maines, though I think they're far more comfortable with country's evangelical fundie leanings than Natalie ever was. Anyhow, five tracks I'd choose are:

Miranda Lambert "Down"
Little Big Town "Good As Gone"
Taylor Swift "Should've Said No"
Ashley Monroe "Satisfied"
LeAnn Rimes "Family"

OK, LeAnn's voice isn't remotely like Natalie's, but the track employs a similar strategy to "Long Time Gone"'s of using shack-in-the-woods plinks as a feint to set up what in its heart is hard rock.

A bonus #6 would be SHeDAISY's "Lucky 4 You (Tonight I'm Just Me)," which is Dixieish and hilarious but not along the lines of "Long Time Gone."

For Little Big Town, you'll have to accept Fleetwood Mac as among the roots of modern country, which they are, partly thanks to the Dixies.

And of course, I'd add the Dixie Chicks' "Lubbock Or Leave It" and Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats," the latter of which is Carrie's best song by several thousand miles.

For extra credit I recommend Aly & AJ's "Rush" and Jordan Pruitt's "Outside Looking In," neither of which are country but both feel relevant, somehow.

The Singles Jukebox takes on Caitlin & Will.

New Taylor Swift vid for "You Belong With Me"; on my lj I described it thus: "Band-nerd-in-glasses Taylor Swift employs venerable communication technology to snare boy next door, defeating her evil, popular, dark-haired double":

(Presumably Big Machine will whack that link sometime in the next few days; here's another, though it'll probably also fail to survive.)

(By the way, I didn't mean to imply that Miranda and Little Big Town are teenpop-leaning, though I wouldn't mind it if they were embraced by the wee ones. Basically I meant Taylor and Carrie.)

Caitlin & Will's mushy new ballad single about unsuccessfully attempting to mail a letter to a dead loved one is not nearly as good as their cheating-on-each-other song (which is indeed great. And it's been a while since a country couple hit with one of those, hasn't it? Except I have no idea if Caitlin & Will are a couple, in the romantic sense. Plus "Even Now" wasn't actually a hit, apparently. I do like how neither duo member seems physically attractive in any traditional American sense, however.)

I don't understand how CMT's Can You Duet works, but Caitlin & Will hadn't even met before the competition. They'd each showed up with different partners, the judges (or whoever) threw out the respective partners in Round One (or whatever) and I guess Caitlin and Will were assigned to each other.

As for their lack of traditional beauty, I love Rodney's response to this picture over on the Jukebox, "Wait… they look like an Evanescence reject and a short-order cook at a sub-Denny’s diner?":

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/9626/caitlinandwillgothandde.jpg

(And a new link for "Like We Never Loved At All.")

most of the teenpop-leaning country lasses are children of Natalie Maines

This inspires me to recommend this alternate list of five songs to Shannon, since today's teenpop-leaning country lasses are sort of children of these, too (whether they know it or not):

Mindy McCready, "Oh Romeo"
Faith Hill, "Wild One"
Rebecca Lynn Howard, "Pink Flamingo Kind Of Love"
Alecia Elliott, "I'm Diggin' It"
Meredith Edwards, "The Bird Song"

Honorable mentions/Extra credit:
Jessica Andrews, "You Go First"
Possibly something by Cyndi Thompson (though I'm not sure which song I'd pick)

Caveat: I don't think any of these sound as hard rock as Carrie's "Last Name"* or as bluegrass as the Dixie Chicks' "Long Time Gone." But I feel they are somehow in the same neighborhood, wherever that is.

* -- Well, actually, "I'm Diggin' It" might. But it's got more funk and bubblegum in it, which might counteract the hard-rock feeling for some people.

(Shania Twain probably belongs here someplace, too.)

I also want to note that, in the car yesterday, I heard Dierks Bentley's "Sideways" within ten minutes of Paul Wall's "Sittin' Sideways" (on different stations, unfortunately) and liked them both pretty much exactly the same as each other. (But I didn't like either of them nearly as much as "Bizzy Body," Paul Wall's current single featuring Webbie and Mouse, which gains likeability points by reminding me why I used to like the Ying Yang Twins so much.)

Thanks a lot, Frank and Xhuxk.
I'll start digging around and report back!

Cool, Shannon! One more caveat, though, before you start spending your money: A couple of the songs I named (definitely the Alecia Elliott one, and maybe the Rebecca Lynn Howard and Meredith Edwards ones too) are also much emotionally lighter -- more giddy fun, less intense -- than "Long Time Gone" or "Last Name" (or most of the tracks Frank named, for that matter.) But they're still good! Hope you like them.

Actually, come to think of it, this might be way more along the line of what you're looking for:

Ashton Shepherd, "Takin' Off This Pain"

But that's already a whole lot of songs to sift through, between Frank's recommendations and mine.

But what the heck, how about more? Here are the six songs that pandora.com calls "similar" to "Long Time Gone" (none of which I can vouch for one way or the other):

Dolly Parton, "Marry Me"
Alison Krauss, "Doesn't Have To Be This Way"
Alison Krauss, "Don't Follow Me"
Alison Krauss, "The Lucky One (Live)"
Donna Hughes, "Bottom Of A Glass"
Donna Ulisse, "Gone"

And here are the six songs pandora.com claims are similar to "Last Name", ha ha:

Taylor Swift, "You Belong With Me"
Taylor Swift, "Fearless"
Taylor Swift, "Teardrop On My Guitar (Acoustic Version)"
Taylor Swift, "Picture To Burn"
Taylor Swift, "Love Story"
Taylor Swift, "Breathe"

On a related topic, here is Metal Mike Saunders, via email:

as pop songwriter gaga is a MAAAJOR talent. her and taylor swift are 100 miles beyond anyone else in this country i've heard in eons. (the melody line in Love Story is somethnig i've never heard in my entire life -- just 3, sometimes 4 notes back and forth through the whole chorus while the chords proceed in a pre-beatles C-Am-F-G type chord progression) (the one it took new wave/ramones to bring back from the musical undead zone of "uncool," 12+ whole years later).

taylor's current routine of "write some songs, go in and record em on your day/weekend off; repeat; repeat" is classic pre-album rock. (the 4 songs / one session method of producing 1 or 2 future singles back then, THEN pad out the "album tracks" as needed later).

Anybody heard these? (I have gotten real lazy about youtubing, so maybe somebody can youtube them for me)

51 1
Henry Cartwright's Produce Stand, Trent Tomlinson
L.Reynolds,T.Tomlinson (T.Tomlinson,D.Wells,M.Kerr ) Carolwood PROMO SINGLE | 51

55 NEW 1 Foot Stompin', Davisson Brothers Band
D.Hanner,B.D.Willis,D.Grau (D.Davisson,C.Davisson ) CharTunes DIGITAL | Yell | 55