Rolling Country 2013

Well, the guests are good, JJ doesn't get in the way, the production is appropriately eerie---for the gently twisted themes, the touch of Miss Havisham and "A Rose For Emily", the candles still lit at the table, by the bed, in the museum of love and music---the songs, incl ones unheard even by xgau and certainly by me, are now at hand. I really should track down Jeanie Seely etc, but this works on its own. And I'm not nec. awed by Great Old Man shit: not by Nelson & Price's Run That By Me One More Time, Nelson Haggard & Price's Last of the Breed, or even From Lefty To Willie (should listen to that one again, prob all of 'em).

I don't know if "Don't Rush" is a direction for Kelly Clarkson or just a blip. She was confused and feckless on her last two albums, the wrong big blast of this person's and that person's pop rock. And now here she is in '70s middle-of-the-road warmth and pain, and the richness of her pipes returns.

otm. I listened to this quite a lot during the holidays.

I actually found the cavalcade of legendary guests annoying, too -- The kind of self-important grandstanding that generally hits me as fishing for a Grammy, and all the more disjointed to listen to because of it. But different strokes, obviously. Maybe it would've clicked if I'd spent more time with it; just seemed like there were more interesting, less stodgy records out there to focus on. For me, at least, Lionel Richie re-inventing his own songs as country (which I still wound up deciding was too spotty and redundant for my Scene ballot) seemed way more useful and fun. Liked Lionel's singing more, too.

I somehow completely forgot about that---not much promotion, or just me? Will check. I meant To Lefty From Wiilie o course, but would check From Lefty To Willie, especially if recently recorded...

Just you -- and country radio. According to Billboard it sold 1.07 million copies in 2012 -- ninth biggest selling album of the year in the U.S. overall, and fourth biggest selling country album (behind Swift, Underwood, and Luke Bryan.) Album went #1 country, but exactly zero singles off it hit the country chart. Figure that out.

Oops, sorry, my bad -- "Deep River Woman" feat. Little Big Town got all the way to #60 country. For one whole week.

with Cochran's one-time wife Jeannie Seely being the greatest exemplar in my book of Cochran's tunes

Edd, I'm guessing you're being figurative here, but the first time I glanced at this I was excited to think you had a book out.

Alfred, I do think Kelly Clarkson's "Einstein" was a good little go-fuck-off pop tune that got lost amid her duller elephant stomping.

Edd, I don't own a telly, so I've never seen Hayden in actin'. Back in her teenpop days she was a strong voice with no personality. Might have just been a problem with material, in that it didn't have personality, not even a generic one. Pleasing melodies would have been a help.* Her voice was too predictable, rising where you'd expect a rise, wailing where you'd expect a wail. A lot of fly balls to short right field, none falling in for hits. Whereas "Undermine" is a sharp line drive through the gap. Swings and connects on the first pitch.

*I never made it to any album tracks, though, so I don't know if there's anything ace hidden somewhere.

Frank, thanks. Hayden's character is, along with Deacon's, the most interesting in the Nashville show. My colleague at the Nashville Scene, Adam Gold, has been doing a good weekly wrapup of the show for Rolling Stone. I'll check out "Undermine." Some commas would've made my comment above re Seely a bit less ambiguous; no book, but I am working on getting a country column for the Scene underway this month, hoping it'll begin running w/ Himes' country poll. Working title for it is "Between My House and Town," the title of a pretty obscure George Jones Musicor-era tune (one of the Jones recordings that proves, vocally, he was just as pop as he was country, if you ask me, hardly any flourishes at all, sung straight except for a little shiver at the end that is a lot like what Jerry Lee or Gary Stewart would've done, only not as well.) But I digress: As for the Scene poll, I predict either Jamey or Dwight will top it, with Iris DeMent running a close second.

upcoming country:
Katie Armiger Fall into Me Jan. 15
Darius Rucker True Believers Capitol Nashville Jan. 22
Gary Allan Set You Free MCA Nashville
The Mavericks In Time Jan. 28
Tim McGraw Two Lanes of Freedom Big Machine Feb. 5
Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison Cheater's Game Feb. 12
Greg Bates s/t Republic
Paisley Wheelhouse April 9
LeAnn Rimes Spitfire Curb April 30
Randy Rogers Band Trouble April 30

I Am Jaida Dreyer--Canadian singer who wrote "Fall for Me" for Sunny Sweeney. Charted a couple of tunes--#55 and #57, says here--last year: "Guy's Girl" and Confessions." Don't think I ever heard either one of them.

and Kristofferson, Randy Houser, Emmy Rossum have records set for release in first half. I've never heard a Kristofferson album that was even listenable, let alone notable, so whatever.

There's also a new Ashley Monroe album (Like A Rose) slated for March 5.

And a new Dale Watson album (El Rancho Azul) January 29, though he seems to becoming (or maybe he's always been) one of those guys who churns out one album after another so quickly that it feels like a chore to even try to keep up. (Also plays in bars here in Austin at least every other week, seems like. Probably I should go see him sometime. But I have definitely seen his fancy tour bus a few times, parked in a residential neighborhood adjacent to ours, when I've been out on a bike ride.)

Xhuxk, I remember seeing Dale Watson in Colorado a few years back--always puts on a good show in his Buck Owens-esque mode. Every once in a while he records something that seems a bit better than his average...I guess the one I do occasionally go back to is From the Cradle to the Grave, 2007, with "You Always Get What You Always Got" a nice track, written by Chris Scruggs and his mother, Gail Davies, along with Chuck Mead, the main guy in BR549 and a pretty decent kinda post-Buck/Beatles/Stiff Records kind of Nashville power pop guy. I didn't vote for Old Crow Medicine Show this year because I basically can't stand them, and I saw them on stage this year and really disliked it intensely, but Mead and Gary Bennett opened up for them in the re-formed BR549 and I thought they sounded pretty great, more Beatles Kountry than I remembered them. But I do like Old Crow and Marley's Ghost and Jack Clement's take on "It's All Over Now" on Marley's Ghost's Jubilee, not bad at all. Old Crow strikes me as really uninflected hootenanny stuff that seems lifted from Public Domain, but maybe I need to go back and listen again...

Words I used to describe that Dale Watson album on Rolling Country 2007 (I just checked): "leaden," "ponderous," "dreary," "dull," "Johnny Cash type atmosphere." Which is to say, I didn't like it much, at least at the time. The one I did like (made by Nashville Scene and came real close to my Pazz & Jop ballot, if I remember correctly) was his previous one, Whiskey Or God, from 2006 -- which actually had a sense of humor and sense of energy to it that I haven't heard him match since. Though, as I say above, I've become less motivated to keep up with the guy.

Xhuxk, yeah, Dale Watson is just fairly high up in my retro-country category, and the "psychological" country-trauma songs on From the Cradle were just kinda lame. that tune I mention just has the best guitar lick and hook on that record, kinda even uptempo. But if he had gone for novelty-Cash a la "The Frozen Four Hundred Pound Fair-to-Middlin' Cotton Picker" or Dave Dudley/Del Reeves/Sovine truckers' country throughout, maybe that woulda been a good covers album.

Unlike Jamey Johnson, and you know, it's kinda funny to imagine Jamey doing Del Reeves or Dudley or Jim Nesbitt (author of "Truck Drivin' Cat with Nine Wives"). but if you're gonna give the People back '60s country, that's a big part of what it was. But the big time stuff wasn't like that, they went for the Hank Cochran-level, commercial, songs, except it was done in that streamlined, studio-tooled Nashville way and respected your intelligence, more or less, without being so solemn about that whole thing.

Anyway, people think stuff like Watson is "real country," and OK. but Dale never appeared on his own Del Reeves Country Carnival '60s TV show in a leisure suit looking like Jerry Reed fused into Dean Martin, and singing his truckin' hits and "Gentle on My Mind" for variety.

You can see that all done better any nite of the week on Lower Broadway via the Don Kelley Band, Nashville's hottest-pickin' country retro truckin' Buck-in covers aggregation.

Yeah, the mid-60s interplay between country, esp. Southwestern, and British Invasion was appealingly suggested, not too heavy-handed, on 3 Pears, at least as I heard it, and I think Yoakam, in a recent World Cafe interview. mentioned Buck Owens as a constant inspiration over the years. Speaking of Beatles Kontry, always liked their version of "Act Naturally", which led me to other thangs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnyzOl5-P2k

Watson's voice and material begged comparison to Cash on that '07 album, and he seemed too pleasant a fellow for the dark side: imagine what Cash could have made of "Yellow Mama", about Alabama's old faithful 'lectric chair (named for the yellow streak along the cracked center of its seat). Agree that if he stuck to the novelties etc, would have fared better. Nobody should try to be so much like Cash, Dylan, Miles, Joyce, etc. Geniuses/indelible stylists are a pain that way.

Edd, I've a couple of Jeanie Seely LPs I've picked up over the years which never made a huge impression on me, though I remember liking them well enough - I'll give them another go. Any particular recommendations for records of hers to look for? Similarly, any Jody Miller recommendations?

Speaking of Swift--from OK, Is This The Worst Piece of Music Writing Ever?

this isn't about the camille paglia piece specifically but about this amazingly stupid junior high school paper-level response to it in LAist

http://laist.com/2012/12/06/camille_paglia_rips_hollywood_a_new.php
text:
Camille Paglia isn't known for being polite or couching her feminist arguments in niceties. In an opinion piece for The Hollywood Reporter, she keenly rips Taylor Swift and Katy Perry brand spanking new assholes, calling the singers "insipid" and "bleached-out" and saying that they and their ilk are ruining things for young women.

The piece itself is a little scattered, beginning by talking about how Perry and Swift are so bland as to vault feminism back about 60 years, then moving on to talk about how young middle-class white girls have sex these days without being considered rebellious, and wrapping up by saying that there aren't enough roles in Hollywood for older women in their 40s and 50s.

But in between all that, Paglia makes the correct point that watered down performers like Swift and Perry don't provide particularly interesting role models for girls, insofar as they seem to be more reflections of what society wants them to be than expressions of their own true selves.

The only catch? There are always artists like Perry and Swift out there, and they will probably never go away.

See, not everyone is a Camille Paglia. Some people take their music cookie-cutter because they are cookie-cutter themselves. And here's the thing -- that's OK. Just like not everyone will grow up to be a lawyer or a doctor, not everyone has the eclectic taste of a punk rocker, or a hip-hop head, or a connoisseur of electronic music.

In other words, some people like bland because they are bland. Writing a takedown piece of stars like Perry and Swift, who are harmless for all intents and purposes, just seems kind of unnecessary.

original Paglia piece here:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/taylor-swift-katy-perry-hollywood-398095

Seems like Swift's ever-massing target audience identify with Swift as somebody bursting out of the cocoon, fighting the good and necessary fight as each and every girl-to-woman does, regardless of Feminism-per-se's landmark victories. Paglia and her critic should see this as the obvious pitch, whether they like the songs or not. Dunno wtf deal is w Perry.

― dow, Friday, December 7, 2012 5:46 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

she has a dazzling smile

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, December 7, 2012 5:50 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The 93 writers from all over North America who voted in the 13th annual Country Music Critics’ Poll named Eric Church Artist of the Year, Singles Artist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year. Jamey Johnson’s “Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran” was voted the year’s Best Album, followed by albums by Dwight Yoakam, Iris DeMent and Kellie Pickler. Kacey Musgraves was named the Best New Act.

There are other winners: Little Big Town scored the #5 album and the #2 single and were voted best group. Miranda Lambert, last year’s big winner, was voted Best Female Vocalist and the #5 and #9 best singles. Jason Aldean was voted Best Live Act and the #4 Artist of the Year. Taylor Swift, the #3 Artist of the Year, was the subject of much discussion in the accompanying essay and voters’ comments. Johnny Cash has the #1 and #8 Best Reissues.

The issue will go live at this link tomorrow morning:

http://nashvillescene.com/nashville/from-eric-church-to-jamey-johnson-2012-found-country-music-in-a-holding-pattern-and-searching-for-role-models/Content?oid=3230383

Anybody heard the new Rimes album? So glad "Borrowed" came out just in time for my Singles.

Country Poll results out today. Puttin up pt. 1 here, thru Reissues...

no surprises for me at the top. Americana takes up a lot of the bottom half, from Kelly Hogan to Carolina Drops to Shovels and Rope, Miller/Lauderdale, Old Crow. Justin Earle. Marty Stuart? Alan Jackson. Rodney Crowell. good, quality artists...Jerrod Niemann at #24....

Albums

1. Jamey Johnson, Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran (Mercury)

2. Dwight Yoakam, 3 Pears (Warner Bros.)

3. Iris DeMent, Sing the Delta (Floriella)

4. Kellie Pickler, 100 Proof (19/BNA)

5. Little Big Town, Tornado (Capitol)

6. Taylor Swift, Red (Big Machine)

7. Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives: Nashville, Volume 1: Tear the Woodpile Down (Sugar Hill)

8. Alan Jackson, Thirty Miles West (EMI)

9. Jason Aldean, Night Train (Broken Bow)

10. Rodney Crowell and Mary Karr, Kin: Songs by Mary Karr and Rodney Crowell (Vanguard)

11. Zac Brown, Uncaged (Atlantic/Southern Ground)

12. Kip Moore, Up All Night (MCA Nashville)

13. The Time Jumpers, The Time Jumpers (Rounder)

14. Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leaving Eden (Nonesuch)

15. Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, Wreck & Ruin (Sugar Hill)

16. Dierks Bentley, Home (Capitol)

17. Justin Townes Earle, Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now (Bloodshot)

18. Don Williams, And So It Goes (Sugar Hill)

19. The Avett Brothers, The Carpenter (Universal Republic)

20. (tie) Corb Lund, Cabin Fever (New West)

20. (tie) Lionel Richie, Tuskegee (Mercury)

22. Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, Buddy and Jim (New West)

23. Willie Nelson, Heroes (Legacy)

24. Shovels and Rope, O' Be Joyful (Shrimp)

25. Carrie Underwood, Blown Away (19/Arista)

26. Jerrod Niemann, Free the Music (Arista)

27. Kelly Hogan, I Like To Keep Myself in Pain (Anti-)

28. Jason Eady, AM Country Heaven (Underground)

29. Old Crow Medicine Show, Carry Me Back (ATO)

30. John Fullbright, From the Ground Up (Blue Dirt)

Singles

1. Eric Church, "Springsteen" (EMI Nashville)

2. Little Big Town, "Pontoon" (Capitol)

3. Kacey Musgraves, "Merry Go 'Round" (Mercury)

4. Alan Jackson, "So You Don't Have To Love Me Anymore" (EMI)

5. Miranda Lambert, "Over You" (RCA)

6. Eli Young Band, "Even If It Breaks Your Heart" (Republic Nashville)

7. Pistol Annies, "Takin' Pills" (Columbia)

8. Carrie Underwood, "Blown Away" (19/Arista)

9. Miranda Lambert, "Fastest Girl in Town" (RCA)

10. Don Williams, "I Just Come Here for the Music" (Sugar Hill)

11. Band Perry, "Better Dig Two" (Republic Nashville)

12. Chris Young, "Neon" (RCA)

13. Dierks Bentley, "Home" (Capitol)

14. Brad Paisley, "Southern Comfort Zone" (Arista Nashville)

15. Hunter Hayes, "Wanted" (Atlantic)

16. Taylor Swift, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" (Big Machine)

17. Josh Turner, "Time Is Love" (MCA Nashville)

18. Taylor Swift featuring The Civil Wars, "Safe & Sound" (Big Machine)

19. Ashley Monroe, "Like a Rose" (Warner Bros.)

20. Jamey Johnson and Alison Krauss, "Make the World Go Away" (Mercury)

Reissues

1. Johnny Cash, The Complete Columbia Album Collection (Columbia/Legacy)

2. Various artists, Country Funk 1969-1975 (Light in the Attic)

3. Flatlanders, Odessa Tapes (New West)

4. Waylon Jennings, Goin' Down Rockin': The Last Recordings (Saguaro Road)

5. Jerry Reed, Unbelievable Guitar & Voice of Jerry Reed/Nashville Underground (Real Gone)

6. Hank Williams, The Lost Concerts (Time Life)

7. Woody Guthrie, Woody at 100 (Smithsonian Folkways)

8. Johnny Cash, Bootleg Vol. IV: The Soul of Truth (Columbia/Legacy)

9. Various artists, Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard (Tompkins Square)

10. Mel McDaniel, Baby's Got Her Blue Jeans On: His Original Capitol Hits (Real Gone)

Who are these people? Likely I'd like any of them? (I'd look 'em up myself, but I'm lazy, plus I want opinions not facts.)

13. The Time Jumpers, The Time Jumpers (Rounder)
24. Shovels and Rope, O' Be Joyful (Shrimp)
28. Jason Eady, AM Country Heaven (Underground)
30. John Fullbright, From the Ground Up (Blue Dirt)

One of them almost has the same last name as me!

I finally got Church's Carolina, from which I'd only heard "Smoke a Little Smoke." It's damn solid – the guy's been consistent.

and in reissues...that Mel McDaniel one slipped past me and that's got to be good.

Country Funk is one I gotta get. Good selection of stuff, not all that country, but good.

Tim, the Seely Greatest Hits on Monument is the place to start. It's probably easier to find the original LP than the '93 CD these days. but her masterpiece is Thanks, Hank! with songs written by...Hank Cochran, her husband at the time. But you know, despite the cover versions of "Harper Valley P.T.A." and "Wichita Lineman" (but Seely actually does a definitive version of "Dreams of the Everyday Housewife" on 1968's Little Things), all her Monument LPs are worth hearing, high-grade shit: The Seely Style, I'll Love You More, Little Things, Jeannie Seely, and then the '72 Jeannie Seely's Greatest Hits, on Monument. On MCA I like the album Can I Sleep in Your Arms/Lucky Lady, really good late-era novelty-soul country, and she's in a bed in a barn on the cover and looking her sultriest. And for what it's worth, one of her biggest successes was the 1970 single with Jack Greene, "Wish I Didn't Have to Miss You," which for updated '66 Beatles guitar move and giant hook is hard to beat.

Tim, as for Jody Miller, the best single LP she made is probably The Nashville Sound of Jody Miller, 1969, I believe. she was maybe known as a singles artist, with her "King of the Road" riposte, "Queen of the House," but the album of the same title is real good almost-country of the '60s. I've found just about all her Epic Billy Sherrill-produced LPs here for practically nothing in good shape. Depending on your taste for almost-schlock country morphing into the mechanized '80s, you may really like Miller's 1977 Here's Jody Miller, Nashville Kraftsmen at work. I think it's pretty great. another one that shows her pop range and somewhat surprising taste in material is '76's Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. Recorded in Nashville, strings by Bergen White, horns arranged by Bill Mcilhiney, the guy who played one of the trumpets on Cash's "Ring of Fire" or something. dunno if she's on CD in any significant way or not.

Xhuxk, the Time Jumpers are a western-swing boogie-jam band, revivalists. Kenny Sears is the main guy, a fiddler, and Hoot Hester has been a member, I believe Vince Gill is now? Shovels and Rope: here's my 2011 Nashville Scene critics' pick on them:

"Cary Ann Hearst possesses a country voice with a built-in bluesy ache, and she writes songs as if she instinctively knows the difference between wasting her gifts and selling out. She's a big talent, as evidenced on the 2008 full-length release Shovels & Rope, a collaboration with husband and musical partner Michael Trent. Sounding desperate but loose about it, Hearst and Trent covered Charlie Feathers' "I Can't Hardly Stand It" in magnificently creepy fashion and wrote a few themselves. Shovels was a lo-fi affair guaranteed to appeal to No Depression listeners and other guardians of authenticity. Still, Hearst essayed some amazing girl-group pop on last year's Are You Ready to Die EP — the title track was worthy of Jackie DeShannon. Touring under the Shovels & Rope moniker, Hearst and Trent make beautiful, idiosyncratic music together: Their harmonies manage to sound both spectral and full-bodied."

actually, I still need to hear last year's Shovels and Rope, I guess, don't remember checking that one out.

Here's my Shovels & Rope preview, later pasted into RC 2012 and my Scene comments blogged on http://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com followed by RC 2012 comments on Fullbright, also adapted for Scene comments and the blog round-up:

Also like these guys I previewed; go see 'em:
Shovels & Rope are Americana singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalists Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, a committed couple who never settle down, or settle for less than true love and cheap thrills. 2012’s O Be Joyful tracks risky ramblers teaming up, learning the mixing and measuring of pleasures. Thrills-wise, when Hearst later calls, “Come down here and make some sense of it all,” she’s affectionately addressing someone known as Wrecking Ball. Appropriately so: after all, Hearst sent “Hell’s Bells” prowling through True Blood’s third season, and S&R’s sly, Southern Gothic beauty travels many a moonlit mile.

John Fullbright's From The Ground Up also has me evangelistic 'bout it. Call this wide open spaces/ex-dustbowl/Oil Age southern gothic or just past that. First song is like Randy Newman's "God's Song" and then some: He gives us the stuff to party with here, then He (or whoever's representing) got a hang over cure, if you can hang with that (party again, way out of or in the core of bounds). "Jerico" founds him heading east to find his destination all fallen down, but bury him in the vines, he wants to rise and be the trumpet sound all around the walls )which have to rise and fall again for him to do so). Oh, but he's a badass by day who prays at night, when the world disappears and he has to confront his fears, has an unmarked car, wants to keep things unscarred (or looking that way), only flies so far. some things are nowhere to be found, but that's not nec bad: he might want to be a rich man in a big house where he can't be found--rich or poor, no matter how loudly he testifies, is always ready to take off again. So many shadows, such appetite, eh "Fat Man" (caricature taking on a life of its own). Another for Miranda Lambert or LeAnn Rimes to consider, though the orig should be on the radio right now: "This is not reflection/Reflections are true/This is just me/Me wantin' you/Sweet silver mem'ries/Me wanting you", and the music starts another upward arc, then back to its perch, but as always (so far) with the talons to ride cows, whales, whatever you got. Strong, clean-cut voice; there's more to the boy next door than previously thought. Kid's got charisma, look out.

yeesh some typos on the caffeinated Fullbright, no wonder Himes didn't quote it ( except not really: when he used to quote me, he included the typos)

Any links to previous nashville scene country polls?

Try the previous ILM Rolling Country threads -- I'm guessing at least the past several would have a link to that year's poll, around this same time in January. (Whether the links are still active, though, is another question.)

thanks for the Shovels and Rope update, Dow.
link to last yr's Poll:
http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/in-a-year-ruled-by-miranda-lambert-and-her-pistol-annies-eric-church-and-hayes-carll-country-music-returns-to-taking-itself-a-little-less-se/Content?oid=2743147

Found in the vinyl bins:
Charley Pride The Best of RCA '69
From Me to You sealed '71 with "Piroge Joe"
Compton Brothers Yellow River
Jack Clement All I Want to Do in Life '78

Edd, the Jeannie Seely LP I have is "Little Things", which I've now dug out and am enjoying it very much, especially side two. Bits of the record remind me of the Sammi Smith Mega-era stuff I love so much. Thanks! I seem to be making fairly regular trips to the US these days and it's always good to have something to look out for.

Yeah, Sammi Smith! Also: it's good to have something vs. the cloying/pro forma salute to hometown values, but (from my blogged Scene ballot comments)
Kacey Musgraves, "Merry-Go-Round" : "If you don't have two kids by 21, you're done." The first line is the best, then conformity and distraction go down the hill, to fetch a point made over and over. The small town in the video looks pretty good when it's gliding by, reminding me of my Granny's town, with an actual walk-in movie theater, where I used to sit through all-day Western fests. Don't remember a frame, but now the place is an arts center: walk by and hear kids strumming, warbling, to karaoke and Garageband beats. Getting ready for talent shows, reality shows maybe, and one of these days, some of them just might want to be the next Kacey Musgraves. But if so, they're less likely to be fired up by this droning, heard-it-all, mostly we-meaning-yall "confessional", than, for instance, whatever she may do with "Undermine," which is very fine, when serving as the creative breakthrough for TV's young and restless Nashville pop-country starlet Juliette Barnes, AKA Hayden Panettiere.

Yeah, McGraw had a much more potent antidote to the obligatory pandering:
More boldly cautious is the speculative survey taken by "The One Who Got Away." A long shot success, now everybody wants some, incl everybody in the once chilly hometown, Cub Scout leaders included. "Now you tuck your scars up under your dress, like an American girl", oh hell yes. No gilt-edged guilt, self-pity, lashing out, peacemaking, "closure", just flying round in the big room. And it's even a single!

Yeah, Dow the "what happened to my hometown" trope in country. Kenny Rogers and "20 Years Ago" at least 30 years ago, right?

I guess it's the Springsteen influence that is part of what Geoff is writing about in his Country Roundup.

I need to read it all again, but did take a look at it and the comments. Holly Gleason bemoans the the whole thing, another guy complains that Richard Thompson is English, but he's Americana. "Rootlessness" seems in there somewhere, and also, the opposition between Good Influences in country and Bad Ones like Olivia Newton-John. Frank's question about the split in the audience, between Taylor Swift Country and Real Country, or however you break that down, gets at it pretty well. I think country music left Jones, Kitty Wells, Billy Sherrill, and those guys behind a loong time ago, myself.

theNashville show lays it out better than anything in the Scene poll. the young thing, the pop star, is really the one searching for authenticity. she has the mom in rehab, the shoplifting, all the things poverty and provincial Southern life can do to you. She sees the snooty Nashville family--they woulda hated Webb Pierce and George Jones but maybe liked Jim Reeves, back in the olden days in Nashville, and their social anxieties and piety have blinded them to more bracing aspects of popular culture--for what they are, leaves it all at the altar. Reyna James is just the old-time, good old, half-facing-forward half-back '80s and '90s country, a big old girl with a way with middle-class heartbreak.

What little "Americana" there is in the show is in the songwriting team--where do they end up but Austin, where whats-his-name meets his brother as the prison gates roll open. As Dow says, everyone has scars, everyone needs "closure," therapy--the pressures of even small-town life in America are immense, everyone knows someone who got shot at the mall. Everyone has a daughter who left Alabama for Seattle and Denver, and won't come back as long as her gun-toting father keeps that handgun in the house, or continues to support the Republicans.

The old stuff--Tompall Glaser and Harlan Howard's 1966 hit song for Bobby Bare, "The Streets of Baltimore," gets it back when American industry was more important than Information Moving or Finance--says some of the same things at a less complicated level.

I may not make the time to read any poll essays this year, and I'm just skimming the Scene comments, but was delighted to see Anthony Easton, in wondering about how "Pontoon" snuck up on him with its appeal, saying, "it's mostly the craft." If it were you saying this, Don, I'd know the pun was deliberate. I can't tell with Anthony.

I'd say the divergence I was talking about wasn't between Taylor Country and Real Country (no matter how ironically those terms are meant), but between the country market and Taylor, a divergence I hadn't seen in the past; though maybe there was something of a drift during Speak Now.

Jiyoon and Gayoon of the great K-pop girl group 4minute are billing themselves as 2YOON and have just released a country-dance-pop (or something) EP called Harvest Moon. I'll report back when I hear it. In the meantime, there's the single, "24/7," which forapper over on K-pop 2013 calls a mess -- certainly has more of a mashup sensibility than a country sensibility. The first vocals you hear are a rap. My thumb is wavering but in the up direction. Jiyoon's climbing-and-falling wail in the prechorus is the best part (shows up first at 0:28 thru 0:33), though I'd more likely envision Robert Plant singing it than Miranda Lambert. There's a teaser with a very problematic cultural stereotype that unfortunately I find funny (and sounds more like Steppenwolf than Hank Williams). I'm sure 2YOON dance better than any of their country or rock counterparts.

I would like the EP to be great, so that on next year's ballot I can list Shinsadong Tiger, Kim Da Hoon, and Lee Sang Ho as Country Music's Three Best Songwriters Of 2013.

(xhuxk, you've got a Shinsadong Tiger song on your 2012 P&J ballot.)

The great thing about McGraw's song is he (or "you", who may be trans, with the line about having scars and being the American Girl, tho basically he's stoically talking about the price and process of success) refuses closure, unless it can mean confirmation: he doesn't sound surprised to see all the people who treated him like shit now cheering him on and swarming around him.

Having now listened to Harvest Moon, and done some searching for writer and producer credits, I discover that (1) no songs other than "24/7" even remotely pretend to be country, (2) I actually couldn't find any producer credits, but if Shinsadong Tiger and Kim Da Hoon had anything to do with the thing (as some Hallyu website claimed, but which I now doubt), it would be as producers, since they're not in the writers and arrangers credits that someone posted on Omonatheydidnt. Not that I necessarily trust such information, but my ears certainly don't hear anything of the quality of "Lovey-Dovey" or "Trouble Maker" or "TTL." There is a pretty good lite-metal power ballad, "Why Not," written by Thomas Troelsen and Remee, a couple of Danes who've done good work with SHINee and SNSD and Corbin Bleu and f(x), and also by Robbie Nevil, who as a singer did music that I've utterly forgotten but that other people like and as a writer had a hand in many of the worst of the High School Musical tracks, all of this being neither here nor there for Rolling Country. Also, while I'm still being somewhere but not here or there, Lars Aass and Ole Henrik Antonsena, a couple of Norwegians, are on the credits of "Black Swan," the third of the three good songs (out of five) on here, and they once helped M2M write "Everything You Do." And one of the two M's - Marit Larsen - went on to have occasional countryish moments including my country track of the year in 2006, not that that's relevant to 2YOON.

Which leaves us with "24/7," which is rolling in country signifiers and instrumentation while still doing a fine job of feeling K-pop and not country. It stomps along, it wails, it grins. It is resolutely and deliberately silly, but with a serious theme, and I quote (though I'm not sure whom I'm quoting): "The title track of the mini album, '24/7,' is about pulling ourselves out of the monotonous routines that we go through 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in order to seek a free, exciting life. It is a song that has an exciting intro and fun atmosphere. It combines the liveliness of country-pop with Gayoon's high notes and Jiyoon's powerful singing into a wonderful harmony." The video has a hen, a chicken, a pig, a mechanical bull, and a boombox. So, funny hunny as usual in the land down south of the 38th parallel. The track doesn't have the how-did-he-pull-that-all-together amazingness that Lee Sang Ho seemed to be going for, in imitation I'm guessing of his colleague Shinsadong Tiger. But my thumb is veering up to match my gullible smile, about a 6 or a 7.

Oh, the mechanical bull is actually a mechanical sheep, unless it's a bull in sheep's clothing.

Do mechanical sheep dream of the beautiful shepherdess, who plays the gatta, bagpipe of her native Galicia?
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/19/169639816/a-bagpipe-slinging-spaniard-finds-a-home-in-new-york-jazz

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/01/17/cristianapato_nimg_7966_wide-d8e27c2404aa3f64c66a0b70d6bd05135e637a8f-s4.jpg

Musically and video-wise, "24/7" is pretty agreeable, but not hardly country at all. A long article about K-pop may still be on the New Yorker site--I'm tempted to call it in-depth, but don't know if anybody who knew anything about the subject would agree.

New York City has a country station for the first time in 17 years:
http://www.nashfm947.com/about/

awright! Sounds good, thanks.

Jewly Hight on Gary Allan in Nashville Scene. Make sure to read the comments on Jewly's comparison of Allan to Neil Young.

who plays the gatta, bagpipe of her native Galicia.
It's spelled gaita, Don. .

(Knew something seemed familiar about the boom-claps in "24/7." Subdee points out that there's more than a passing resemblance to Hannah Montana's "Hoedown Throwdown" -- though boom-clap aficionados will notice that, while Hannah goes "Boom boom clap, boom de-clap de-clap," 2YOON go "Boom clap, boom-b-boom clap." Think 2YOON provide more juice overall.)

That Nash FM website is a catastrophe.

How so? I'm listening to it now, still sounds OK (clear sound, typical contemporary country programming, minus OD of commercials on my local stations)

OK thanks. Rhapsody actually lists the label as TuneCore, whatever that is (one of my top 10 P&J singles, a Southern Soul song, has the same label listed), but I'm going to take your word for it and assume that opens up a slot on my Top 100 for something non-Musgraves. ("See You Again" didn't make my Nashville Scene ballot anyway actually.)

tunecore is the most prominent of the services that lets any artist or label self-distribute ther work to online services. it's mostly unsigned artists, but some smaller labels use it too (as well as a few bigger artists who are over the whole label thing). don't know if they have ther own label on the side. maybe some people who use them enter "tunecore" as their label 'cause they've got nothing else to put in that box.

A few more pretty-good-or-better singles I forgot to list above:

Lauren Alaina – Barefoot and Buckwild
Lee Brice - Parking Lot Party
Brandy Clark – Pray to Jesus (came out months before the album, lead cut on a 3-song, uh, TuneCore EP -- possibly a demo version)
Toby Keith – Hope On The Rocks
Mavericks – Back In Your Arms
Willie Nelson feat. Mavis Staples – Grandma’s Hands
Johnny Solinger – Rock n Roll Cowboy Man
George Strait - I Got A Car

As well as stuff already mentioned, I'm quite partial to the McAnally-penned "Fuzzy" by the Randy Rogers Band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NreVs1e4GM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_udpQffCt4Y

How do people feel about Eric Church's "The Outsiders"? AFAIK Al hates it, but that's all the talk I've seen about it.

So I relistened to Charlie Worsham's "Could It Be" and it drifted into the sunlight and off my list (though he does an okay cover of "Gangnam Style"). Working my way through your recommendations. Toby Keith sings best; Chris Stapleton sings worst but has the best song, and he'll probably get the nod for not disappointing me (in that I don't think I've heard anything else of his ever). I'll probably decide that "22" is country eligible (though it makes no effort to convince me it is). This still leaves one spot to fill, and I'll give these more of a chance. With Gary Allan I keep feeling "He's been there and done that," which I realize isn't much of an explanation for why I've gone meh on him recently, given that I regularly fall for freestyle and disco rehashes from South Korea.

Do u Spotify? I do, now that we don't have to sign in via Fecebook. I thought the same about Allan before hearing the whole album a couple times. But if you're not into albums, may not help (the whole Drinks After Work seems amazingly good so far, compared to my expectations, anyway).

The extra, self-written track on the new Keith album is pretty.

Pretty sure Stapleton is only the worst singer on those lists if you never got around to Solinger.

And Gwen Sebastian does an okay "The Fox" (as in "what does the fox say?"), actually.

And I might well not cringe at Sturgill Simpson so much if I didn't now live in Central Texas, where there is actually a "Texas country" station where every song sounds every bit as stodgy as he does. Fwiw, the one song in that style that might've made my single ballot if in fact it was a single is "Electric Bill" by Jason Boland (whose album was way too hard work to get all the way through otherwise, though I'm pretty sure I did once anyway.) Though admittedly there are plenty of songs in that style I haven't heard -- I've developed an increasingly low tolerance since moving here. (PS: I have no idea where Simpson is actually from, but judging from what I've heard he would fit right in.)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/perpetua/every-country-song-was-the-same-in-2013

Perpetua links to a Youtube mix made by an EW writer who likes Jason Isbell and Brandy Clark but mocks mainstream country cliches re trucks, dirt roads, and beer

Isbell and Clark have sung about all three, o course. Not spotting it now, but somebody on here favorably mentioned Kelly Willis & Bruce Robison's Cheater's Game---thanks so much! Lots of catchy contemplation, and it just now held its own on Spotify, even with laptop headphones vs. a very proximate boombox blasting a cathedralful of Christmas music. Also sounded real good beyond that battle, when I listened to the whole thing again. Any other album rec's? (Think I'm okay w singles).

My backhanded 800+-word defense of a few dumb (or maybe not) songs

http://www.rhapsody.com/blog/post/defending-bro-country

Thanks for that! I'll have to check out the whole Crash My Party when I have a little more time. Bryant seems like a romantic bastard, eh---and/or smart enough to know which side his beef gets the mustard on--guess some Southern boys really do learn to say "Thank you Ma'am" to Grace---judging by how truly fervent he sounds marching to "That's My Kind of Night" and getting (somewhut ride my prOny imagery at times but still sincerely) thrilled to see her drinking that "Beer In The Headlights", and gosh she can "Crash My Party" anytime, never mind another night with the boys. These are all a little too long for me, but they're not for me (anyway I'll listen more).
Lee Brice! "Ain't no party like the pre-party, And after the party is the after-party" is a true sing-along chorus, I have to give it up to that! Very cool range-wise to see it's only another song away from "I Drive Your Truck," a true fallen-bro (or maybe fallen Dad?) anthem, also very good to sing along to, for my own imaginary (much-missed) bro. The one in between is "Don't Believe Everything You Think," which is certainly good advice, even if the song itself is a corny how I met yore etc.
"Cruise (Remix" is fly when Nelly takes over, though I'm not thrilled by F-G's ownautotuned Mac and cheese. Sarah Buxton's on another track eh, I'll check 'em all.

garth brooks tributing billy joel with "allentown" and "goodnight saigon" at the kennedy center honors. kinda great.

Took me a month to catch up on year-end lists, but 2013 was a fine year in country. Stand outs for me were:

Kacey Musgraves - "Merry Go Round", "Keep It to Yourself", and "Follow Your Arrow"
Sturgill Simpson - "Life Ain't Fair and the World is Mean"
Ashley Monroe - "Like a Rose" and "Two Weeks Late"
Dean Brody feat. Lindi Ortega - "Bounty"
Brandy Clark - "Stripes"
Kelly Willis & Bruce Robison - "Leavin'"
Jason Isbell - "Elephant"
Guy Clark - "My Favorite Picture of You"
Kellie Pickler - "Buzzin'"
Pistol Annies - "Hush Hush" and "Don't Talk About Him, Tina"
The Band Perry - "DONE."
Caitlin Rose - "Only a Clown"
Patty Griffin - "Go Wherever You Wanna Go"

"Bounty" didn't get enough praise. Helluva song.

Thanks, and come on over to RC 2014 for more lists etc.