Big & Rich: Album of the Decade?

I went through and cut all his parts out of the album in protest. Then I threw out the rest of the album, too. Also, I shoplifted that album to begin with.

Oh, OK, so I never owned or listened to it, whatareyougonnado?

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-810844
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ho88VXJTBg

Wow, what a story.

really weird they don't reference the obvious debt the song owes to months of people playing Red Dead... it's right there in the video!
anyways, song isn't bad! Good meme material!

Always love seeing this thread pop up. FWIW I still love this album. Wonder what xhuck's updated take on it is.

Should post it to the "What's the least acclaimed album you love?" thread.

okay, now billy ray is on the remix. fun song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ysFgElQtjI

lol I knew why this thread got revived.

... ok pic.twitter.com/pwJC5Vyqir

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) December 14, 2020

ilm hero

lol so many of the replies are people going "wtf is john rich?"

or how the fuck is John Rich rich?

Ha, the guy he did the bet with, Adam Gold, is a former editor of mine at the Nashville Scene. He's been loving this hilarity of course.

wonder if he laid a bet on the 2004 pazz & jop results

If anyone's curious at this point, which I doubt, the first album was almost as good to listen to as it was to write about, which is saying a lot; the second one not as much, as tends to happen with second albums (Don: "You have your whole life to write your first album, six months for the second one." Well yeah.) But it did slink into my Nashville Scen Top Ten. The third was ridiculously bad.
Other endeavors soon became relevant to Duos with one member you love and one member you loathe
Big K did some good mixes of his and OPP singles, also I liked this first solo joint (haven't heard others)---excerpted from Voice review of it and B&R associate Lil Jon Nicholson's:
Live a Little, Big Kenny's pre-Big & Rich solo album, finally given a proper release on The Disney Music Group's Hollywood Records, brings the
noise candy, not the nose candy. It's a slowly spinning saucer, serving up a skyful of Purple Planetberries,
bursting on cue, presented 2 U by B.K., a psych-pop-goes-thee-country impresario and aw-shucks-ma'am workaday wizard, bopping through amber waves with his drum machine. Kenny's as much wistful crooner as carny barker when singing through a megaphone-like vocoder
about "a place where dreams come true." He gets his comeuppance in "Cheater's
Lament." Even more so, in "Think Too Much," with virtual drumsticks bouncing off
the cello-and-viola cloud growing around his (Traveling Wilburys-flavored) Orbisonic orbit.
Yet also with a ready tip of his feathered top hat to "Dor-oh-thee, and
Lit-tle To-To," flying by in "Rather Be."

the first album was almost as good to listen to as it was to write about

oh i agree

For the rest of my life I will remain completely baffled by how this awful album became such an ilm touchstone.

I'm assuming even calling it "awful" out loud will get me FPed so I'll add, "so long folks".

No, you're fine. There's room in the manger for all walks of life. As The Big 'un always says, "It Ken be done."

I bought the album four years after this thread sprung to life and liked it quite a lot, but then again, this place is not the friendliest toward country, a genre which mixes schmaltz, arena moves, bad jokes, and pathos in ways that confuse people (and sometimes me).

I mean, I love it when ilm coalesces around an unexpected album and pushes me to check it out, but no matter how many times I tried with this, I didn't get it at all. Still don't.

I'm going to guess--maybe I'm wrong--the coalescing had something to do with Chuck's over-the-top swoon at a moment when he was editing the Voice.

I have watched the video in wide-eyed, catatonic horror.

This happens. I never got Moby's beloved Play, much of Radiohead, much of Kacey Chambers, incl. 0 of her beloved Golden Hour ilm is the manger tho.

Musgraves! Sorry Kacey Chambers, although I gave up on you too, to put it nicely.

, this place is not the friendliest toward country, a genre which mixes schmaltz, arena moves, bad jokes, and pathos in ways that confuse people (and sometimes me).

― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, December 14, 2020 11:46 AM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i honestly don't think i am confused at all by big & rich or country music

the whole big & rich thing on ilm basically always felt like like someone handed me a cold big mac and i tried to eat it and spit it out and then i'm told i need to go to culinary school to really appreciate it

i checked out your life as a record by brandy clark this year because of ilm and that was a real treat, just great songwriting

For me, a good example of the complete opposite of this was Last Train to Paris. It took a lot of convincing to get me to care at all about what Diddy was doing in 2010, but the ilm hivemind managed it and I absolutely fell in love with that record.

sounds like a good poll!

this place is not the friendliest toward country, a genre which mixes schmaltz, arena moves, bad jokes, and pathos in ways that confuse people (and sometimes me).

there was definitely an element to the ilm big & rich thing of some people giving themselves a permission structure to continue writing off all other country music

xpost - I'd be really curious to see what the list of "ilm event albums" looks like. These two, that Electrik Red record maybe?

for sure

permission structure to continue writing off all other country music

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Monday, December 14, 2020 12:37 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i see zero evidence of this

Peak into any year-end thread when an Eric Church single appears.

I don't really follow those too much

I guess why would anyone need permission not to like country music much less pretend to hate Big & Rich when secretly in your dark little heart you love it so much and listen to Save a Horse every day crouched in the closet in secret shame?

no one has to like anything

i was unclear, i didnt mean ppl were being disingenuous about hating big & rich, what i meant was a certain amount of the big & rich praise on ilm had a framing of "we all know country music sucks but FINALLY this is GOOD" that struck me as self soothing a little bit, giving themselves permission to continue writing off country as music for dumb racists because they like the album where the guys rap about not being racist.

yet they turned out to be racists

ahhh sorry OEO totally misread

"FINALLY these are GOOD racists!"

this place is not the friendliest toward country, a genre which mixes schmaltz, arena moves, bad jokes, and pathos in ways that confuse people (and sometimes me).

I love country music from some mega-schmaltzy eras (e.g. 1987-1997) but have completely loathed Big & Rich from day one. It's just terrible stuff and I don't get it at all.

I also hated Lonestar so I guess I do hate these guys specifically

KiNG would have to be on that ilm hive list. And chuffing Balloon.

avalanches are the classic ilm act for me. never seen them in anyone's record collection irl or heard anyone talking about them

Oh yeah, I used to put some of their early stuff on mix tapes way before seeing anything about them on ilm. I guess they weren't all that well-known in the US, but I got compliments for the tapes.

I was actually into Since I Left You before I came around to ilx, can't remember where I heard about it, probably some magazine review.

I think Sim0n Reyn0lds reviewed it pretty ecstatically in Uncut? I could be remembering that wrong.

Yeah think I first heard them on magazine bonus comps.

Ah, that Reyn0lds review was in Spin. That is definitely where I would have seen it.

I have "Save A Horse" on my Elliptical Jams playlist, mostly unplayed since March.

the first B&R record still rules--but there was a lot of great Country music in that era

Yeah, and that was when I started paying attention to it, beyond Willie---pop arena mainstream country was big fun, and I thought so much of it was going to keep being like that---spoiled me, waaaah

he paid out, it went to a military charity: https://tasteofcountry.com/john-rich-joe-biden-donald-trump-election-bet/