Rolling Country 2010

I'm not going to debate the merits of Taylor Swift; she's a songwriter and a figure and a successful one. And I usually don't exactly agree with Himes on much. He sends out a list of his 100 best records of the year and I generally find his jazz selections all right and the other stuff, ecch. (Don't get Buddy and Julie Miller or Justin T. Earle [wish he would change his name to that as it evokes a cornier era in country I'd like to see come back, fat chance of that] or Daddy Earle's snooze-fest a la Townes V.Z.) And I think that Himes has probably, like many another critic (I had a very very amusing meeting with one of 'em this summer; she kept telling me she was really a writer but had gone over to the "other side of the fence" but had come back; meanwhile, she dropped every possible name she could, including those of the Artists she's been involved with career-wise), perhaps bought into the whole shebang here a little too much. Maybe. What Himes thinks is that there's a continuum of "country music" and that Taylor Swift has something to do with that. I mean who does he think she is, Melba Montgomery or Connie Smith?? She's a songwriter who lives in Nashville because that's where songwriters live. And I for one think that country music is more or less an idiom; anyone can live in Nashville and write songs, right? So the idea that she's gonna dip into the George Jones catalog or even be as "country" as Reba, who I've never been able to stomach (do like the sitcom in a way), seems to me just way beside the point of who she is. One thing that Nashville is very good at is paying lip service to "country" (as a marketing tool, as a reference point, but certainly not as an idiom), and Taylor Swift benefits from this. I said at the beginning I wasn't gonna debate the merits of Swift and I won't, but I simply find it incredible that anyone thinks she has anything to do with country music--as an idiom, may I repeat. Lots of songs "tell stories," I mean fuck, back in the olden days did anyone think Gordon Lightfoot had that much to do with "country music"? Would anyone disagree that he has a lot more to do with it that Swift on almost any level you could choose? (Saw a great SCTV thing from '81 in which they were hawking a collection of Lightfoot "singing every song ever written.") All this has happened before in a different guise, cf. Olivia Newton-John and the flap over that, only back then Nashville was far more a hick town and there was actual outrage that Newton-John's shit was labeled and marketed "country." And I'll point out that this year I interviewed Norbert Putnam, who was the dude who made Joan Baez a pop star with her terrible version of "Night They Drove Old Dixie" and who recorded "Please Come Back to Boston" or whatever that is, Dave Loggins, not to mention Eric Anderson or the dreaded Dan Fogelberg. (But Norbert did a lot of other good stuff, too; and his importance is probably not the in the records he made but in the technical side of it all, the studiocraft which led to the big crossover. This was almost 40 fucking years ago, and no one advised Dan Fogelberg to study up on Lefty Frizzell or Diana Trask albums.) So maybe the whole thing comes down to a lack of historical awareness; what's relevant about Swift is that she came up as a songwriter but not as a musician who, like, went on the road or had to play some honky-tonk in Oklahoma to make it; probably even Garth Brooks had to endure some of those gigs. Frank says she can do stuff with her voice in the studio and I guess that's true. More power to her.

Paisley has become the Beck of country, everyone likes him and thinks he "transcends" the genre. I like him fine. Has he dipped into the past of country? I dunno. I hear him as a kind of white Johnny Guitar Watson or one of those guys, a guitarist-singer. This summer, Caroline and I saw Robben Ford play Nashville. Ford is a super-guitarist and does this kinda dull but not bad blues thing these days, it's competent, depends on whether you like blues. Well, he's playing away, all those fluent jazzy things, just great. And brings out some country guests: Paisley first, with his cap turned backwards. They jam. Paisley sorta keeps up, but compared to Ford it's Blues 101 licks, hardly sophisticated in this context. He hadn't been studying them chords and stuff. But cool, whatever, I like Brad and he can certainly play. Then Vince Gill comes out, looking as though he had come from the golf course, very well-fed. He can play, but he plugs in and it's even more Blues 101, kinda stiff. So we're in the old Belcourt in Nashville and lo and behold, there are actual black people in the audience! Like the Apollo! And they start heckling Gill: "Hey man, you can't play! Let's see you cut it up there! Let's see if the man can play!" and so forth. Very familiar from my Memphis days when there were real audiences and not, you know, a bunch of Nashville, er, enthusiasts...so Gill soldiers on, actually he can't really play what the demands of Ford's jazz vocab, not at all. Kinda like page 2 of the B.B. King Book of Licks for tenth graders in Alabama. So Gill has enough and actually told the folks to "fuck off!"; they just laughed and so did I, but of course, the audience was appalled. I guess they hadn't even read about Kansas City or Uptown Charlie Parker or Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, cuttin' heads in the old days. See, it's all about the idiom. Good to see all you guys, I promise to not be a stranger any more, sincerely, Edd Hurt.

Not sure where to place this, or if anyone read it, but here's the decade in country according to Stylus.

Hey, Edd, great to see you posting. Yeah, and don't be a stranger.

And you too, Alfred. Haven't perused the Stylus decade section yet because I was so pissed that Dave Moore wasn't invited to contribute, though I realize that that's a dumb attitude on my part. It's not the fault of the writers, just of whoever chose and botched the invitees list. In any event, I'll definitely give that country thing by Inskeep and Love a look. And I'll give Edd's idiom thing some thought.

Brief shot about Geoff's writeup: I'm positive I could learn a lot from a list of 100 records provided by Taylor Swift. So could Geoff Himes, I bet, and Jamey Johnson. Geoff is making Jamey seem narrow by suggesting that Jamey couldn't learn from someone else's list.

And, by the way, as someone who was automatically given my First Wednesday Of The Month Senior Discount at Albertson's this week without the cashier even asking if I was eligible, I'll point out that Taylor Swift does have a country vet who's nearly as old as I am as a collaborator and one might presume as something of a mentor as well, though I don't know anything about how they work.

Also, Taylor made absolutely zero effort to pander to the country audience's need for reassurance, and that audience bought her records anyway. I wish Adkins and Atkins et al. would follow her example. (Not that such pandering can't result in great art - my favorite country album of the decade, Montgomery Gentry's Carrying On, is swamped in such attempts at reassurance - but the pandering has become so accepted and rote, and vague and boring. Seems to hurt Atkins in particular as a lyricist.)(Maybe the problem is that I'm pissed at myself for loving that Alabama fight song by Trace Adkins.)

I posted my ballot on last year's thread, but here are my comments:

Geoff - You'll notice that I stuck Taylor Swift up top of my ballot for the "Platinum Edition" of Fearless, and I can rationalize this because three of the six new tracks are significantly great - even if one of those three has been floating around the Web for a couple of years and another is an alternate version of a song that's already on the album. But honestly, I'm putting the album on my list because I missed the boat on it last year, ranked it number three but hadn't truly digested it yet, how good it was or what it was doing. But also I want to argue against your zero-sum dichotomy that implies that the "suburban" Taylors aren't leaving room for the "small town" Jameys. I don't see this happening - if "High Cost Of Living" doesn't get radio play, that's hardly because "You Belong With Me" does - but also I don't accept your suburban-rural mapping of this. My mapping would be more like: What's going on is that country is absorbing both male folkie romanticism and feminine folkie romanticism, but the latter is harder for you to swallow.

There's a line that runs from Dylan to Springsteen to Mellencamp to a whole shitload of country, and that's pretty well accepted, or anyway I don't see vast ire at the Eric Church types who rock like mothers even while pledging allegiance to the Hag, or at Brooks & Dunn for wallowing in Stones and Skynyrd. And folk-rock that goes Dylan-James Taylor-Garth is pretty much accepted too. But there's a line that goes from Dylan and Joan Baez to Judy Collins to Joni Mitchell to Stevie Nicks to Tori Amos to Alanis Morissette, a feminine line that becomes more and more singer-songwriter and that comes from a girly-girlie world of English-class poetry and teen diary self-expression; and it jumped to teenpop in the '00s via Nelly Furtado and Michelle Branch and Pink and a slew of others, but it also has worked its way into country, in Deana Carter and Natalie Maines and SheDaisy, and then Michelle Branch and Jewel moved it explicitly into country from teenpop and pop respectively. (Not that anyone I mention comes from a single line of music. Everyone's a mongrel here.)

So, here's Taylor Swift, who draws on the female singer-songwriter insistence that the story of her music be very much her story, her sensibility, her voice finding itself and finding its way, while her character develops by way of romantic relationships recounted in song. What I'm seeing is that bohemian romanticism has long since rolled into country in male rambler garb (and male drug fuckup garb), but meanwhile it's also rolling into country by way of female self-expression, the rambling being frankly psychological and emotional rather than taking place only in bars and motels or wearing a cowboy hat in honor of a lost prairie, but it's still roaming the range anyway, even if it's shepherding thoughts rather than herding cattle.

Taylor is pretty much her own genre at this point, and she's the greatest singer within my earshot, using the wavers and quavers of her voice for whipsaw effect as much as for vulnerability. From the YouTube evidence it's something of a crap shoot whether she'll be on pitch live, and award shows cause her to stumble, so maybe Taylor doesn't happen without the modern recording studio. So hurrah for the modern recording studio.

Taylor's sensibility isn't necessarily mine; take the excellently written line, "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind; we both cried." Well, when I was fifteen there were U.S. soldiers who really gave everything they had, for a country that was changing its mind, and I was helping the country change its mind by way of antiwar activities. (And I hear that some Vietnamese died too.) Taylor's actual fifteen surely contained thoughts about wars and global warming etc., such thoughts not making it into her songs, this absence maybe being timidity or may just indicate what works for her as a songwriter. But within her chosen topics she never cheats. E.g., compare to Brad Paisley's pretty good "Anything Like Me," which is full of standard events, boy climbing tree that's too tall, and so on, an implied, "You know what this is like, you know what childhood is like, you know what we're like." Well, Taylor doesn't assume that you know what it's like, so she's going to tell you, whether it's a day in school or a day with her dad. And if the country genre does accept her - which it sure seems to, and she's now its biggest seller - that means she's part of a process where country rewrites what life is like, doesn't take its sharing of experience for granted.

* * *

Quick thoughts going back to what you wrote in your essay two years ago; I don't accept that my liking Miranda Lambert is a sign of my willingness to challenge my own assumptions or to hear something I don't already know. There's a line of music that goes from Dylan and the Stones and the Yardbirds to the Velvet Underground to the Stooges to the Dolls to the Sex Pistols, and that's the music I lived and breathed for years. So my voting for Miranda Lambert is my chance to vote for the home team, or at least for the closest that Nashville will come to giving me one. So Miranda's great expressive hyperbolized rage and vengeance don't challenge me in the least. Whereas what does challenge me is Carrie Underwood's "Jesus Take The Wheel." I identified hard with the narrator in that one, the sense that I don't have control over my own spinouts, the song challenging me to reach outside myself for help and direction and getting my shit together. That the word "Jesus" doesn't contain an answer for atheist me doesn't change my situation or my need in the slightest.

Also, for what it's worth, the anger in Taylor songs such as "Cold As You" and "You're Not Sorry" and "Forever & Always" gutslugs me even harder than the anger in Miranda's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Revolution. "It rains when you're here and it rains when you're gone." What a fierce, vulnerable line!

Hey, welcome back, Edd!! Great to see you on here. This thread is cooking already -- lots of different people posting. Bodes well, even if I'm going through a period now where I'm not sure how much I care about current current music (and/or country radio) anymore. We'll see.

Predictably, I was going to say I can't imagine anymore why anybody would claim that Taylor Swift isn't country; when she gets played all the time country radio, I don't have to make the decision with my own ears. Her genre's been decided for me, and Olivia Newton-John was country, by defintion, in the '70s, too, for exactly the same reason. Also, who the heck cares about musicians paying dues on a live stage, anyway? I don't even go see shows anymore, and I'm in fucking Austin. But I know that's not Edd's point, with his "idiom" stipulation (which I have to ponder more too; honestly not really sure what that means.) And I really don't know whether I'd consider Taylor country if she didn't come up through country radio, or if I will if country radio stops playing her. (Well, I probably will, when it comes to country music polls which is the only place it matters much anyway, since I usually tend to give genres the broadest definitions possible.) That said, I kind of like the idea of country music being some secret society with a secret handshake and all (especially because I just saw Brad Paisley listed in a NY Times editorial this morning among celebrities who have been Freemasons. Did all those older New Kung Pao Buckaroos teach him the oath? Speaking of paying dues.)

Oddly, I was actually listening to Gordon Lightfoot's Complete Greatest Hits (Rhino, 2002) yesterday morning, before I read Edd's post, wondering where he might fit into Frank's story of confessional songwriters evolving through the post-Dylan/Joni ages. Which means I somehow made the Taylor connection, inadvertently, in my head. If he put out a great album this year, I can't imagine I wouldn't consider it eligible for a Nashville Scene ballot. But deep down, I guess I'd still consider him more a "folk" than country guy (even though I always thought Sawyer Brown's singer Mark Miller sort of sounded like him, vocally, at least on the ballads.) (Hey, there's another '90s country band with enough decent hits for a best-of CD.)

The one comment I should have made about what-counts-as-country in my Scene ballot was why I decided the Southern /Chitlin Circuit soul singles I liked last year -- Larry Shannon Hargrove “I Need A Bailout”, Mel Waiters “Everything Is Going Up (But My Paycheck)," Floyd Taylor “Southern Soul Party” -- weren't eligible for my country list. Also "Fallin' Faster" by Hope Partlow's band, the Love Willows. Since it's stuff I actually left out, it's a more interesting question for me, somehow, since it would've explored my own line of thinking. (Though honestly, I probably just left them out since there were too many undenibaly country singles I thought were good enough to list.)

who the heck cares about musicians paying dues on a live stage, anyway?

Well, I do, at least indirectly, because often as not that kind of seasoning helps makes the playing on their albums more compelling -- one reason I infinitely prefer, say, '70s hard rock to '00s indie rock where bands together for mere weeks get famous just from a webpage. (Also, I have to say, that story about Vince Gill is totally hilarious.)

Just saw this Ricky Skaggs q and a interview at the Washington City Paper blog:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2010/01/08/the-arts-desk-interview-ricky-skaggs/
Here's an excerpt:

Can country music outlast the genre mixing and mashing that “the kids” insist upon today? Or will it be absorbed into something else?

If (country) stays on the American Idol scene where its videos want to look like VH1 and the sound wants to be so far away from country and be more pop and be more absorbed by the pop listener where someone buys a John Mayer CD and a hip-hop CD and a Taylor Swift CD—there’s hardly any differentiation anymore. It’s like country music doesn’t have a sound. When “Sweet Home Alabama” sounds country…[Skaggs, contemplating a world in which Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" sets the standard for country, seems to shudder.]

["Sweet Home Alabama"] sounds like everything that’s coming out of Nashville. We’ve really gone in a different direction. But that’s one of the things that sparked me to go back and discover that deep well of water that’s still there. There’s still a pure taste in this old music. There’s things to discover. There’s new music there…

I don’t care if it’s 2010. You can go there and be back in the ’30s and ’40s and thank God that we’ve got recordings from back then. Raccoon and I has this discussion here not long ago. [The author isn't sure whether "Raccoon" is Skaggs brother, bandmate, attorney, doctor, or dentist, and, though he could probably find out with a quick Google Search, prefers the presence of an unidentified man (or woman!) named "Raccoon" in this interview.] There’s so much. Why would we wanna fight and fuss over this new music that’s being played these days when we can go back and glean from all these great old players?

x-post. Wow, Chuck, I would not expect you to say that. But what about jam bands? I assume they practice a ton and play out alot and does that make their albums sound compelling?

On American Saturday Night, he defies his own formula more than ever—and without guests to
lean on.

<sarcasm>Brad Paisley as 'defiant' on his album -- now there's an assessment brooking no room for doubt.
Yeah, he's certainly self-defiant from top to bottom.</sarcasm>

Nah, curmudgeon, I didn't mean to imply that live dues-paying makes everybody more interesting on record. Obviously there are thousands of exceptions where it does just the opposite. Which was kinda my point.

And see, one thing I don't get about Taylor Swift "not sounding country," meaning "she doesn't sound like old country music" is, goddamit, NEITHER DOES ANYBODY ELSE. George Strait, who can be really good sometimes, doesn't sound like Merle Haggard, and his Western Swing stuff doesn't sound like Bob Wills. (It's nowhere near funky or jazzy enough, for one thing.) Those Darlins, who I really want to like, don't half match the energy of the '80s cowpunk they're aping or the '20s/'30s White Country blues they're aping. Miranda Lambert and Brad Paisley have rock music in their sounds that country wouldn't have touched just a couple decades ago. And right, I can't think of many old country albums that are as deadassed as what I've heard from either Dad or Son Earle lately. This is neither good nor bad. Everything changes. But if Taylor isn't country, I'd really love to know who is.

I dunno, maybe Ricky Skaggs genuinely is a purist now. He's been a student of the stuff long enough that maybe he really can convincingly replicate the sound of the '30s and '40s. But I'm skeptical. And truth is, his best albums from the '80s (Highways And Heartaches, for instance) had great studio pop hooks of their own. Hell, he even put Ed Koch and subway breakdancers in a video once, and I loved it. Hypocrite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0crpP7l8VJw

Or I dunno, undoubtedly there are artists whose sounds maintain more stylistic reference points to country of distant previous decades than Taylor's sound does, even if the ultimate result doesn't sound exactly like old country in their cases. I suppose that's people's point. It's just that, to me, acting like pop crossover is some new thing in hit country music, when really it's been going on longer than the almost half-century I've been alive, is really willful. (But I'm obviously not saying anything here that I haven't said a zillion time before.)

Oddly, I was actually listening to Gordon Lightfoot's Complete Greatest Hits (Rhino, 2002) yesterday morning, before I read Edd's post, wondering where he might fit into Frank's story of confessional songwriters evolving through the post-Dylan/Joni ages.

He probably fits in around '68 or '69; '67 or '68 is when my brother gets Judy Collins' Wildflowers and then we go backwards and forward from there, to Judy Collins' Fifth Album, In My Life, and Who Knows Where The Time Goes?, which for me and a lot of music listeners is the first we hear songs written by Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell (though Noel Harrison has a minor hit with Cohen's Suzanne before I heard Collins' version). Who Knows Where The Time Goes is the first I hear a song written by Sandy Denny. Collins' version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" may be the first time I hear that song as well, since I hadn't been listening to top 40 radio in '65. I have no idea why or how - I don't think it was through my brother, who'd now gone off to college - I hear of Gordon Lightfoot and buy his second or third album, the one with "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" on it. Some of that album feels beautiful and moving, at least for several months - I remember getting into a fight with my parents, and afterwards stomping off to my bedroom and putting my head between the speakers and listening to the album and thinking, "Well, here, this guy is doing something beautiful," which contrasts with whatever I feel my parents have just done to me. But eventually I decide that Lightfoot is simply too weak and soft-headed (though that might mean he ought to be now ripe for re-evaluation).

Oddly, the only thing I now remember from the record is "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," which I recall as being more rousing than pretty. The songs that come to mind from the guy don't strike me as confessional (and I'm sure I wasn't using the word "confessional" then in regard to music). But then, the only ones I remember other than "Trilogy" are "That's What You Get For Loving Me," which is a young-man-as-charming-rake genre exercise, and pretty funny, "Black Day In July," about the Detroit riots ("It wasn't just the temperature/And it wasn't just the season"), was dramatic and really good, I thought, and then "Sundown," whenever that hit, which again isn't him opening his heart, particularly; when I think about it "Sundown" might be the character in "That's What You Get For Loving Me" but addressed in the second-person by a rival. Doesn't it go "Sundown you better beware/If I find you creepin' 'round my back stair"? (I feel it would be cheating for me to Google or Wiki for this info, since I'm trying to say what my memory is telling me.) In any event, I didn't keep up with Lightfoot but my impression is that he evolved from "folkie" to "folkie for smoochers" or something, and I imagine him playing supper clubs with rustic fireplaces, though I'm sure he actually played regular old folk clubs.

In the post-Garth world there's no reason to assume that a latter-day Lightfoot might not cross to country, if he had decent enough songs, but I think the reason country radio is so comfortable with Taylor is that she feels like the heartland in a way that folkies don't, even if her chords and riffs don't flaunt antiquity. As for those chords and riffs, they actually don't scream Sugar Pop* in the way that, say, Lady GaGa and Britney Spears songs do, and Taylor doesn't come across as crossover diva in the way that LeAnn Rimes and Faith Hill sometimes do; I think the country listener is pretty used to women singers with one foot in adult contemporary, and vice versa; I'd say AC's been a part of the language of country radio for the last couple of decades, though you guys know more about those previous decades than I do.

*Well, "You Belong With Me" does, somewhat, and more power to it.

my impression is that he evolved from "folkie" to "folkie for smoochers"

This might be true, especially if you're trying to smooch widows of guys who died in Edmund Fitzgerald. (Actually, Gordon may well have smoochier material later in career; I've just never heard it. "Sundown" is clearly about smooching a wayward prostitute, however, and "Go-Go Round" about smooching a go-go dancer. "If I Could Read Your Mind" maybe about smooching a ghost from the wishing well in a castle dark or a fortress strong with chains upon your feet; "Early Morning Rain" about the memory of smooching fast women and drinking liquor the night before but now you're smooching wet grass out on runway number nine. Why the hell is here, anyway? I've never figured that out. He's only got a dollar, and he knows you can't jump a plane like freight train.)

Meant "If You Could Ready My Mind," obviously. (And "died on the Edmund Fitzgerald." You know, on that big lake they called Gitchie Goomie. Doubt any better geography lesson about the Great Lakes has ever hit the pop chart. Still waiting for somebody to do a doom-metal version.)

I never even noticed the words to "Go Go Round" before yesterday, fwiw.

And come to think of it, why have I always "clearly" thought the hard lovin' woman in "Sundown" is a prostitute, anyway? (Just because she's lying back in her satin dress in a room where you do what ya don't confess? Or because she looks like a queen from a sailor's dream?? Not nearly enough to go on!)

Neat trick, for a confessional singer-songwriter: He does what you don't confess, then he indirectly confesses it to us anyway!

xpost (Yeah, come to think of it I don't remember the lyrics to "Sundown" at all, other than that one line, so what I said about it might have been pretty stupid.)

These days country tends to define itself sonically more by instrumentation and accent than by notes and chord progressions; at least that's how I hear it. A difference between Taylor Swift and Fearless is that on the latter Taylor decided to forgo the twang and the blatant mandolins and fiddles (though they appear; as do violins), probably said, "Fuck it, I'll sing in my own voice."

On the other hand, I do think that the melody and chords to "Our Song" and the chorus to "Teardrops On My Guitar" sound more country - in a way that I can't put my finger on - than anything on Fearless, but those more typically country notes make those two songs worse than they'd be without them. (I suspect that Xhuxk'll disagree. Isn't "Our Song" one of your favorite Taylor songs?) But as I've been saying, what I think gets her across to country fans - beyond the fact that she's really good - is that people in the mainstream of country listening* are willing to attune themselves to her sensibility, and therefore even willing to let her take them to new places.

*I'm using that awkward phrase to differentiate them from someone like me, who listens to mainstream country radio and is a fan of the music but isn't in the mainstream of such listeners; "primary audience" might be another term. But "mainstream of such listeners/primary audience" doesn't denote a single type, either; just doesn't include me. (Of course, she's crossing big to noncountry fans as well.)

Meant "If You Could Ready My Mind," obviously

Uh, obviously not. (At least the "Ready" part.)

why the hell is here, anyway?

why the hell IS HE THERE, anyway? Jeez...

Simon Frith, contrasting Celine Dion to Barbra Streisand:

Dion is, by contrast, a populist. Her voice is as rich in timbre as Streisand's and as flexible, but her approach to balladry draws on different traditions, on soul and country music. From soul she takes a method of direct expression, sound as physical feeling; from country she takes the sense of the everyday, cutting emotions down to size.

This isn't about "idiom," the musical language, so much as about the result, how one uses one's language. I don't think genres are idioms, at least not at the expense of sensibility and results - not just the "vocabulary" you employ, but also what do with it, and people with different vocabularies can find themselves doing similar things. (Not that a genre can be limited to a set of results either.)

I wouldn't say that Taylor cuts emotions down to size, but then I wouldn't necessarily have associated "everyday" and "down to size" anyway. Some people go from drama to drama every day. What Taylor does is to show big emotions arising within the details of everyday life.

In any event, I started off thinking of Taylor as Ashlee South, so it's not my particular issue whether Taylor is or isn't country - though it sure makes country richer and better if she is. But I wonder how much music of the last fifty years or so that has been created by people in or near country is considered "not country" for being too pop, but it isn't that the sound came from somewhere else, The Land Of Pop, but rather it came from these people, who helped create modern country and therefore modern pop. (Again, someone else will have to give this argument flesh, since I don't know the music's past well enough.)

helped create modern country and therefore modern pop

Well, obviously didn't help create all of modern pop, just pieces of it.

Here's a link to Geoffrey Himes' 100 Best Albums of 2009

http://sonicboomers.com/albumreviews-0

Drunk-dialing masterpiece "Need You Now" is number 5 on Billboard's ringtones chart!

Meanwhile Skaggs tells the Washington Post he likes some bluegrass

Ask Ricky Skaggs about his favorite contemporary bluegrass acts and he'll rattle off a mighty list: Cherryholmes, The Infamous Stringdusters, Mountain Heart, Blue Highway, Sierra Hull and many others. But ask him about his favorite new country artists and... crickets. Skaggs thinks the genre has "lost its way."

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/clicktrack/2010/01/be_specific_bluegrass_great_ri.html

Caramanica on banda singer Jenni Rivera (whose new album is said to be an all-mariachi affair on which she covers country singer Freddie Fender's "Before The Next Teardrop Falls"); some indie band called Wild Yaks (who Jon says play "country-rock", though since he said the same about indie band Girls I'm skeptical, and since he calls their country-rock lackadaisical I assume I'd hate anyway); and the Huntsville, Alabama hip-hop scence (featuring the hit "Fresh" by 6 Tre G, which I'm pretty sure I heard on the radio a week or two ago and actually liked):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/arts/music/10play.html

Jenni Rivera has been covering Tex-Mex for years; still prefer her banda version of "I Will Survive" with its wailing clarinets though. She's awesome.

Although in "Ala-Freakin-Bama" Trace Adkins says he grew up on Skynyrd, the song sounds at least as much (or a lot more) like he grew up on Gary Glitter or Joan Jett doing the Standells.

Kara DioGuardi about writing for country artists:

It's lyrically heavy in a way pop music isn't. It's got to be the perfect way to put it, but it's also got to have emotion [that resonates]. It's poetic in a way that pop music isn't. It really tests me. It makes me go back to songwriting 101. It's not just describing an emotion at face value, it's more like, "Here's the emotion -- how do I say it in a way that's interesting, so that someone gets what I'm trying to put across but it's also a twist on it?"

[For instance], "I Hope You Dance"? What an incredible metaphor. I hope you take that risk, I hope you take that chance, I hope you live life to the fullest. The way they paint that picture, when they get to the chorus you know exactly what they're talking about. I'm very drawn to the genre because I feel like I've become a better writer by going down there, and I'm always learning in the sessions.
--Billboard Interview

(I don't think it's such an incredible metaphor, myself.)

You're not terrified of dancing the way some of us are.

Christgau wraps up 2009 (year in music):

http://bit.ly/6wSxv7

Here's a new Voice piece I wrote on the music played at PBR (that's Professional Bull Riders) events.

I'm here to warn people off the new Jason Boesel album, which I'm currently streaming. He's drummed for Rilo Kiley and Conor Oberst, so it's ironic that Hustler's Son is completely devoid of memorable beats. Or memorable tunes, or singing voices, or words... CMT blog says he sounds like Chris Martin, which I don't hear at all. If anything, he's a less-distinctive and sometimes pitchy Jack Johnson. No way is he a hustler's son, unless he's overcompensating. You've been warned.

Also ungood, though still listenable, is Freedy Johnston's Rain On the City. I'll say he counts here since he recorded it in Nashville and "It's Gonna Come Back To You" sounds country. (And the guitar sound on "Livin' Too Close to the Rio Grande" is what I imagine Uncle Tupelo sound like.) I'm sad it's not good because I really like some of his songs, but he seems to have smoothed a lot of the interest out of his voice. There's a point in the second song where he sings "tried and tried and tried and tried" etc., and if you can imagine Freedy Johnston singing that, you can maybe picture the unusual way he used to shape vowels--very round and throaty. Unfortunately, that's almost all gone. Some of the tunes are pleasant, but nothing compelling. So all you've got left is the least interesting part of his arsenal--the Evocative Lyrics. On about half the songs, he tries to amp up the evocativeness by playing slowly, bleh. I may listen again in case I missed anything. Got an alarmingly high score from Ann Powers.

Nice article, unperson--real colorful.

OK, Freedy Johnston sounds better today. It's still not setting the world on fire and I still miss his idiosyncrasies, but the tunes have grown on me. He's rhythmically competent enough that most of the songs hit some sort of relaxed groove, and his drummer knows how to work with his melodies. Best song probably "The Other Side of Love," which has a BeMyBaby beat. "Don't Fall In Love With a Lonely Girl" (the "tried and tried and..." song) is also good. Worst may be the bossa nova exercise "The Kind of Love We're In." Still borderline overall.

My five favorite country singles of 2010 so far; order very fluid:

1. Jason Aldean – The Truth
2. Trace Adkins – Ala Freakin Bama
3. Martina McBride – Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong
4. Brian Burns – Rattlesnake Tequila
5. Colt Ford featuring Jamey Johnson – Cold Beer

Weirdest 2010 country album I've heard so far: Shooter Jennings & Hierophant, Black Ribbons (due out March 2 on Rocket Science Ventures), which has very little or no country music on it whatsoever (well, maybe some very occasional very sublimated melodic twang in the guitars), but it does have a whole bunch of doomsday recitations by Stephen King as a radio announcer calling himself Will O' the Wisp, plus theoretically apocalyptic songs somewhere in the general vicinity of Alice In Chains/Queensryche/Soundgarden/'90s Metallica/Use Your Illusion/Buckcherry. Not sure yet if any of them are remotely worth a shit, but at least the concept seems boderline audacious on paper.

Still didn't get even halfway through the new Lady Antebellum album.

Another constipated and leaden new country-goes-off-the-grunge-deep-end record: 7DayBinge, Muzik Mafioso Jon Nicholson's eight-songer (last song 10+ minutes long, and most others in the four-to-five-minute range, so an album not an EP) with assorted Twisted Brown Trucker (a/k/a Kid Rock's backing band) and 3 Doors Down dorks. Maybe a little rustic blues rock in something like "I'm No Good" or "Cold Dark Grave," but mostly it sounds like bad Nickelback (or Creed, or whatever) to me.

Stephen King as a radio announcer calling himself Will O' the Wisp, plus theoretically apocalyptic songs

End of the world/apocalypse stuff is the new emo mall punk. One new movie a week now, sometimes more on apocalypse, particularly if you get extended cable.

In the meantime, we'll always have Haiti.

End of the world/apocalypse stuff is the new emo mall punk.

Yeah, the new Ray Wylie Hubbard LP (which has been getting lots of press around these parts, and which I actually like, though it sure does plod a lot) definitely fits in the 2010 doomsday country category, too. Probably also the Legendary Shack Shakers' Agridustrial, due out c. Income Tax Day, which I've been liking even more even though Hubbard's abum is probably more immediately comprehensible, vocal/song-wise. Shack Shakers have more energy, more humor, more hooks, probably more variety. Both have some tough blues riffs and touches of gospel.

Good time for me to mention Shooter's excellent duet with Ike Reilly on the latter's Hard Luck Stories (digitally 2009, "real" disc 2010, has a shot at being my favorite album of two straight years). Song is a funny country blues song about the awesomeness of smalltown girls with daddy issues, until it takes a characteristic Ike turn into lyricism. Shooter ain't got no voice at all but he can sing all right.

Ray Wylie Hubbard album gets especially doomsday-dirgy toward its tail-end (titles "Every Day Is The Day Of The Dead"/"Opium"/"The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse" an obvious clue -- more or less metal, delta blues, and Celtic sluggish drones respectively.), and I actually like those, so far, more than most of the other trudging before them. Favorite track so far though is probably the relatively upbeat (well, at least midtempo) "Drunken Poet's Dream," which talks about mescaline, gasoline, naked women, and Judgement Day (and which I just realized was also the lead cut on the last Hayes Carll CD, where both Texans got co-writes). Also liking "Loose," which notably rhymes with Bruce, though I haven't decided yet if it's trying to sound like early or recent Bruce.

Well, this thread was cooking. Where'd everybody go?

Anyway, finally made it through the new Lady Antebellum -- albeit in the background, while reading the morning papers. Not sure what it will take for me to determine whether there's another ballad anywhere near the level of "Need You Now", which I'm ashamed to say made me shrug in the first place itself. Ballads often aren't immediate impact for me. Right now I'd say the closer, "Ready To Love Again," has the best shot, but that's just a wild guess, and overall I'd say the boring-ballad ratio here is even higher than on, uh, the new Vampire Weekend album (which still has nothing nearly as great as "Need You Now" fwiw.) Second favorite song on Need You Now so far would be "Stars Tonight," an insistent two-chord pop-rocker about joining a rock band because rock people dress really cool. At least, that's what I think it's about. "Perfect Day" has a bit of bounce to it, too. But mostly the album's making me shrug (and I liked their first one, by the way. Liked Vampire Weekend's first one too, but liked Antebellum's more.)

Best country album I've heard in the past couple months, maybe in the past couple years, heck maybe ever almost, is a 20-song 1981 Warner Special Products vinyl mailaway compilation called Motels And Memories that I got for a $1 in San Marcos last month. All cheating songs, only a few I was familiar with before (John Anderson "She Just Started Liking Cheating Songs," John Conlee "Friday Night Blues," Gary Stewart "She's Acting Single [I'm Drinkin' Doubles]," Barbara Mandrell's "Married But Not To Each Other" which is basically an r&b song I swear, maybe Crystal Gayle "Talking In Your Sleep" which I really love), and a lot by artists I've barely ever listened to before, often to my shame (Conway Twitty, Stella Parton, Vern Gosdin, Jeanne Pruitt, Earl Thomas Conley, Carmoll Taylor, Bill Anderson, Margo Smith, Mel Street, etc.) Tails off slightly toward the very end, maybe, but still makes me wonder why, if cheating (and even more, being cheated on) was such a major obsession of country singers for so long, when and why did that change? Or did it? Only really great one I can think of in the past year would be "Even Now" by Caitlin & Will (cheating both ways), and that didn't hit big at all. Probably there's some I'm not thinking of. Anyway, did the moral majority's influence over country ensure at some point that songwriters would stop dealing with the topic? Or were the '70s really just one big Ice Storm key party? Or what? (Also been listening to Billie Jo Spears' 1975 Blanket On The Ground, another $1 find, which just strikes me as way more sexy than country nowadays, even though Paisley also sang about doing it outside in "Ticks" couple years back I guess. Getting the idea country lost something along the way, and maybe it's worth talking about here.)

And oh yeah, played the Mavericks' 1999 CD Super Collosal Smash Hits Of The '90s: The Best Of The Mavericks yesterday, and can I just say that, despite the frequent warm mariachi lilts and Raul Malo's equally warm and very smooth singing, those guys were kinda booooring. Lacking almost any memorable songs probably had something to do with it.

And remembered yet another '90s country star with a seemingly good best-of on my shelf, which might have had good '90s albums I've never heard backing it up: Pam Tillis (Greatest Hits, Arista 1997.)

The track listing on that Mavericks comp looks boring but they weren't quite that boring; "Pretend" off What a Crying Shame is a pretty memorable honky-tonk with Latin-flavored vocals as their hype promised (but often did not deliver; "Dance the Night Away" a nice exception); and their cover of "All That Heaven Will Allow" is excellent and better than the already great original. So all in all, a very minor band but you could make a better comp than the one you got.

Played the new Easton Corbin (his debut) and Gary Allan albums. The Corbin was pleasant at best; nothing really jumped out at me. But I'm liking at least four songs on the Allan -- masochism metaphor "Get Off On The Pain" and "That Ain't Gonna Fly" for their toughness; "We Fly By Night" and mercy fuck/breakup sex number "Kiss Me When I'm Down" for the specificity of their lyrics. Like this line in the latter, listing stuff she left behind at his place when she dumped him: "A stack of mail/a tube of toothpaste/An empty Zeppelin III CD case."

x-post. Yea, I think there are some memorable Mavericks songs and would not dismiss the group. I never saw them live, but I saw Raul Malo solo and with a band live several times and recall some of the Mavericks songs working. Xhuck, he's got quite a voice as you acknowledge. For some fans that's enough (also noticed that women were especially charmed by him live).

Regarding cheating songs, that's interesting that country has largely abandoned them (if that's true). They still dominate Southern (Chitlin Circuit) soul to the point that they are formulaic and predictable and I am sick of them. Actually I never liked that lyrical theme much to begin with.

Surely "White Liar" is a cheating song, and quite good. Not definite on what counts as a cheating song; is it only a cheating song when the protagonist cheats (which might disqualify great tracks about a lover's cheating like John Conlee's "She Can't Say That Anymore," since it seems to be through the guy's eyes, but is really about the gal)? In any event, Taylor Swift's "Should've Said No" is about not forgiving a cheater, and if you take account of the video, so is "White Horse." Doesn't Gretchen Wilson have a few? (Well, maybe I'm thinking of the one on the Barbara Mandrell tribute album, which would only confirm your point.) From a few years ago we've got Toby's excellent "Stays In Mexico" and Lee Ann Womack's excellent "There's More Where That Came From."

Yeah, "Stays In Mexico" occurred to me, and most of those others make sense -- duh. Not sure why it seems like there's fewer now; maybe just because I don't have them all compiled in one place. (Most obvious one we haven't mentioned: Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats"! So yeah, cheated-on songs, as I suggested above, definitely count; "She Can't Say That Anymore" is even more blatant about that than "Friday Night Blues," which only implies Conlee's a cuckold but was included on that cheating song compilation regardless.)

I think Tim McGraw's Number One Hits might make my reissues, although I def agree with xxuxk's Rolling Stone review, linked upthread, that reaching Number One sometimes shears off too many possibilities. I prefer Elvis's collected Top Tens to his Number Ones, and it may be that if you get however many volumes of Greatest Hits McG is up to now, you'll do better than with this, but I do enjoy most of it. The MSN Listening Booth download may have jumbled the intended order of tracks, judging by the way they're listed by xxhuk's review, so I got clobbered by front-loaded "live Like You Were Dying" (in a real expensive way, although the dying one's parting words are "I hope one day you can do this too" yeah bro, um got some gold buried at the ol swimmin hole,mebbe?) and "Don't Take My Girl" and some other stuff that would be much more digestible with music that conveyed the urgent neeeed for such soothing. But we do get just that on many other tracks, where he gets more into the struggle for balance, perspective, but also self-justification, as in "Angry All The Time", and just trying to sing his way through all that shit, all those talking points, on "Please Remember Me." But I like some of the suave ballads and def the yee-haw stuff too, where he gives his band and his own light touch (unusual with the yee-haw, Brad Paisley aside) some tonic.

Also for reissues: Granma's or Grandma's Roadhouse, mainly cos I'm a sucker for sustain, and Gary Stewart's got it here ( sort of the same feel as CCR's version of "Suzie Q"), but also some okay songwriting, main limitation is that other guy's squeezebox vocals; if Gary got to sing lead, oh maiiiinn.. And Hamper McBee's The Good Old-Fashioned Way. Supposedly his authentic moonshine-cured vocal delivery was "revelatory" to folkies in the mid-60s, but these late 70s field recordings are mostly down to his good taste in choice of deep folk standards, plus he does feel 'em, and deftly rolls notes through the gaps in his teeth, and he does have some I haven't heard, and he's got good bad taste, or rather good no taste, in his anecdotal outbursts, also some x-rated songs, which are themselves quite prob deep folk standards to those who truly know, like hee-um. They really fit, and extend the canon (also the cannon, he's prob add) in a cheering way, at least to me.

Wondering if anyone else has been listening to the Loretta Lynn tribute album as much as I have. There's some absolute star power on there (Carrie Underwood and Faith Hill absolutely nail their tracks), but it's balanced nicely with some more 'alternative' picks (the White Stripes, Lucinda Williams, and Steve Earle & Allison Moorer).

My favorite by far is Alan Jackson & Martina McBride doing "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man," but Paramore's take on "You Ain't Woman Enough" isn't far behind. I've been a huge Haley Williams fan since Riot! and this just proves the girl's got some of the best pipes going.

Only track not up to par is Kid Rock's, and that wasn't much of a surprise.

Jon_Oh, here is my review of that Appalachian blues reissue CD (scroll up for the actual track listing):

http://www.rhapsody.com/album/classic-appalachian-blues-from-smithsonian-folkways-2?artistId=42653#albumreview

And here is something much, much longer, where I compare Taylor Swift and Ke$ha:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2010/12/taylorkesha.html

And here is my review of Kid Rock's new album that I wrote for Spin, which for some reason wound up in the magazine in slightly edited form (the version below is pre-edit), but never seems to have wound up on their website:

Kid Rock
Born Free
Atlantic

History has proven writing off Kid Rock imprudent – His albums always seem to mosey out the gate, but then months later get jumpstarted when some midwestern country station picks up the fourth single. Next thing you know, he's moved another three million units. His new Born Free already has Big Event written all over it: Rick Rubin production, Martina McBride and T.I. swapping spit on the noncommittally pandering protest "Care," Bob Seger tinkling keys behind Sheryl Crow on the "Picture" redux "Collide," Nashville musclemen and adult-alternative musos lending more hands. Chances are, not even Kid's clunkiest similes and unfunkiest drums ever will stem the demographic outreach.

Michigan, as always, will love it – In the longest of several longish songs, Kid references both Seger's "Against The Wind" and John Rich's "Shuttin' Detroit Down" as he unspecifically cheers the Motor City's resilience. But though Born Free 's dusky highway choogle provides plenty of wind-in-the-hair nostalgia for middle-aged Sons of Anarchy, it lacks jokes and raunch. And while the guitars unfurl, they never crunch, unless "God Bless Saturday"'s blue-collar BTO-lite counts. Plus, strained Neil-Young-cum-blue-eyed-soul falsettos probably aren't the best solution to Bob Ritchie's bark feeling more painful as he pushes 40. That said, he's never let his vocal limitations get in the way before. By next summer, he may well have manipulated more megaplatinum out of his fedora.

Said nice things about Kenny Chesney's "Somewhere With You" over on my lj:

Kenny Chesney "Somewhere With You": Soul-jazz chords at the start, Kenny sounding just as comfortable with smoky longing as he normally does at the beach. Thanks for saving the week, Kenny. TICK.

(The week needed saving from the Glee Cast and Coldplay.)

Also, apparently Martina or someone shortened the title but not the song when they released "Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong" as a single; for no good reason I want to list it by its full title on my ballot. Assume that won't hurt its small chance of making the top tracks, as the Country Critics Poll is small enough that Geoffrey will figure out to add up the votes to each.

Musically, and in terms of singles-worthiness, I like "Care" and "Collide" pretty well; "Rock On" is the most affecting. Speaking of Mumford, Frank, here's my show preview & take on their album, though it's mostly a matter of art appreciation (but as such, and though it takes some repeated listening the album holds up, while def taking me from my rut of preferred listening):

"Tremble, little lion man /Your boldness stands alone/Among the wreck." Drawing on their reputation for poetically rowdy shows, UK folk-rockers Mumford and Sons' "Little Lion Man" is a shrewd point of risky departure for their debut album, "Sigh No More." The little penitent waits for musical shots of tough love's grace. He gets enough to break away, through rising cycles of obsessive drama. These can turn bleak; that's the risk. But the little immigrant does a "Dustbowl Dance" while hometown love and war renew their vows.

And while I'm at it, here's Marling too (haven't heard the EP, they might well be at their best there, esp, since this seems like a year for EPs, intended and in albums that require and reward cherry-picking):

At 17, British singer-songwriter Laura Marling released "Alas, I Cannot Swim," powered by a teenage appetite for folk-flavored melodrama and mischief. If your castle explodes, it might be justice, or just because. Marling's new "I Speak Because I Can" conjures with spontaneity, stagecraft, complex subtexts and direct address. Concerning her banished lord of disorder, she confides, "We write, that's all right/I miss his smell." Sounds promising. Ditto when Marling, now 20, also muses, "I wouldn't want to ruin something that I couldn't save." Let's hold her to it.

Nashville Scene ballot looking like this I think -

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2010:

1. Jamey Johnson - The Guitar Song
2. Taylor Swift - Speak Now
3. Laura Bell Bundy - Achin' and Shakin'
4. Keith Urban - Get Closer
5. Little Big Town - The Reason Why
6. Alan Jackson - Freight Train
7. Reba McEntire - All the Women I Am
8. Kenny Chesney - Hemmingway's Whiskey
9. Easton Corbin - Easton Corbin
10. Merle Haggard - I Am What I Am

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2010:

1. Taylor Swift - Mine
2. Jamey Johnson - Playing the Part
3. Kenny Chesney - Somewhere With You
4. Martina McBride - Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong
5. Brad Paisley - Water
6. Trace Adkins - This Ain't No Love Song
7. Tim McGraw - Still
8. Laura Bell Bundy - Drop On By
9. Sunny Sweeney - From a Table Away
10. Toby Keith - Bullets in the Gun

Looks good erasing. Anybody heard the True Blood soundtrack? I got a press release about a show in the Louisiana cafe where the show is filmed, featuring Jace Everett, C. C. Adcock, a bunch of other contributors, maybe all of em. Thanx to xhuxk for linking stream of Jace Everett's Red Revelations upthread. Also wondering about True Grit soundtrack (seen a couple good reviews already, but no mention of music. Apparently it's closer to the book; a good piece on the suthor, Charles Portis, in recent NYTimes: a truly deadpan comic novelist, it sez, unlike most, who signal when they're trying to be funny, but also blends the seriously serious into the comments of unwittingly amusing characters, True Grit a bit more shadowed than his others, apparently)

Yo Indexed, speaking of the Loretta Lynn tribute, here's xgau, with good excerpts of tracks in the podcast:
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/22/132206305/singers-have-a-ball-on-album-dedicated-to-honky-tonk-girl-loretta-lynn

Rolling Country 2011