This week pop country duo Sugarland released a video for their first single off the album The Incredible Machine due out in October. The album is supposedly inspired by “Steampunk,” a brand of science fiction set in an era when steam power is still widely used, but there’s also futuristic and sometimes fantasy elements. The [...]
On Friday night I was treated to Western swing heaven as Ray Benson of Asleep At The Wheel brought his Bob Wills musical A Ride With Bob to my neck of the woods. (You can read my review of the show on the 9513.) The show featured a couple of guest artists, one being Ruby [...]
I picture a post-Apolcolyptic scene: ghost towns full of crumbling buildings and rubble, smoke filling the sky and blocking out the sun, the result of a society that gave no value to art, heritage, and truth; a vast wasteland of grayness. Then all of a sudden in the midst of all the death and decay, [...]
The sheer speed at which American pop country is devolving before our very eyes can only be described as “awesome.” It is the evolutionary equivalent of if we could witness a species of apes evolve into a new race of humans in the length of a football season. As the creatively bankrupt boardrooms of Music [...]
The internet is exercised today over the fact that Taylor Swift did not win any hardware at last night’s ACM Awards. Fans are looking for the fix, and haters are wondering if this is the end of the Taylor fad. Well, you’re both wrong. Back when she blew her performance at the Grammy’s her manager [...]
Remember back when Taylor Swift won the CMA for Entertainer of the Year? We thought it couldn’t get worse for country music. There was a lot of surmising of where country music might go next after that win. Would there be a traditionalist backlash? Would country become even more pop oriented to try to mimic [...]
I’ve had a working theory for a while that 75% of what you hear on mainstream country radio today can be traced back to a small handfull of songs by Bob Seger and The Black Crowes. Darn near 1/3 of them can be traced back to Seger’s “Night Moves” alone. Well it might be time [...]
They say war makes strange bedfellows. I guess this is a good example. In a recent Edmonton Journal article, country music legend Merle Haggard held little back when sharing his thoughts on “Auto Tune”: “They fix a person’s voice when it’s out of tune, and then they have to do it live when they can’t [...]
Ok, you can stop emailing me. No, I did not watch the Grammy’s last night. I’d rather watch my genitals being made into a smoothee in a blender than to offer up my olfactory to that Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck bullshit; a bunch of talent-less millionaires dressed up like muppets, prancing around to fluff each [...]
We love to paint pop country with a broad brush around here, which may not always be fair. Think about it: sure we might consider two artists like Taylor Swift and Brad Paisley pop country, but the degree of how much pop compared to country they are, or even their overall talent level can be [...]
I would much rather be writing an album review, or highlighting a new artist. But since the 19-year-old Taylor Swift took home an unprecedented four CMA’s, including Entertainer of the Year and Female Vocalist of the Year, this website has been flooded with traffic, similar to what Rush Limbaugh probably experienced after Obama’s win, which [...]
Yeah I know, you have no intention to watch the CMA’s. It doesn’t represent what you believe to be country music, and last year you were blinded for two weeks by the sheer whiteness of Carrie Underwood’s teeth. But I will be watching, and I’ll tell you why: First, if you’re new to the game, [...]
Tonight (11-6) Taylor Swift will be the host and musical guest of Saturday Night Live. Insert your favorite vomit joke here. If I desired, I could operate a daily blog on how Taylor is either not country, or how her handlers exemplify greed beyond all. Just this week a controversy brewed about how the new [...]
Country music legend and Hall of Fame member George Jones has come out slinging verbal daggers at pop country performers, saying “They Have Stolen Our Identity.” Jones, who has publicly come out against pop country before but never in such blunt terms, let the gloves fall in an interview today (11-2-09) with The Associated Press. [...]
What, you thought I was kidding when I said Taylor Swift was now #1 in my crosshairs, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU? And them some criticized me when I wrote about how the Kanye/Taylor MTV Incident might have been staged, because the issue was “so yesterday.” And others worried that Saving Country Music was going to [...]
I really hate harping on this whole Taylor Swift, Kanye West embrolio. But I feel the need to state in full why some have the opinion that the moment might have been staged. Some have asserted this as an opinion, but that opinion is based on facts and a documented history from MTV and Taylor [...]
Yeah, I heard about Taylor Swift being “dissed” by “Kanye” at some contrived MTV awards show. The fact that anyone capable of growing pubic hair would watch that garbage is beyond me. I rolled up to CNN.com this morning, and even though we have two wars going on, are in the midst of one of [...]
When Newsweek published an article calling out pop country a while back, I declared this was an important moment: a mainstream news outlet shining a big light on the sham of Nashville. Another reason I knew it was important was because Nashville took it like a shot right across the bow and came out swinging. [...]
When I think about a good way to personify pop country, I think of a pig; a big, bloated, lazy, garish and gluttonous pig laying around in its own filth and slops. And this pig recently had piglets, with swollen nipples dotting its underbelly. And fighting for a chance with the sweet, sweet nectar of [...]
When it was first announced that the 80′s British Invasion’s excuse for a hair band Def Leppard would be performing at the CMT Awards in June, my first question was, “You mean there is yet ANOTHER stinking awards show for mainstream country?” These awards show have me purging more than Taylor Swift the night before [...]
