Country isn’t the only music community scratching its head while a fairly innocuous and forgettable pop song rewrites history by hitting record marks for its time at #1 on a genre specific chart, or a performer or group who doesn’t even seem to belong in the genre dominates that genre’s most important chart metrics.
Any proper country music fan should know and love the rock band Ween’s foray into country music in the mid 90’s called 1’2 Golden Country Greats.’ Recorded at Owen Bradley’s legendary Bradley’s Barn studio at his farm just outside of Nashville, the album featured a stable of notable Nashville musicians dubbed “The Shit Creek Boys.”
Game over. All efforts to stave off the irrelevancy of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in the face of installing a pop star in the history books as the owner of the most successful single in the genre’s history ultimately failed. This week, the song “Meant To Be” by pop star Bebe Rexha with Florida […]
“Meant To Be” recently helped Florida Georgia Line shatter what once was thought a bulletproof record—George Strait’s cumulative frames for songs cresting a week at #1. With a whopping 45 total #1’s spanning over a quarter century in the business, there’s a reason Strait earned the nickname “King” George over his Hall of Fame career.
Nelly was originally arrested October 7th, 2017 in Auburn, Washington after he was accused of sexual assault by a local woman. Since then two more accusations have emerged. Yet, the rapper continues to be welcomed at mainstream country music functions unabated, including at the upcoming FGL Fest.
In the last 73 weeks of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, there have only been five total songs to crest the chart. That means that over the past 1 1/2 years, two songs have occupied the chart’s top spot 89% of the time. And those two artists very specifically benefit from pop attention.
Ragingly relevant to 2012, the latest Florida Georgia Line reboot goes full-blown Mumford & Sons on our asses as part of their big, multi-year rehabilitation campaign to save their skins from certain doom as a laughing stock of country music history. And when I say Mumford and Sons, I’m talking about the whole damn motif.
Can you imagine having the #1 song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for the last six months—something Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, George Strait, and Kenny Chesney never came close to doing—and not even knowing about the massive present-day pop country band you collaborated with to pull it off?
A Canadian songwriter named Connor Shaw wants you to consider his case of a stolen song. The Edmonton-based composer penned and recorded a demo-style version of a song called “Easy” that he uploaded on YouTube in November of 2016, and the song happens to sound eerily similar to the massive Jason Aldean single “You Make It Easy.”
It’s 24 weeks atop the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for Bebe Rexha’s collaboration with Florida Georgia Line, “Meant To Be.” This means the song first recorded and released solely as a pop single has now tied Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise” for the 2nd longest-running #1 single in the Billboard Hot Country Songs history.
“I truly believe ‘Meant To Be’ paved the way for other artists to jump into country. This is the most fulfilling thing to me more then #1,” Bebe Rexha said on Twitter. “I want more pop artists to do country collaborations, and I bet that will happen a lot more in the next five to six months. I want to pave the way.”
They signed him up to a major label, and put Florida Georgia Line’s producer in charge. I’m not kidding. It’s so sinister, you can’t make it up. This is “Yodel Boy” after all. Where is the damn yodel? It’s the yodel that made the entire thing interesting. Now Mason Ramsey is just another homogenized product to make money from.
Kane Brown will be appearing on a new remix of pop star Camila Cabello’s current single “Never Be The Same” according to information coming down the music wires. What has some observers from the country realm interested (or concerned) is if it will be the latest pop/country collaboration to be released to country radio.
In 10 years and 11 days of owning and operating Saving Country Music dot com, I have never once seen someone display such bold-faced effrontery and wanton disrespect for the gorgeous and historic institution of country music as this wash up and his $50,000 diamond-encrusted gauge earrings.
The news coming out of the Carrie Underwood camp is that she will be debuting a brand new single at the ACM Awards on Sunday (4-15), and regardless of how good or godawful the song is, I couldn’t be more happy, regardless of what the song turns out to be.
Bebe Rexha and her song “Meant to Be” with Florida Georgia Line has officially become to sum of all the fears for the encroachment of pop into country. Now spending its 14th week at the top of the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, “Meant To Be” officially becomes the biggest song for a woman in the 70 year history of the country genre.
Jason Aldean is the latest mainstream country music bro to make it hard to be a mainstream country hater with his latest single, “You Make It Easy.” It’s certainly not anywhere close to an exceptional effort, and we’d be fools to believe that the puffy purveyor of such filthy tire fires as “Dirt Road Anthem” and “1994” has turned a page.
The promise of technology and its interfacing with music is a great equalization of the playing field, both opening up the creative possibilities for artists, and the ability to discover new music for fans. For too long the stuffy and outmoded system of radio feeding us what they wanted us to hear reigned over music […]
Quietly, the Brothers Osborne have deposed the terrible Florida Georgia Line as the biggest duo in country music, at least when it comes to peer recognition and appreciation by the industry. Florida Georgia Line is still a juggernaut in radio play mind you, but that appears to be slipping from their grasp too.
Man did Music Row in Nashville turn in a whole slew of stinkers this year, setting new lows for the substance, and non-country-ness of “country” songs in 2017. This year was a great example of how you should never think it can’t get any worse, because it can, and did, and by a long stretch.
This week the country music world was shocked when a pop star named Bebe Rexha and her song “Meant To Be” featuring Florida Georgia Line debuted at the very top spot of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. But looking deeper into the numbers, something didn’t seem to add up.
That’s right. Think about the scores of female country music performers who have dedicated their entire lives to the craft, including many mainstream country pop performers, who have never enjoyed a debut at #1, or a #1 at all. And then a pop star you’ve probably have never heard of shows up and is cresting country music’s top metric for songs.
“If I ever meet that guy from Saving Country Music he is gonna see just how Country I really am!” says Mark Wystrach of Midland, while calling Saving Country Music’s coverage of the band “lies” and “click-bait.” But it was never about how “authentic” Midland was. It was about their attempts to unnecessarily embellish their back story.
Tonight, Florida Georgia Line’s fleet of buses and semis will be set up in the parking lot of the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena in Florida, and Nelly, who less than a week ago was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in his bus as it idled in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Washington State, will be taking the stage with them.