Similar to the Song of the Year category in 2023, the top finalists for Saving Country Music’s Album of the Year were so close, it only seems fitting to count them down from #4 to #1 just to take another opportunity to reinforce the best stuff once again. But there is a #1, and it’s one for the ages.
Picking the Saving Country Music Song of the Year winner has been especially excruciating here in 2022. Not only was there a strong field of initial nominees, no less than four songs emerged as front runners in the voting and discussion, with all of them basically receiving similar counts in the comments.
Infinite apologies if you came here looking for your next favorite boot scooter, because that’s not what Song of the Year is all about. There will be a Single of the Year category coming up too. But what we’re looking for here is the most unabashedly slow and sentimental sad bastard songs possible.
2022 is a very unique year when it comes to albums to consider, since there are no clear front runners as we’re used to. No specific album or albums feel like undeniable masterpieces, but the albums at or near the top of the heap are so numerous, it’s painstakingly hard to delineate them from each other.
The Grammy Awards officially open the initial round of voting for nominees today, and due to the propensity for the Grammys to often overlook key contributors in the country music and roots space, here are some simple suggestions of what Grammy voters should make sure they don’t ignore for the 2023 awards.
Songs are the most important unit of measurement in music, and the specific moment a life can change, a perspective can shift, a deep emotion that has gone dormant is re-awakened, and life is enhanced positively henceforth. When we talk about potential “Song of the Year” nominees, were not looking for the toe tappers.
Here at the halfway pole of the musical year, it’s time to run down the best albums that have been released in 2022 so far. There have already been some excellent releases, and the first albums highlighted should be considered early candidates for Saving Country Music’s Album of the Year.
When this playlist was first started as a simple collection point for the top songs in the current moment in country, who knew it would still be around nearly five years later, and garner over 7,700 followers on Spotify alone? Since then it’s helped launch songs and artists.
Ian Noe is a master craftsman of character and setting, manifesting men and women that feel as real as rain in the mind’s eye, and casting them in scenarios that make you materially and emotionally invested in them, all within a three minute interval.
What an amazing time in music we live in where you can compile a playlist of excellent new songs from living legends like Willie Nelson and Ray Wylie Hubbard, and place them right beside new songs from great contemporary artists like Ian Noe and Kaitlin Butts.
Sometimes you have to really dig for some new songs worthy of being added on this distinguished playlist. And other times the cup runeth over. The latter is the case this week with multiple songs that will move you, including from artist you won’t hear about anywhere else.
The elusive and enigmatic Ian Noe from Kentucky stunned many and left them hungry for more with his debut album Between The Country from 2019. But aside from some scant touring and appearances, the songwriter has been mostly out of the spotlight.
Tis’ the season, and the opportunity as the COVID-19 pandemic era comes to a close to start thinking about music festivals once again, and one of the biggest in the roots community has just announced its full 2021 lineup, and it’s a doozy.
Amid all the excitement last week of Cowboy & Western artist Colter Wall announcing he has a new album called ‘Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs’ coming out in August, it was glossed over that Colter was also part of a new song with tour partner and Texas country songwriter Vincent Neil Emerson.
A Saving Country Music Song of the Year candidate is not just your favorite ditty that gets stuck in your head. These are songs that change hearts, change lives, rest in your head for years to come, open up new ideas, or unlock memories or emotions you haven’t felt in years. Song of the Year nominees are the reason you’re a music fan.
When it comes to top-tier releases in the country and roots realm, 2019 was a year like we’ve never seen before. Though it feels like we say that every year, 2019 truly was exceptional. The albums selected to be considered for Saving Country Music’s Album of the Year are so elite, all of them should be considered the winners.
An album is something you listen to. A song is something that can change a life. The places a song can take you, the realizations and perspectives it can impart, the way it can touch something inside of you to make you feel something you never have before, or haven’t felt for a long time is the reason we cherish music so much.
The Saving Country Music Top 25 Playlist has now come to the lossless format of Tidal, so now you have no excuse to not be following along. And if that isn’t enough to entice you to listen, get a load of the newest selections, some of which might be some of the best songs yet in 2019.
As we get to the halfway pole in the musical year, it’s time to look back and asses the best albums that have been released in 2019 so far. At the moment, 2019 feels very top loaded with stellar releases. It has also been a very busy year for releases in regards to volume, though much more hit and miss when it comes to quality.
On ‘Between The Country,’ people die, and the light of the world is clouded out by the gloom of hard times, broken hearts, and unsettled minds. But there’s also a strange comfort to Ian Noe’s music, with the stories of tough times and tragic characters resetting one’s perspective on many of the silly concerns of much of modern life.
The amount of premium festivals with stacked lineups for you to salivate over as the target for your discretionary music budget are starting to get downright overwhelming, and a new festival set to take place August 10th and 11th in Lexington, Kentucky will only add to your dilemma.
If you’ve been paying any attention to country music over the last few years, you know to be paying attention to just about any performing songwriter hailing from Kentucky. It’s the state that has given us Tyler Childers, Dillon Carmichael, Chris Stapleton, Kelsey Waldon, and Sturgill Simpson just to name a few over the last few years.
An older name, a younger name, and a name you need to know make the latest additions to the Saving Country Music Top 25 Playlist. Let’s start off with venerable songwriter Tom Russell, who surprised us all with the release of his latest record ‘October in the Railroad Earth,’ and just how full of quality songs it is
Folk Alliance International is the annual gathering of the tribes for those individuals too stubborn-headed to worry about the major commercial applications of performed music, and instead do it for the spirit of the art, the community it creates, and/or to preserve primitive musical art forms in their most pure state.