A few thoughts on the CMA awards

We didn’t do too well with our predictions of this year’s CMA Award winners. In part, that’s probably because we gave the CMA way too much credit for artistic integrity. Next year, I’m going to take a look at the nominees and predict the very worst person in each category, and I suspect [...]

Who will win the CMA Awards

We shared our wishlist for this year’s CMA awards with you of last week. Now for the hard part – this is where we go out on a limb and try to predict who will actually walk home with a CMA award this year. We collectively sucked at prediction the last time [...]

Who should win this year’s CMA Awards

This year’s CMA Awards are due to be announced on November 11th. There are bound to be a few surprises, with unexpected winners or losers. We’ll share our best attempts at prediction with you next week, but first we thought we would let you all know not who we expect to win, but [...]

2009 album recommendations, album previews

2009 has been interesting, a crappy year for mainstream country music overall, but I would say a good year for other genres. Since the year is 75% over, I just wanted to share some of my picks from the year so far (inside country music and out) and a look at a few upcoming albums. [...]

Single Review: Carrie Underwood – ‘Cowboy Casanova’

A while back I must have become a follower of Carrie Underwood on Facebook, because after returning from the library, I saw a notice of her new single on my news feed- and I decided to give it a listen. I enjoyed Carnival Ride at first, but after a while, I got sick of it [...]

Recommendation: Should have been a hit

I’ve heard several people say that Gary Allan’s ‘Half of My Mistakes’ should have been released to radio. I’m inclined to agree with them.  It was my favorite track on his Living Hard album from the first listen, and has held that spot ever since.  While the album housed 3 successful singles, with each declining [...]

Album Review: Darryl Worley – ‘Sounds Like Life’

After almost ten years of varying degrees of success, Darryl Worley’s latest album came out recently on Stroudavarious Records. It is produced by Jim ‘Moose’ Brown and Kevin ‘Swine’ Grantt, and Darryl himself wrote or co-wrote almost all the material. One of the few exceptions, ‘Tequila On Ice’, written by Rivers Rutherford and [...]

Single Review: Brad Paisley – ‘Welcome To The Future’

In my recent foray into Twitter, I became a follower of Brad Paisley. Here’s the first message I saw from him, accompanied by a picture of Pac-Man on an iPhone:
My in flight entertainment this evening. Welcome to the future.
I was puzzled by the meaning of this picture until I heard the song “Welcome To The [...]

Album Review: Brad Paisley – ‘American Saturday Night’

First of all a disclaimer: I have never really been a Brad Paisley fan until today, when I listened to this album. Sure I like “Whiskey Lullaby”, “When I Get Where I’m Going” and “Letter To Me”, but I never really thought “Man, I need to hear some Brad Paisley right now.” He just wasn’t [...]

Recommendation: Songs about saying goodbye

Today an album that I’ve been anticipating for a while came out, namely Far by Regina Spektor- a very unique artist indeed. Listening to the album’s lead-off single, “Laughing With” (See the music video here), a line hit me kind of hard:
No one laughs at God on the day they realize
that the last sight they’ll [...]

Week ending 6/20/09: #1 this week in country music history

1949: One Kiss Too Many — Eddy Arnold (RCA)
1959: The Battle of New Orleans — Johnny Horton (Columbia)
1969: Running Bear — Sonny James (Capitol)
1979: Nobody Likes Sad Songs — Ronnie Milsap (RCA)
1989: Love Out Loud — Earl Thomas Conley (RCA)
1999: Write This Down — George Strait (MCA)
2009: Then — Brad Paisley (Arista)

Signature songs from superb singers

This past year, Taylor Swift had a massive hit in “Love Story.” I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It went to #1 on 3 charts worldwide, including the American and Canadian County charts as well as Australia’s all-genre chart. Beyond that, “Love Story” went into the top 5 on U.S. Billboard’s Hot 100, Pop 100 [...]

1989 Album Review: Gene Watson – ‘Back In The Fire’

1989 was supposed to be a new start for Gene Watson. He had been one of relatively few traditional country artists flying the flag for real country during the Urban Cowboy era of the earlier 80s, so the neotraditional revival should have given him a great opportunity. He signed to Warner Brothers, and [...]

Brad Paisley ‘Playlist’ album

This topic came up a few weeks ago when we were discussing the Brad Paisley and Sara Evans duet “New Again”. Some of you were looking for the song as a digital download. We were able to find it on the new Brad Paisley “Playlist” collection, but it was only available in CD [...]

Happy Easter

ACM Predictions

Tomorrow night’s Academy of Country Music awards are on everybody’s minds and lips. Reba will be hosting for the 11th time as the Academy hands out the awards on their 44th annual show.  Here then, is our contribution to the ACM Awards media frenzy.  These are the predictions of the My Kind of Country writing [...]

Are record labels stupid, or is it just radio?

Lately I’ve noticed that the worst songs seem to be picked for release as singles from a number of artists.  Alongside that, labels seem to be increasingly confused about how best to promote albums, with songs being announced as the next single from a given artist, and then hurriedly replaced by something else.  It all [...]

Emotional truth: sentiment and sentimentality in country music

Emotional truth is at the heart of almost all truly great country songs.  There is a very fine line in country music between the true tearjerkers, for which the genre is justly known, and the cloying sentimentality which outsiders sometimes ascribe to the music. Not, I have to admit, always completely unfairly – if the strings [...]

Secret Collaborations

Recently I’ve bought many Trisha Yearwood albums, namely Hearts In Armor, Inside Out, Real Live Woman and The Song Remembers When, in that order (the last one hasn’t arrived yet). The other day I was listening to all of my Trisha music on shuffle (which adds H,HatPoL and Jasper County to the previous albums) when [...]

Grammy Pre-show – Country Winners and My Thoughts

Here are some of the country winners already announced on the Grammy pre-show. These are the awards that won’t be televised at the ceremony on CBS tonight.
Best Country Song:  Jennifer Nettles, ‘Stay‘ … Isn’t it great to see ‘Stay’ get so much recognition? Plus, I think Jennifer is the best thing since penicillin anyway. 
Best Country Album: [...]