Week ending 12/5/09: #1 albums this week in country music history

1984: Willie Nelson – City of New Orleans (Sony)
1989: Randy Travis – No Holdin’ Back (Warner Brothers)
1994: George Strait – Lead On (MCA)
1999: Faith Hill – Breathe (Warner Brothers)
2004: Shania Twain – Greatest Hits (Mercury)
2009: Carrie Underwood- Play On (19/Arista)

Single Review: Carrie Underwood – ‘Temporary Home’

As iTunes counted down to the release of Play On, Carrie Underwood’s latest album, I bought the singles since I planned on buying the album digitally. When I first heard this song, I knew it was a formulaic 3-part song, but in my opinion it is a really good 3-part song.
Now on Carnival Ride I [...]

Week ending 11/28/09: #1 albums this week in country music history

1984: Willie Nelson – City of New Orleans (Sony)
1989: Randy Travis – No Holdin’ Back (Warner Brothers)
1994: George Strait – Lead On (MCA)
1999: Faith Hill – Breathe (Warner Brothers)
2004: Shania Twain – Greatest Hits (Mercury)
2009: Carrie Underwood- Play On (19/Arista)

Week ending 11/21/09: #1 singles this week in country music history

1949: Slippin’ Around — Margaret Whiting & Jimmy Wakely (Capitol)
1959: Country Girl – Faron Young (Capitol)
1969: Okie From Muskogee – Merle Haggard (Capitol)
1979: Come With Me – Waylon Jennings (RCA)
1989: Bayou Boys — Eddy Raven (Capitol)
1999: I Love You — Martina McBride (RCA)
2009: Cowboy Casanova – Carrie Underwood (19/Arista)

Week ending 11/21/09: #1 albums this week in country music history

1984: Willie Nelson – City of New Orleans (Sony)
1989: Randy Travis – No Holdin’ Back (Warner Brothers)
1994: Mary Chapin Carpenter – Stones In The Road (Columbia)
1999: LeAnn Rimes – LeAnn Rimes (Curb)
2004: George Strait – 50 Number Ones (MCA)
2009: Carrie Underwood- Play On (19/Arista)

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 [...]

A swarm of new videos!

Head over to CMT’s website today, and there are 10 music videos that are premiering. Those would be “Southern Voice” by Tim McGraw, “I’m Alive” by Kenny Chesney & Dave Matthews, “White Liar” by Miranda Lambert, “Keep You” by Sugarland, “Consider Me Gone” by Reba McEntire, “That’s How Country Boys Roll” by Billy Currington, “Hit [...]

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 [...]

Album Review: Julie Roberts – ‘Men & Mascara’

After the semi-success that was her self-titled debut, Julie returned to the fans in 2006 with Men & Mascara. This time around she hired Byron Gallimore; the man responsible for producing Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, both of whom have turned out to be two of the biggest hit makers in the genre.  Any sane person [...]

What makes it country?

Even after a good three years of listening to my local country station, rooting around on the internet and exploring country music blogs, I still often wonder to myself, “What makes country music, country?” There’s such a variety of artists with a diversity of sounds and looks these days. Is there a definitive element that [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

What lies around the bend for Randy Travis?

Two news items over the weekend made me think about the career of Randy Travis and where (if anywhere) it might be headed now.
Last summer saw the long-awaited release of Around The Bend, widely trumpeted as his return to mainstream secular country music after some years pursuing Christian music.  It also marked his return to Warner [...]

Poll – Grammy For Best Female Country Vocal Performance

Here we have another entry in our Grammy poll series, this time for best female country vocal performance! In my opinion, this is a fairly strong category. I apologize for having so many polls close together, but the Grammys are fast approaching and there are still some country categories left!
As usual, check out the Grammy [...]

Chris’s End of 2008 List: Top 30 Singles

This is my 2008 top-30 singles post! First, about my singles list, I attempted to avoid songs that could still impact the charts more, songs like Miranda Lambert’s “More Like Her” or Little Big Town’s “Good Lord Willing”. I made some exceptions as you’ll soon see, but I tried to keep it to songs that [...]

If I Were A Country Song…

First of all, I admit it. I’ve used this as a discussion topic before on the 9513 forums! Unfortunately, it didn’t get that much of a response there, so I decided to re-try it here, hopefully more people will see it here.
So I was listening to the song “If I Were A Boy” by Beyoncé, [...]

Country Singles Chart Summary – 12/17/08

Yuletide offerings still dot the lower rungs of the Hot Country Songs chart this week, Montgomery Gentry holds steady to the top spot, Carrie Underwood has the Hot Shot Debut, and nothing much changes at the top of the heap.
Steve Holy enters the chart at #60 with ‘What Might Have Been’ and Faith Hill’s ‘Little [...]