Week ending 11/14/09: #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: Burnin’ Old Memories – Kathy Mattea (Mercury)
1999: I Love You — Martina McBride (RCA)
2009: Toes – Zac Brown Band (Atlantic)

Classic Rewind: Patty Loveless & Kathy Mattea – ‘Someday Soon’

Album Review: Reba McEntire – ‘Rumor Has It’

First of all, let me explain how I came across this Reba album. Rumor Has It came out in September of 1990, one year before I was born, so I found it much later. In December of 2007, right after I gave my dad Reba: Duets for Christmas, we went to my grandparents for the [...]

Week ending 7/4/09: #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: Statue of a Fool — Jack Greene (Decca)
1979: Amanda – Waylon Jennings (RCA)
1989: Come From The Heart — Kathy Mattea (Mercury)
1999: Write This Down — George Strait (MCA)
2009: Sideways – Dierks Bentley (Capitol)

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 [...]

Class of ‘89 Album Review: Lorrie Morgan – ‘Leave The Light On’

Lorrie Morgan was one of the ‘Class of ‘89′ who had been around on the fringes of the country world for a while, but who made a major breakthrough that year. Her father George Morgan was a minor country star of the 1950s, who sold a million copies of his biggest hit, ‘Candy Kisses’, [...]

Meet the Class of ‘89

Mixtape Time!

I was talking to a friend yesterday morning, and he told me that I need to give him a mixtape so he can “assess my personality”- so I decided to try and make my mixtape to try and encompass all of the music I listen to in just a limited number of tracks, say around [...]

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 [...]

Poll – Grammy For Best Country Song

First, if you haven’t yet voted for Best Country Collaboration or Best Duo/Group Performance, click the respective links to do so!
Here we are, my last poll on the Grammys! This is for a biggie: for Best Country Song Of The Year! Past winners include “Where’ve You Been” (Kathy Mattea), “Love Can Build A Bridge” [...]

Chris’s End of 2008 List: Top 10 Album Cuts

These are my favorite album cuts from albums released in 2008. I decided to do it for all genres, but there are only 3 songs that aren’t country, so I hope you guys like it! (I also shortened my comments to just a few sentences.)

10. “Strawberry Swing” – Coldplay
- The great looping guitar in the [...]

Storytime!

As I usually am when I make discussion posts, right now I’m bored, so here I am!
First of all, Merry Christmas to everyone! (Or Happy Holidays, whatever, you know what I mean.) For Christmas, I got 50 Greatest Hits, the 3 disc box set from Reba McEntire, so needless to say, I’ve been listening to [...]

Chris’s End of 2008 List: Top 8 Albums

This is my post for my top albums of 2008! I was looking at the new albums I had bought this year, and I only bought around 12 new country albums, most of which I thought were undeserving of being on my year-end list. So, I narrowed it down to 8 worthy candidates. I’m warning [...]

Jeopardy! Country Edition Discussion

So I was surfing wikipedia after watching an episode of Law & Order: SVU, and I followed a link to “Celebrity Jeopardy!” Looking through the total list of contestants over the years, I spotted some country stars, namely Kathy Mattea (Who won her game in 1994), Naomi Judd (1998), and Brad Paisley (2003). As a [...]