The 9513 - Country Music Blog

Last.fm Top Artists

Apparently this group isn’t as crazy for Carrie as you’d think. Despite a brand new album, the best Carrie Underwood could manage was #4 with 25 listeners, behind Johnny Cash (28), Miranda Lambert (27) and Garth Brooks (26). That’s a dead guy, a slightly un-retired guy and a non-radio sweetheart whose new album is a month old. Clearly, The 9513 group does not recognize real country music when it hears it. Underwood did manage to surpass the likes of Willie Nelson (22) and Dolly Parton (21), not to mention current stars like Sugarland (21) and Taylor Swift (19). Surprisingly, the Americana artists had a pretty solid week, with Todd Snider having 18 listeners, putting him on par with George Jones and Alan Jackson. Also, 11 people are now listening to The Avett Brothers, Corb Lund and Ryan Bingham, which makes me smile.

Last.fm Top Albums

As expected Play On did make it to #1, but it shares that spot with Revolution, as both had 15 listeners. Swift’s Fearless, in all its incarnations, was at #3 with 14 listeners, alongside the Dixie Chicks‘ Taking The Long Way. Two other Underwood albums made the Top 10, so her die-hard fans made it a Carrie Week. Gretchen Wilson managed to make it up to #9 with Here For The Party, as 10 people recalled those halcyon days of 2005 when her schtick was fresh. The group with 6 listeners ranges anywhere from Bomshel’s Fight Like A Girl and Billy Currington’s Doin’ Something Right to Whiskeytown’s Pneumonia and Deer Tick’s War Elephant. This will be the only country music chart where Deer Tick is mentioned in the same sentence as Billy Currington, by the way.

Last.fm Top tracks

Underwood almost manages the clean sweep, as nine of the top 10 songs are from her Play On album. “This Time” had 11 listeners, and “Someday When I Stop Loving You” and “Look At Me” had 10. Lambert’s “White Liar” sneaks in with 9 listeners. All in all, female singers and groups take the top 24 songs, with Luke Bryan breaking up the monotony with “Do I.” Six listeners dug back in the dusty recesses of their mp3 collections to give Randy Travis‘ “Forever and Ever, Amen” and Suzy Bogguss‘ “Someday Soon” a whirl. Even further back, 5 people played “Big Iron” from Marty Robbins, “Angel Band” from The Stanley Brothers and “White Lightning” from George Jones. That concludes our audio tour of country music history. Steel Magnolia also had 5 listeners for “Keep On Lovin’ You,” which isn’t all that great for a track that was available as one of iTunes’ free downloads.

Billboard Country Songs

For the second week in a row, Zac Brown Band holds the Top spot with “Toes,” while Brad Paisley sits at #2 with “Welcome To the Future.” Two of the big gainers for the week are “Cowboy Casanova,” which moves Underwood up to #3, and “Need You Now,” which moves up to #4 and gives Lady Antebellum its third Top 5 song. Meanwhile, Reba McEntire adds another Top 10 hit to her collection, with “Consider Me Gone” being her first solo Top 10 song since “He Gets That From Me” in 2004. The biggest debut of the week went to The Band Perry, which saw “Hip To My Heart” debut at #52. Meanwhile, “Honky Tonk Stomp” by Brooks & Dunn with Billy Gibbons moves backwards for the second straight week (down to #20), meaning that one of country music’s most successful duos is ending their career with a single that even one-third of ZZ Top couldn’t push past #16.

Billboard Country Albums

It may be a little unfair, but Taylor Swift’s Fearless re-debuted and went from #2 to #1. It was the biggest sales gainer of the week, and Swift made history on the Hot 100 Singles chart as well, as all six of the new songs from the platinum edition charted, with five debuting within the Top 30. Overall, she’s got nine singles in the Hot 100, which is a record for a female artist. Back to the country albums, or at least the “country” albums. Jason Aldean moves up three spots, as Wide Open moves from #10 to #7. Lady Antebellum has a resurgence as well, moving up to #4. There weren’t many debuts this week, but Joe Nichols made it to #15 with Old Things New. Rosanne Cash made a reappearance in the Top 10 with The List, which is having a nice little run on the charts. Most other albums that aren’t supported by country radio have a solid debut before falling completely off the charts, but this one has stuck around.

Americana Music Association Chart

As good as it’s doing on the Billboard charts, The List has only made it to #2, where it’s been blocked for the second straight week by The Rose Hotel by Robert Earl Keen. It’s only by a technicality that Hotel keeps the top spot, as both albums had 429 spins last week. The rest of the chart was pretty stable, with only The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band having a big jump, with Speed Of Life moving from #21 to #10. You know the competition is tough on this chart when John Fogerty has stalled out at #7 for the third week in a row with The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again. At least Sam Bush managed to move up four spots, with Circles Around Me jumping to #16. Though he hasn’t charted yet, Chris Scruggs (from THAT Scruggs family) had the most adds last week, as Anthem gained 12 stations.

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I think I’d watch Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson in any type of movie. Buddy cop, period piece, tastefully shot erotica…well, maybe not any type of movie. In 1984’s Songwriter, they basically seem to be playing alternate universe versions of themselves. Nelson is Doc Jenkins, a great singer/songwriter with aspirations of making a fortune as a music mogul. Kristofferson is Jenkins’ best pal, Blackie Buck, a charismatic and frequently shirtless country artist who “drinks so people don’t think [he's] a dope fiend.”

When Doc gets caught up in a bad publishing deal thanks to sleazy businessman Rodeo Rocky, he calls on Blackie to help him out. Wackiness ensues, as it so often does in a Willie Nelson movie. Doc cooks up a plot to make some money and screw over Rocky. He discovers Gilda, a slightly nutty up and coming singer, then slaps Blackie and Gilda’s names on songs he writes, telling them, “you get the credit, I get the money.”
Can Doc scheme his way out of Rodeo Rocky’s contract and make enough money to provide for his kids and ex-wife, who he may still love? And just exactly how much of this film is based on the exploits of Nelson and Kristofferson in their rowdier days? Nelson, who sold the wildly successful song “Night Life” for peanuts, sure learned about the ins and outs of the music business the hard way, so there might be a grain of truth in Doc’s plotting.

Songwriter doesn’t ever take itself too seriously, mostly because its two leading men sure seem to be having a blast, thus suggesting that the question Blackie poses to Doc, “Do you suppose a man has to be a miserable son of a bitch all the time just to write a good song now and then” might not be true after all. Celluloid Country repeat offender Lesley Ann Warren is excellent as neurotic, drunk, girl singer Gilda (she was nominated for a Golden Globe), and there are a couple other recognizable faces in the mix, including Rip Torn (Payday) as slick promoter Dino. Members of Willie’s band and Stephen Bruton show up as well in Songwriter, appearing as…the band. Rodeo Rocky is played by Richard C. Sarafian, best known around these parts as the director of the supercreepy “Living Doll” episode of The Twilight Zone, while the film’s actual director, Alan Rudolph, is an Altman disciple who’d again work with Kristofferson in Trouble in Mind.

The music, written by Nelson and Kristofferson, is damn good. “Who’ll Buy My Memories,” shows up, as does Kristofferson’s “Under the Gun.” Songwriter will never make any AFI “Best Of” lists. But when it comes to films starring musicians, it’s not half bad, thanks to the many charms and musical talents of Willie and Kris Kristofferson, who was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Original Song Score category. There are worse ways to spend 90 minutes…like listening to Countryman on a loop.

• Sony Pictures plans to bring Kenny Chesney to the big screen next April in a limited-release concert film, Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3-D.
• Sugar Hill released a video from the release party for Sam Bush’s album Circles Around Me.
• Brad Paisley on why he wears a hat:
  

  It’s about the image, and it’s about the lifestyle and what I want to sing about. It’s not like someone’s going to mistake me when they turn on “Conan O’Brien” tonight, you know what I mean? It’s not like, “Wonder what kind of music he sings.” Instantly, when you turn it on, you know.

• Check out all of Taylor Swift’s skits from her appearance on Saturday Night Live.
• EW.com’s Whitney Pastorek kept a not-quite-liveblog of the CMA Awards rehearsal on Sunday, with an occasional interview, and found out Carrie Underwood will change dresses a total of nine times.
• Willie Nelson performed an off the cuff concert at the Ryman Auditorium last Thursday that was dominated by cover songs. CMT’s Chris Parton has a review.
• Country Haiku:
  

  I cannot help but
  Wonder what she’s doing now
  Where’s my telescope?

• Gary Allan, who plays the Ryman on Thursday, explained the process behind choosing songs for his albums:
  

  “I usually write all I can, and then I go to my friends and if their songs beat my songs, I put them on the CD,” he explains. “They have to relate to me in my life somewhere. I can never do a song about tractors or anything that doesn’t relate to me personally.”

• The Dixie Bee-Liners lead singer Brandi Hart on the band’s new album:
  

  “Susanville is the first of several bluegrass concept records we’ve been planning. It’s all about journeys and destinations. If you can imagine being able to look down into every car on the highway and tell the stories of the people inside, that’s what Susanville is like.”

• Listen to a live recording of Charlie Robison performing his hit “Photograph.”
• Music Fog videos:
  • Band of Heathens – “Let Your Heart Not Be Troubled”
  • Scott Miller – “Claire Marie”
• Chris Hillman performed a concert for a church fundraiser on Saturday night, which was recorded with plans to be released as a live album on Rounder Records next year.
• Nashville Scene’s Edd Hurst wonders: “After helping spur a roots revival, where will The Peasall Sisters go next?”
• The Brooklyn Rail’s Margaret Eby reviewed the recently released book A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears by Antonino D’Ambrosio. She concludes:
  

  D’Ambrosio’s enthusiasm for Bitter Tears turns into a regurgitation of Cash’s own self-constructed mythology. The Johnny Cash that sings about Ira Hayes’ plight on Bitter Tears is no more—and no less—real than the Johnny Cash of any other era. D’Ambrosio fails to mine the contradictions behind Cash’s persona.

  Not that D’Ambrosio’s moment of realization was wrong; Johnny Cash was indeed a folksinger. But he was also a chameleon, a sneering rock star and an earnest troubadour, a country legend and an outlaw. Cash said as much in an angry, amphetamine-fueled letter to Billboard: “I am fighting no particular cause. If I did, it would soon make me a sluggard. For as times change, I change.”

  (via That Nashville Sound)

• Watch the new video for Radney Foster’s “Angel Flight.” (via Music Fog)

All you young country singers who are looking to expand from country music into pop, movies, television and even book publishing, keep one thing in mind: Dolly did it first. Name any aspect of the entertainment industry, and Dolly Parton has probably been successful at it. Her latest venture is a CD/DVD live concert performance, Dolly: Live From London.

So, for this interview, I had two goals. One, to talk about the new album. And two, to get her laugh recorded for posterity. You know the one–that high-pitched, infectious squeal that can melt the coldest of hearts and brighten up the grayest of days. The Dolly laugh.

SAM GAZDZIAK: You’ve had a couple of live albums out before, but this is the first one that’s got the DVD with it. Why did you decide to put out a concert video?

DOLLY: We thought it was about time. We were really inspired after we did our European tour last year. In London, we worked at the O2 Arena, and the audience was just so great and the place was just so wonderful, and we had such good footage when we got home, we thought this was just too good to put in the archives and hold for another time. We edited it down, and we thought it would be a great idea, as you mentioned, to put the CD and the DVD in one package. That’s what we did, and we’re very excited about it, and we hope the fans are going to love it. We think they will.

SG: From a logistics standpoint, did having all these cameras around you pretty much everywhere you went cause any problems or issues?

DOLLY: No, we knew they were going to be documenting the whole tour as we usually do if we’re doing something really special. I think the audience was told up front they were going to be filmed, in case somebody was sitting next to somebody they weren’t supposed to. So we kind of told them that.

I’m used to cameras around me. I live my live in a fishbowl and in the spotlight, so that was all okay. We just had a great time doing it, and I think it shows. We got a lot of footage from the fans, so they didn’t mind it at all, they liked being part of something special. And we have a lot of interviews from a lot of my band and the crew, and I did a lot of talking within the body of the show. We kind of cut away so the fans have a little more insight as to what we think and how we live. We (taped) the rehearsals, that sort of thing. All in all, I think it’s a wonderful and enlightening, and entertaining look for the fans.

Continue Reading…

Sammy Kershaw once sang that there are three topics he’d just rather not get into: “Politics, Religion and Her.”

However, Kershaw may be in the minority, considering the recent string of country songs and news items that don’t necessarily fall into the conversation outlines for polite company.

On Halloween, Q Notes published “City bans Country performer after anti-gay lyrics,” recounting controversial lyrical additions singer Matt Boswell and the Hillbilly Blues Band made to a Merle Haggard song during a city-sponsored concert in Reidsville, North Carolina:

In his rendition of Haggard’s “Are the Good Times Really Over for Good?”, Boswell sang, “Well you’ll never take my guns, and I’ll pray anywhere that I please/My daddy always told me, if you were able, and didn’t work then you don’t eat/All you Wall Street bankers, as far as I’m concerned, you can all go to Hell/And you can’t get married, you stupid gays and queers, so why don’t you go somewhere else?”

On a different note, Jim reviewed Lee Ann Womack’s new single “There is a God” this week, which some readers disliked not for its content, but its presentation. Commenter Noeller said:

Yep – as much as I love Country music, I can’t stand the Christian overtones in a lot of it, and this song really really rubs me the wrong way. It’s just too preachy and too “in my face”. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who will eat it up, but I just can’t see it getting a lot of spin up north of the 49th.

Historically, country music (and its roots in Southern traditions and beliefs) has been built upon conservative and religious foundations. About a year and a half ago, we had a Your Take that focused on mixing politics and country music, so this time around we want to hear from you on a slightly different question: Despite the examples above, do you think country music, as a genre, is unfairly stereotyped as being bigoted, backwards and preachy?

Thanks to That Nashville Sound’s Ken Morton, Jr. for his suggestions on this week’s Your Take subject.

• In a press release from Rural Rhythm Records, Melonie Cannon revealed that she’s been battling an addiction to prescription medications and in light of that revelation, Rural Rhythm is offering a free download of her song “Send a Little Love.”
• Watch the video premiere of Randy Houser’s “Whistlin’ Dixie” at CMT.
• My Kind of Country’s Occasional Hope described in detail the new Hank Williams box set and says it’s a must-have.
• Kid Rock and Jamey Johnson are scheduled to duet at the CMA Awards.
• Blake Shelton discussed deer hunting and his relationship with Joe Nichols, and tried to guess which of his songs was playing after hearing one-second snippets, in an interview with a Cincinnati radio station.
• Joe Diffie’s Live At Billy Bob’s album will be released Nov. 17.
• The Bluegrass Blog is spotlighting The Quebe Sisters Band, a group of three sisters specializing in Texas swing, who were one of the surprise hits at the IBMA last month. (MySpace)
• Despite being a four-time Grammy nominee, Joe Nichol’s CD release concert at the Wormy Dog Saloon in Oklahoma had a poor turn out, possibly due to AC/DC’s show down the street. However, the Red Dirt Report’s Andrew W. Griffin reports that the low attendance didn’t affect the quality of the performance.
• Joey + Rory partnered with CMT for a couple of Christmas projects.
• The Greencards are scheduled to perform a hometown show — their last of 2009 — next Wednesday at Station Inn. Jon Weisberger cites the show as being particularly special due to fiddler Eamon McLoughlin’s departure from the group at the end of the year.
• Songs:Illinois describes Ike Reilly as a mid-western institution who has flirted with with rock radio fame. His new album is due out in a couple of weeks and one of the tracks, “The War on the Terror and the Drugs,” features a duet with Shooter Jennings. Listen at Songs:Illinois.
• Amazon’s Best Songs of 2009
• Chelsea Crowell, daughter to Rosanne Cash, is releasing her debut album next week and asked her mother for her own list, referencing Cash’s recent album of cover songs pulled from a list her father gave her when she was 18. Click through watch Cash perform “Motherless Children” and “Sea of Heartbreak” from that album for WSJ Cafe.
• For the the final week of their fall concert series, The Nest is giving away tickets to three of Kellie Pickler’s upcoming tour stops and five copies of her latest record.
• Steve Martin strikes a balance between comedy and music in his live shows.
  

  There were times where Steve quipped “This is a song. Well, that’s exactly what it is” and then played the song. Another time he said “The next song is a sing-a-long, but there are no lyrics, so good luck.”

• CMT’s Chet Flippo believes all of the CMA Awards nominees for entertainer of the year would make worthy recipients, but cites Taylor Swift and Kenny Chesney as the front runners.
• Toyota, sponsors of Brooks & Dunn, introduced a concept truck called the Tundra Midnight Rider Tailgater as a tribute to the duo and to celebrate their upcoming 2010 farewell tour.
• Is “ass” a bad word?
• In collaboration with Nashville Scene, the LimeWire Store released a free sampler of songs titled Ear to the Ground: Nashville. The songs are pulled from a variety of genres, with Derek Hoke, Those Darlins, and Caitlin Rose representing country in some form. (via MusicRow)

My original intent was to write a Friday Five in honor of Guy Fawkes Night; however, there are few songs about plotting to blow up Parliament. So instead, we’ll be looking at another important historical event. This November marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Here are five of country music’s best songs about walls, whether they’re made of stone, sheetrock, or metaphor (Note: Songs about the Vietnam Wall aren’t included here; they’ll be featured in an upcoming playlist).

• 5. “Four Walls” – Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys
  With his girl drawn to bright lights and good times, this guy sits at home with the walls closing in on him. Poor fella. Maybe he should get a dog or a hobby or something, because talking to walls is the first sign of crazy hermitdom.
• 4. “Tonight I Climbed the Wall” – Alan Jackson
  The wall in this song is metaphorical, representing the emotional distance between two lovers. The second single from A Lot About Livin’ (And A Little ‘Bout Love) went all the way to #4 in 1992. Try not to be freaked out by the mustache-less Jackson in the music video.
• 3. “Walls of Time” – Paul Burch
  That Bill Monroe sure liked to sing about walls. Here Burch, supported by The Pine Valley Cosmonauts, delivers a mopey alt-country cover of the Monroe/Peter Rowan-penned song. Other excellent cover versions come from the Johnson Mountain Boys (featured below), Emmylou Harris and quite a few others.
• 2. “The Wall” – Johnny Cash
  Escape attempt or suicide? Cash suggests it’s the latter in this prison song. Interestingly enough, the clip below is from a late ’80s performance in Berlin.
• 1. “Hello Walls” – Faron Young
  If the guy in Monroe’s “Four Walls” spends a few more nights in the same situation, he’ll end up like the dude in this song, talking not just to the walls, but windows and ceilings as well. Perhaps the most important wall song in country music, “Hello Walls” was a massive hit for Young in the 1961, and helped its songwriter, Willie Nelson, make a name for himself.

• Watch the promo for this week’s Saturday Night Live, hosted by Taylor Swift.
• Country California’s C.M. Wilcox reviewed the new album from Derek Hoke, Goodbye Rock N Roll, and maintained that Hoke has released one of the finest country debuts of 2009. (MySpace)
  

  His gentle, unpretentious brand of throwback country often seems just a hiccup away from the early rock of Buddy Holly. Fans of The Wrights and The Little Willies should take particular note.

• Jessica Simpson and Dolly Parton have double-D breasts. Thanks, CNN.
• The iTunes single of the week, which is available for “free dollars,” is Steel Magnolia’s “Keep On Lovin’ You.” (iTunes)
• Stream the Ryan Adams-penned song from Norah Jones‘ forthcoming album The Fall. The Dallas Observer’s Pete Freedman describes the song as having a “decidedly Americana feel–like a less twangy but just-as-sultry Lucinda Williams.”
• Carrie Underwood on women in country music:
  

  I definitely do see more women in country music and more women doing well, and I think it will be a while before we really get what’s coming to us. … I’m not complaining at all because I’d rather work as hard as I can and see a difference than have things handed to me, but it does seem sometimes like women have to work a lot harder to kind of keep up with the boys. And I definitely see the tides changing.

• Amazon’s Best Country Albums of 2009
• Drew Kennedy’s new album, An Audio Guide to Cross Country Travel, is now available through iTunes, Amazon MP3, and Napster
• In honor of the late Stephen Bruton, the Lone Star International Film Festival conceived the Stephen Bruton Award and the first honoree is Kris Kristofferson, who will accept the award on Nov. 13.
• Matthew McConaughey celebrated his big 4-0 on Tuesday with a birthday party featuring country musician Jamey Johnson.
• Start-Telegram pop critic Preston Jones was underwhelmed with Carrie Underwood’s new album.
  

  Underwood has had too much success doing a few things well to ever truly break out of the box, which may satisfy her financially but would seem stifling creatively. Although she makes noise in the press about pushing herself and trying new things, as she did in a recent Billboard interview, the only variable between albums is who helps write songs.

• Americana Roots posted live audio of the Sons of Bill from a concert they performed back in October.
• Matthew Houck, of Phosphorescent notoriety, talked to American Songwriter about his last album, To Willie, a collection of Willie Nelson covers, and his reluctance to playing new songs on tour before a record is actually out. Scroll to the end to listen to three live acoustic tracks.
• Music Fog posted video of Corb Lund performing “Talkin’ Veterinarian Blues.”
• Loudon Wainwright III recently released a two-CD tribute to Charlie Poole titled High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project and he revealed to All Things Considered’s Robert Christgau his goal for the project: a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame for a rambling man named Charlie Poole.
• Daytrotter recorded Kris Kristofferson performing three songs from his recent album.

Songwriters: Don Cook, James House, Curly Putnam and Rafe Van Hoy.

“Written by committee” is a standard put-down for jumbled songs so chock-full of cliches without any sort of concentrated focus that it’s easy to imagine a room full of songwriters throwing proverbial darts at a lyrical dartboard in search of easily digestible, commercially viable hits. Like any stereotype, however, this particular brand of song creation doesn’t have to produce such sallow results.

Nashville veteran James House’s new single “I Love You Man” was written by a committee of four, and what a committee it was: Together, Don Cook (”You’re Gonna Miss Me”), House (”Broken Wing”), Curley Putnam (”He Stopped Loving Her Today”) and Rafe Von Hoy (”Golden Ring”) effectively bang out one thoroughly enjoyable rockabilly ditty.

If “I Love You Man,” written by the songwriting heavyweights during a string of summer songwriting sessions held earlier this year, sounds a little bit like a Dwight Yoakam tune, there’s good reason: House was also behind Yoakam’s 1993 Grammy-winning hit “Ain’t That Lonely Yet.” Similarly, this song represents a man satisfied with his newly single status, albeit in a slightly more upbeat, “mano-a-mano” manner: “I love you man/For taking her off my hands/I think one day you’ll understand/Why I’m you’re biggest fan.”

House also borrows Yoakam’s enthusiastic brand of retro honky-tonk rock that works well with his twang that bangs out lyrics like “I hear her calling, so I’ll let you go/I got a bar stool and it’s getting cold/Hey if she ever lets you off that leash/Come on down, the drink’s on me.” The song’s title also works well as an appropriately slurrable declaration that feels like a fresh addition to the crowded “good riddance” song market.

Despite his success with a pen (the songwriter also counts Diamond Rio’s “In a Week or Two,” which reached number two on the country charts, as one of his own), House’s own success as a singer has been limited to three Top 25 singles. And while it’s unlikely this song’s tongue-in-cheek, shake-your-hips vibe will make that garner him a fourth, “I Love You Man” should make a more than sizable dent on the Americana charts.

Listen: James House – “I Love You Man”

Songwriters: Jason Jones & Brett Jones.

One of country music’s greatest strengths is its realism. All the joys, sorrows and experiences of life are presented right there, on country radio, in a manner to which everyone can relate. For example, everyone I know who’s from a small, backwoods hick town constantly waxes poetic about general stores and church on Sunday. Women are free to vandalize their ex’s cars (or their ex) without consequence. And if I had a dollar for every time some old man I met in a bar left me his fortune, I could leave a fortune to some stranger I met at a bar.

A couple of similarly realistic scenarios are played out in “Hard Rain” by Lofton Creek artist Gwen Sebastian, but the happy endings are non-existent. When compared to other sad songs from recent memory, this one takes a little different approach–instead of being a dreary balled, it’s a sprightly uptempo tune that favors the fiddle over a whole string section. Instead of draping on the maudlin sentiment, the song deals frankly with its characters, the choices they made and the consequences therein. As the song goes, hearts break, and a hard rain washes out a gravel road. The singer who leaves his love behind to seek his fortune and the girl who gives up her baby aren’t portrayed as bad people, nor do they have a tacked-on redemption. They just made their decisions and are left to deal with the repercussions, months or years down the road. Anyone who’s ventured out into the real world has been there.

Sebastian has a radio-friendly voice, yet there’s just enough of an edge to it to give it some character and separate herself from other singers making a play for airtime. Though she’s working from a disadvantage of being on a record label (Lofton Creek) that has yet to compile more than a handful of success, she’s got a smartly written song and solid vocals. That’s not a guarantee of a smash hit, but it’s a good start.

Listen: Gwen Sebastian – “Hard Rain”