Thankfully, though, some artists are still recording good country songs, and good country drinking songs. The superb “An Old Friend of Mine” was a highlight of Joe Nichols’ recent album. The 9513 columnist Miss Leslie independently released “Drunk Dialer” just a few months back. Even Brady Seals’ “Been There, Drunk That” and Rodney Atkins’ “Fifteen Minutes” (both from 2009 releases) were a fair bit of fun.

Yes, good country drinking songs are still being recorded. This just doesn’t happen to be one of them, probably because it never aspires to anything more than competence. It’s template traditional country designed to go down easy, but in striving to make no negative impression, it doesn’t make much of an impression at all. The singalong tempo and Niemann’s affable baritone will have you humming while you listen, but you’ll be hard-pressed to remember any of the details minutes later. Because they don’t matter, possibly not even to Niemann himself. This isn’t a song for a lasting career; it’s just something else to sing, another track to fill an album.

Points have also been deducted for the cutesy sound effect over a not-so-racy line about getting laid and the barroom singalong at the end, both standard ingredients of this song type that appear all-too-predictably and bespeak a general lack of innovation.

In response to the song’s own question – “Hey hey hey, what’s so wrong/With one more drinking song?” – nothing, nothing at all. But if it doesn’t distinguish itself through an especially clever turn of phrase, a fresh musical take, an outstanding vocal performance, something on which to pin an identity – if it even seems to delight in its own nondescriptness – I’m left wondering why anyone would choose to listen to this particular drinking song in the first place. Especially given all the fine alternatives.

Listen: Jerrod Niemann – “One More Drinking Song”

The acronym stands for “certified guitar player,” a designation given by Atkins to a select few musicians who he felt made significant contributions to the world of guitar–Wariner was one of only four to receive this honor (the others were Jerry Reed, Tommy Emmanuel, and John Knowles).

Atkins, who died in 2001, is one of music’s most important figures. He worked with Red Foley, toured with Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, released over 100 albums, influenced countless guitar pickers with his unique style, and, of course, spearheaded the Nashville Sound movement. He was also the man who signed Steve Wariner to his first recording contract at RCA in 1977 (Wariner was still a teenager when he got his start playing bass for Dottie West and Bob Luman, and was barely in his 20s when he signed with RCA) then subsequently “fired” Wariner as his bass player when Steve’s solo song “Your Memory” cracked the Top 10 a few short years later. The two men were dear friends, and this friendship/mutual admiration is tenderly displayed in the music and liner notes, which feature pictures of the two as well as the revelation that they called each other “Big Hero” and “Little Hero.”

My Tribute to Chet Atkins is generally arranged in chronological order, interspersing biographical Wariner-penned originals with songs that Atkins recorded during his six decades in the music business; the album is bookended by “Leavin’ Luttrell,” a song representing the start of Atkins’ musical career and “Silent Strings,” a moving eulogy in which Wariner pays tribute not only to his dear friend, but the guitar he left behind. As Wariner makes very clear in the liner notes, “You can’t out-Chet Chet.” He doesn’t try to, eschewing Atkins’ arguably best known singles “Yakety Axe” and “Mr. Sandman” in favor of songs that hold personal meaning, such as “(Back Home Again in) Indiana,” (recorded for the 1954 album A Session with Chet Atkins.) a song that Wariner, an Indiana boy, listened to religiously.

A highlight of the album is “Producer’s Medley,” a compilation of eight songs that Atkins produced, including “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “End of the World,” and “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot.” According to the liner notes, Atkins used to play “Producer’s Medley” on the road, but never recorded it. Here, Wariner reconstructs the medley, making it all sound incredibly effortless, as though certified guitar playing is no more difficult than a marathon session of Guitar Hero.

For the most part, My Tribute to Chet Atkins is an instrumental album, letting the masterful fingerstyle guitar work–often supported by fiddle and piano–speak for itself. However, “Chet’s Guitar” features Wariner singing his lifelong admiration of Atkins, beginning with a childhood spent listening to “the touch and the tone and the twang of Chet’s guitar” on his father’s 45s, playing dive bars as a young man, and eventually making the Opry stage, “fingers all flying up and down the frets/Playing every lick that [he] stole from Chet.”

Clocking in at approximately 35 minutes long, My Tribute to Chet Atkins, may run a little short for some listeners’ tastes, but it’s a masterful tribute to a great friend and a legendary figure in American music that simultaneously showcases Wariner’s c.g.p. skill. He doesn’t deliver a carbon copy of Chet’s musical style, but instead pays homage to the man and the artist with a sense of understated grace that makes each song a joy to hear.

Will guitar-loving kids pick along to this just like Steve Wariner did to Atkins’ records so many years ago? It wouldn’t be surprising.

Chris Young’s self-titled first album suffered from an acute case of Underwooditis: a great voice, but not-so-great material. While the dozens of Nashville Star viewers may have bought the record, the subsequent radio play just wasn’t enough to make him a household name. His second album has been much better received, with “Gettin’ You Home (The Black Dress Song)” recently topping the charts and “Voices” breaking into the Top 40 back in May 2008.

The title track and third single from his sophomore album, “The Man I Want to Be,” is written by a pair of proven rainmakers. Brett James (”Jesus, Take the Wheel”) and Tim Nichols (”Live Like You Were Dying”) start things off with a killer opener, “God, I’m down here on my knees ’cause it’s the last place left to fall/Begging for another chance if there’s any chance at all” and although some lyrics are a little too bland to be particularly moving (”I wanna be a givin’ man/I wanna really start livin’, man” is the worst offender), “The Man I Want to Be” is certainly good enough to hold its own when compared to the similarly inspirational hits penned by Nichols and James mentioned above.

In the hands of a lesser singer, this single would be radio filler in between songs about being country and songs about high school; however, Young sells it, truly sounding as though he’s at the end of his rope and praying to anyone who’ll listen. He possesses perhaps the best voice to hit commercial country since Josh Turner first hit the scene, and his vocal turn on “The Man I Want to Be” is slightly reminiscent of Keith Whitley.

“The Man I Want to Be” is definitely capable of success: it’s got the catchy, radio-friendliness of “Gettin’ You Home” while also being (neo)traditional enough to lessen the grief of those sitting shiva after last week’s CMAs. Better get used to hearing from Chris Young: at only 24 years old, he’s got the talent and potential to make some mighty fine music.

Listen: Chris Young – “The Man I Want To Be”

When a new artist releases a cover song as his or her first single–especially a cover of a non-country song–there are two ways it could flesh out.

A cover song comes with a built-in audience, or at least an “Oh-that-sounds-familiar” audience. And those 20-some extra seconds a familiar tune may buy can make all the difference between a listener turning the radio dial (or clicking the “Next” button on Pandora) and hanging around long enough to become invested in a new voice, one of the biggest obstacles hanging over an emerging artist’s head.

But, as Randy Travis would remind us, there’s always the other hand: A cover song can signal an artist’s reliance on material that may be more commercially profitable than artistically worthwhile, and it invites inevitable comparisons between the new version and its predecessors.

Newcomer Margaret Durante’s debut release “Use Somebody,” a cover of Nashville-based pop/rock band Kings of Leon’s chart-topping hit, falls somewhere between the two. While Durante’s performance doesn’t show any symptoms of laziness, the same can’t be said for her success in making the song her own or providing potential fans with any signs of her point of view as an artist.

Of course, there’s a reason the song was popular and often-covered: Its lonely urgency is underscored thoughtful, interesting lyrics like “Off in the night, while you live it up, I’m off to sleep/Waging wars to shape the poet and the beat/I hope it’s gonna make you notice/I hope it’s gonna make you notice/Someone like me”.

Established singers Paramore, Nickelback and Kelly Clarkson have taken their own stabs at the hit, albeit as one-offs featured during concerts and special acoustic sets. However, Durante–or, more likely, her handlers at record label Universal Republic–chose to introduce herself to the country music world with a “country” version of the song.

By “country,” I mean Durante delivers the song from a female’s point of view in the stylings of Taylor Swift and Colbie Caillat: She finds a natural rhythm that complements her vocals, but any brief glimpses of her interesting twang are disrupted by “whoa-whoas” featured throughout the song. And even though the original song’s hipster edge is shaved off with superfluous strains of steel guitar and fiddle, the production and arrangement remain disappointingly similar.

Although Jimi Hendrix famously covered “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” just two days after its initial release, it feels a little soon to reinterpret a song that debuted just under one year ago; however, because her target audience may be largely unfamiliar with the tune and its writers, that probably won’t be a hindrance for Durante.

Still, in terms of bringing a convincing female perspective to the song, Durante doesn’t come close to indie singer Laura Jansen’s version of the tune, which marries an original arrangement with a genuine delivery. Here’s hoping Durante brings original material like “Put Yourself in my Blues” (a tune featured on her MySpace profile that’s worth the click) on her next go-round at a bid for a slot on country radio.

Listen: Margaret Durante – “Use Somebody”

The Grascals are no strangers to the rowdy side of country music, having covered Waylon Jennings’ “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line” on their last album, Keep On Walkin’. Even so, their collaboration with Hank Williams, Jr. on his new single, “All the Roads,” is a pleasant surprise. Not only is it a catchy little number, it–along with several other tracks from Junior’s recent album 127 Rose Avenue–is some of the strongest material the man’s put out in nearly 20 years.

Though banjo and fiddle kick off the song and feature prominently during the next three minutes, “All the Roads” isn’t bluegrassy enough to frighten away the unbelievers–there are no Monrovian high lonesomes, and there are thumping country-rock drums to pound out the beat–but it might lead a few converts over to the Grascals and their irresistible sound. The sextet’s picking is in fine form, with new addition and current IBMA banjo player of the year Kristin Scott Benson delivering some tasty licks on the five string. Singing about waiting for his gal to return to him, Bocephus sounds better than he has in some time: engaged, playful, even downright youthful. Best of all, he’s not rehashing “All My Rowdy Friends” for the millionth time.

The raucous chorus (the best part of the song), on which Hank is joined by the Grascals, details the easy path back to him as the gang sings “I’m gonna keep all the roads open to my heart/Just in case you ever want to come back this way, sweetheart/The gate’ll be open and the door unlocked, so bring your horse and cart.” Where else do these roads lead? Junior’s “cave of love,” in which he is waiting like a hungry grizzly and you, young lady, are his Timothy Treadwell.

“Love caves?” Montana snowstorms? Horses? Dogsleds? At times it’s tempting to wonder just what the hell Bocephus is talking about, but “All the Roads” is so dang catchy that it doesn’t really matter. Turn it up and sing along.

Listen: Hank Williams Jr. and The Grascals – “All The Roads”

When an artist capable of transcendent moments like “An Old Friend of Mine” and the note-perfect rendering of Dement-via-Haggard heartbreaker “No Time to Cry” that graces Revelation sets out to have a radio hit, it’s usually pretty obvious. That’s the curse of being an adept interpreter of weighty material: when you opt for lighter fare, it’s clearly a matter of choice rather than a symptom of all-around incompetence.

Enter “Gimmie That Girl,” an inoffensive little ditty all about how beautiful a woman can be in those unguarded moments when she’s not even trying. It’s a nice enough sentiment, and one that certainly resonated with women and their adoring men alike when delivered by Sammy Kershaw as “She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful.”

But there’s an important (if subtle) difference between Kershaw’s 1993 hit and Nichols’ latest: where the former focuses on the woman and what she don’t know, the latter filters the same idea through a language of “gimmies.” In fact, the song is virtually swimming in gimmies: Nichols himself repeats the phrase 15 times, while back-up singers add repetitions of “gimmie gimmie gimmie that girl” behind the choruses.

The most straightforward reading is that he must really want her. Upon further examination, though, the repetitions of the request reveal a deeper truth: the song is ultimately more about the gimmie than it is about the girl.

So that when Nichols sings “Give me that girl with her hair in a mess/Sleepy little smile with her head on my chest/That’s the you that I like best/Give me that girl,” it seems less like a tribute to the woman herself and more like wishful thinking–a far-flung fantasy of compartmentalizing a person. He wants all the good, none of the bad. In truth, however, the girl who’s sweet in the morning is the same one that sometimes comes home like a raving lunatic after a difficult day at work. Nichols registers his request (15 of them, actually) for “the you that I like best,” but he can’t pick and choose. He has signed on for the whole woman.

At least, that’s the way relationships work in the real world. When you pretend otherwise, you’re ultimately just being selfish.

Gimmie a little more verisimilitude next time around, Joe.

Listen: Joe Nichols – “Gimmie That Girl”

“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”

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”

Exactly one year ago, Lee Ann Womack released a collection of whiskey-and-heartbreak laced neo-traditional country music that included songs about bars, dying relationships and domestic abuse. That collection, titled Call Me Crazy, was masterfully sung, beautifully recorded, splendidly arranged, wonderfully written, and, of course, a complete commercial failure.

Maybe a major label country artist who chooses to record and release an album comprised of mostly down-beat (mostly traditional) country music deserves to be called crazy. It was, after all, a miracle that “Last Call” managed to wiggle its way to hit status (thanks for that hook, Johnnie Walker Red), and there was scant hope for anything else from the disc to find a home alongside Jimmy Wayne and Billy Currington.

Fortunately, Nashville is a town where a songwriter is always waiting in the wings with a musical Prozac, and Womack’s new single (from an as-yet undefined project) is proof positive that the medicine works; Womack’s syrupy delivery is more than a few personalities removed from the sultry and smoky vocals on Call Me Crazy, with her rendering of this song’s idyllic world layered in pastel rather than neon.

In fact, if “There Is A God” was any more warm and fuzzy, it would be a bunny. A big, fat Easter Bunny with a basket full of clichés instead of candy.

“There Is A God” amounts to a slideshow of inspirational lifescapes—from running horses to flocking birds to sprouting seeds—all of which are offered as proof that “there is a God.” Of course, there are some fireflies, some babies and some abating cancer thrown into to mix…what inspirational country song would be complete without that trifecta?

Country music has a long history of incorporating Christian and gospel themes into both its mainstream and its ancillary branches, and even some of the genre’s most hardened outlaws have turned their musical eyes towards heaven. Here, however, Womack offers what is less a profession or discussion of faith and more a rejection of reason and logic. After going through a laundry-list of beautiful things (like a raindrop falling onto your tongue), the songs asks, “how much proof do you need,” eventually winding into the bridge and, thus, the pervading theme that binds all of these disjointed lyrics together: “Science says it’s all just circumstance/Like this whole world’s just an accident/If you wanna shoot that theory down/Just look around.”

While the overriding message of the song is that we can see God’s existence in everything around us, the writing errs when it ventures into a debate about the merits of logic and science (and the relation of those things to spirituality). The proclamation that “there is a God” does not need to also undermine and misrepresent what are almost universally accepted explanations for various scientific processes, and the fact that the song is willing to attack science makes the lyric come off as more political than it needs to.

After all, there’s a pretty famous song that makes essentially the same points without going down that road:

Everytime I hear a new born baby cry,
Or touch a leaf, or see the sky
Then I know why I believe

That song, “I Believe,” is a personal, specific declaration of faith. “There Is A God” is a pandering declaration of ideology masquerading as abstract inspirationalism–and a disappointing entry from a woman who has produced some of the most compelling country music of her generation.

Listen: Lee Ann Womack – “There Is A God”

Before his life was cut short by cancer at age 44, Wayman Tisdale had made a name for himself in two pretty diverse fields: professional basketball and jazz. He’d also been a long-time friend of Toby Keith, who sang a song on Tisdale’s last album and wrote this song days after Tisdale’s death this past May.

Several of Tisdale’s friends and band mates are on the record, most notably Dave Koz on the saxophone. Appropriately enough, the song has a smooth jazz-meets-Nashville feel, though the sax tips the scales into easy listening. The real existential question this song presents is, “Can you write a song that’s too depressing even for country music?”

I realize that we’re talking about country music here, which has a long tradition of heartbreak, misery and sad times. There have been plenty of superlative songs about the death of a loved one–Vince Gill’s “Go Rest High On That Mountain” and Guy Clark’s “The Randall Knife,” to name a couple. Those songs take on death and loss frankly, but they have a cathartic moment, and the singer by the end has moved on to acceptance.

With “Cryin’ For Me,” we’re still solidly in the grief stage. The first thing we hear is Tisdale’s outgoing voice mail message, so the song starts off on a somber, slightly morbid note and ends with Keith still crying for himself over losing a cherished friend.

I like the personal touches in the song, where Keith mentions Tisdale’s left-handed bass playing and refers to him as “Superstar.” Maybe if the song were more about those personal touches and less about Keith crying for himself, it wouldn’t seem as dreary. Yes, Tisdale has only been gone for a few months, so the hurt is still understandably fresh. But right now, there are two songs about suicide being played on the radio, and neither of them are as depressing as this one.

Listen: Toby Keith – “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song)”