The 9513 - Country Music Blog

Adam Graham, The Detroit News’ pop music writer, sat down with Uncle Kracker this week to talk about the artist’s new musical direction. The singer is releasing a new six-song EP titled Happy Hour: The South River Road Sessions, containing countrified versions from his 2009 pop album Happy Hour. Although Uncle Kracker has had success [...]

Continue reading "Your Take: Kracker Jacks"

In the comments section of Wednesday’s News Roundup, Brody and artist Miss Leslie discussed the new(ish) trend of music labels preemptively testing artists’ singles before dedicating time and money to releasing (or even recording) entire albums: Miss Leslie: Hey Brody – out of curiosity – what’s ya’ll’s take on the way things are going with [...]

Continue reading "Your Take: Singles and Albums"

The reporters and editors who craft headline banners atop newspapers and magazines across the country have been making the front pages themselves over the last few months–and between layoffs, furloughs and shut-downs at newspapers, magazines and television stations across the country, these aren’t fluffy, feel-good feature stories. It’s no surprise, then, country music news outlets [...]

Continue reading "Your Take: Where Do You Get Your Country Music News?"

In Jim’s interview a few weeks back with former front man of The Mavericks Raul Malo, the singer had an interesting game for country listeners to play in their cars: Here’s an experiment for you if you wanna try this out just for fun one day. If you have satellite radio, put on the 40s [...]

Continue reading "Your Take: Decades of Country Music"

In yesterday’s news roundup, Brody listed some of the more interesting statistics published in the Country Music Association’s study on country music audience demographics. There were some interesting numbers on people who consider themselves “countryphiles,” as well as the genre’s love/hate relationship with digital downloads. The nugget I found to be the most intriguing, however, [...]

Continue reading "Your Take: What Do Your Musical Tastes Say About You?"

Don’t look now, but Darius Rucker, lead singer of 90s rock group Hootie & The Blowfish, has a country hit on his hands. “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It” currently sits at number 14 on Billboard’s country singles chart and continues to pick up spins. What you probably haven’t heard is that Rucker is [...]

Continue reading "Rucker Proves That Sometimes, The Best Marketing Is No Marketing At All"

Jessica Simpson made history by becoming the highest charting debut solo artist in the history of Billboard’s country singles chart for her song “Come On Over.” John Bohannon says John Hiatt‘s formula becomes closer to perfect with each album and Same Old Man follows in that lineage. His ability to relate to an audience through [...]

Continue reading "Jessica Simpson Is The Highest Charting Debut Solo Artist"

It was hard times for roots based country acts in the 90s. Garth and Shania delivered an enormous audience to country music that the Nashville establishment had no intention of losing, and people who were playing “traditional” country music were being increasingly marginalized in favor of those who were playing a more pop-based variety. Country [...]

Continue reading "Jumping Ship: Reflections on Americana Music"

A government ruling on the legality of the proposed Sirius-XM merger is expected soon. The merger will require approval from two government agencies: the Department of Justice must investigate the merger for violations of antitrust law and the Federal Communications Commission must decide whether the merger will serve the public interest. I don’t possess the [...]

Continue reading "Satellite Radio’s Opportunity"

To prepare for this review, I re-listened to most of Trisha Yearwood’s single releases in an ultimately futile attempt to discover a better vocal performance. Some, such as “I Don’t Paint Myself into Corners” and “The Song Remembers When,” come close, but I believe that “This is Me You’re Talking To” represents Trisha Yearwood’s best [...]

Continue reading "Trisha Yearwood – “This is Me You’re Talking To”"