The 9513 - Country Music Blog

Ladies and gentlemen, after weeks of mulling over nearly every country album released last year, we’re proud to present The 9513’s Best Country Songs of 2008.
To be eligible, a song may not have appeared on 2007’s Top 50 list, and all significant covers have been excluded. Also, please note that a song need not [...]

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Don’t confuse disappointing with worst, as that list would most likely be dominated by obscure indie knockoff bands along with a couple of mainstream releases. There has to be a modicum of expectation that’s dashed upon the release of an album for it to qualify for the year’s most disappointing. Hopefully all of the acts [...]

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Only eight artists make an appearance on November’s list due to a dearth of quality material, but don’t let that fool you about the top songs–they really are that good. There are only a few releases for December, so I’ll be skipping next month, but look for our end of year lists closer to the [...]

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Trace Adkins - X (Ten)
Whereas Adkins’ previous albums have touched on redemption and reflection in passing, X puts those issues front and center. In fact, a majority of the album is comprised of truly outstanding material, which includes the sincere “All I Ask For Anymore,” and the fantastic Larry Cordle (of “Murder on Music [...]

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With his surprising debut single “Anything Goes,” which is currently sittin’ pretty at #18 on Billboard, Randy Houser showed a lot of promise. The subject of the song, predicated on the idea that the narrator’s moral compass relies on the presence of the love he lost, is similar in theme to Jamey Johnson’s “Mary [...]

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Randy Houser’s debut album Anything Goes is a project, says the Mississippi native, that he’s been working on his whole life–or at least since he first picked up a guitar at the age of five. It is, in that sense, a culmination of the experiences–good, hard, and spiritual–that have brought him to where he stands [...]

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Clint Black filed a lawsuit against his manager/accountant, Charles Sussman. Black asserts that Sussman and his firm “repeatedly engaged in self-dealing, negligence, and/or gross negligence” in steering his finances. Part of the dispute involves Little Big Town. Black believed the band was signed to a long-term deal with Equity Records, the independent record label in [...]

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Hank Williams Jr. plans to run for a seat in the Senate during the next primaries.
Sleepy LaBeef is a rockabilly artist who got his start in the ’50s and recently released a stripped-down acoustic album, Roots. Steve Morse calls it “a tasteful, change-of-pace LaBeef album for fans who thought they had heard everything from him.” [...]

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The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame plans to induct Matraca Berg, Tom Shapiro and John Hiatt during ceremonies on Oct. 26. Hiatt is being inducted in the songwriter-artist category while Berg and Shapiro will go in under the songwriter moniker.
Sugar Hill Records announced that they’ve slashed most of the prices in their catalog to the [...]

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Matt asks if anyone else finds it odd that Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America” was played at the end of Obama’s acceptance speech last night in light of the fact that it was also George W. Bush’s campaign theme song in 2004.
A recent flight carrying Trisha Yearwood had to make an emergency landing due [...]

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