Thoughts on the 42nd CMA Awards

Please, please, please, please don’t let the “Surprise Guest” be a recent candidate for political office!!!!!!

But if it’s Tina Fey as Sarah Palin I will take back every bad thing I’ve said about the CMA.

And I’m gonna have to use some Price is Right strategy and guess five wardrobe changes for Carrie.

Maybe Dale Watson, SheDaisy and 4Runner performing the classic Bryan Adams hit, “Everything I Do, I Do it For You”

Thank you, Thank you very much….you know, half of my blood is Cain’s blood, afterall…

If Kellie Pickler isn’t attractive, how do you explain this?

http://tinyurl.com/5wk8b7

Would this article be considered a CMA Award Show preview, or a warning to stay away? because the Brad paisley/Keith Urban guitar duet sounds like the only remotely interesting thing going on.

Hey — there is a mandolin on “Glory Days.”

Sam G, we’ll leave it open to interpretation.

Rumors are that Reba will appear with Brooks & Dunn to sing their latest single. Not sure if it’s true or if she’s Surprise Guest.

Chris N, too thin with a fugly head. :)

Looks like this could be the lowest rated CMA award show in history. I haven’t been excited over a CMA program in 4-5 years.

“What exactly can we expect as far as performances? Kellie Pickler will sing her next single, “The Best Days Of Your Life,” a song she co-wrote with Taylor Swift. It’ll be the second time she’s introduced a single from her self-titled sophomore effort at a major awards show. She debuted “Don’t You Know You’re Beautiful” at the ACM Awards earlier this year. The failure of that single to break her into the top 10 (hasn’t yet cracked the top 20) brings into question how long her good looks and personality can carry her. Despite more media exposure than most new artists, she has yet to reach the top 10, although that will probably change with the contributions from Taylor Swift’s golden pen on her next single.”

First of all forget about looks and personality because Kellie is an equal or better live singer than many artists who made top 5 on radio, and she has many great songs, mostly the ones she co-wrote, that are equal to or better than many songs that made top 5. Remember her amazing I Wonder performance on the 2007 CMA Awards was one of the best of the night, earned a standing ovation from the biggest country stars and won Performance of the Year. Kellie’s best songs deserve top 5 and it’s not her fault that she hasn’t broken top 10 on radio. Taylor Swift and other new artists who broke top 5 and 10 get much more label promotion to radio. In fact, Kellie is the only best new artist in her class of ‘06-’07 (including all 4 of the other Best New Artist nominees 2 years in a row) without at least 1 top 5 because:

1. Her label doesn’t promote her airplay to radio enough or as much as those who made top 5. They didn’t even try to push I Wonder to top 10 and it clearly deserved top 5 or #1. Country fans made this statement at the 2008 CMT Music Awards, and we can’t help it if the label and radio doesn’t listen to what fans want and know who is the best.

2. Most of the time Kellie’s label doesn’t even pick her best songs to release to radio. Out of all 4 singles released, I Wonder was the only best song and the rest were in the middle of the pack or lower of all songs on her albums. They never polled fans or radio listeners to pick the next single for any of her releases. By extreme contrast, Bucky Covington’s label has always provided him with great airplay promotion and they let his fans choose his current single 100% on their own. I Wonder clearly deserved top 5 or #1. If Kellie’s albums and singing aren’t great, I wonder why her sales are double and triple many artists with top 10 and top 5 singles? LOL Airplay is the #1 source of all album sales so I’m sure her sales would be much higher if her label promoted her more and got her top 5 hits like she deserves. Kellie also co-wrote the best song on her new album, One Last Time, and her label REFUSED to let her record it until she put her foot down. Unreal! After attending concerts and seeing videos of Kellie’s new songs and before Don’t You Know You’re Beautiful was chosen for the lead single, fans had next single and favorite song polls on websites and no one picked Don’t You Know You’re Beautiful for the next single, they ranked it as the weakest song and One Last Time as a favorite. Why wasn’t anyone at her label listening? Why refuse one of her best songs for the album instead of refusing one of the weakest to release to radio? I’m not surprised Don’t You Know You’re Beautiful didn’t break past #19. It’s a good song but probably not strong enough for country radio top 10. All of her previous singles were stronger songs and climbed higher. Also, Sony pushed Jessica Simpson’s lead single ahead of Kellie’s and added Kristy Lee Cook to the chart picture, which I think further slowed down Kellie’s promotion.

3. Country radio is 80% male biased/plays 80% males and I suspect some labels contibute to this, especially those with larger male rosters. I believe Taylor, Carrie, and Miranda (1 song) are about the only new or fairly new solo females that were allowed into and/or promoted to the top 10 over the past 2 years. Only Carrie and Taylor made the top 5. Did Gunpowder & Lead just barely break top 5 on Mediabase, I know it came close?

Best Days of Your Life is a great song and Kix Brooks said he likes it, however Kellie has many songs she co-wrote with others that are just as good and better. From the new album, personally I like One Last Time, Somebody to Love Me, and maybe Rocks Instead of Rice better – all Kellie co-writes. Best Days is probably her best pop/rock crossover song so maybe they should release it to pop radio like many of Taylor’s songs and Carrie’s Before He Cheats to try to bump single and album sales up by another 500,000 or so. I think many fans are on the Best Days next single bandwagon because they are also Taylor fans or they think she will help move it up the charts. Taylor’s participation could possibly help Kellie break top 10 a little however I wouldn’t count on it or leave it to chance if I were in charge of Kellie’s airplay promotion. Can anyone name some historical examples? And what about promoting her future singles? I’d go for #1 with every single.

If you think it was just Taylor’s golden pen that broke her into top 10, got her multiple #1s and 3x platinum you must not know much about promotion. Sure she’s a great writer and it was also due to heavy label promo including great albums and single choices, heavy airplay on country and pop radio, many CD bonus tracks, much lower prices, much more internet promotion, and more TV performances. Taylor is one of the most promoted artists for the past 2 years. Same for Bucky and many others to some equal or lesser extent. Great for them, bad for Kellie. It’s hard to break top 5 or 10 when other equally talented artists on the chart are getting 2 to 10 times more label help and promotion, which has the effect of squeezing or blocking out those who don’t have it. I’m glad Kellie and Taylor are friends, they both rock and I wish Kellie’s label were as promotion friendly as Taylor’s! LOL It’s high time her label stepped up her promotion to the next level!

I’ve also seen Sony Nashville provide Jessica Simpson and Kristy Lee Cook some of the airplay promotion Kellie needs and isn’t getting, which is ridiculous. I agree with the review here that the Cook signing makes no sense except for a wild gamble. Simpson and Cook’s albums aren’t nearly as good as Kellie, Carrie, Taylor and others and there is limited room for them on the charts. For that matter, many new country artists as well as pop artists who went country including Darius Rucker and Kid Rock got promotion to country radio from their labels that Kellie hasn’t.

All of which brings into question how long Sony/BNA/19’s underpromotion of Kellie can carry her, and why aren’t they doing anything to fix this problem? I’m sure the additional promotion others are getting from Sony and other labels will carry them for years. Joe Galante made Keith Anderson change from one Sony Nashville label to another so he’d get more promotional attention.

http://www.cmt.com/news/country-music/1592575/after-three-year-delay-keith-anderson-bows-new-album.jhtml

I still haven’t heard him state any solution to help Kellie break top 5 and sell more. Granted it must be difficult to juggle such a large artist roster, but it seems that determining who to promote more and less is Sony’s biggest problem.

I see Reba has just inked a deal with Taylor’s label group. Back in January the chief marketing executive at Kellie’s label left and joined Valory and then later in the year another followed. I wonder why. If Sony doesn’t get its act together and stop running a new artist revolving door instead of doing more to help the best move up the the next level, maybe Kellie and others would be better off joining them. I’d rather see Sony fix these issues.

Tim McGraw is performing as well.