Merle Haggard On Kennedy Center Honors / Willie’s Arrest
Tonight the Poet of the Common Man, Merle Haggard will be honored with a Kennedy Center Honors award for his contributions to American music. Well, actually he received the award on December 5th, but...
View ArticleRelease of Controversial Unfinished Hank Williams Songs
The Rolling Stone has just reported that a long-rumored project pairing Bob Dylan and Jack White together to oversee the recording of an album of Hank Williams songs that were found without music in a...
View ArticleSheryl Crow’s Rendition of Hank Williams’“Angel Mine”
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember Hank Williams ever recording any drunken sea shantys. I can't remember any Ol' Hank songs featuring trumpets, or classically-styled lilting mandolin parts...
View ArticleAlbum Review – Willie Nelson’s “Heroes”
This album is good both because it is Willie, and because it is good. After years of navigating through a gray area in his career and having to dabble with some record labels probably less able to do a...
View ArticleHank Williams Legacy Recordings Field Guide
For years, the principals of the Hank Williams estate (Hank Jr. and Jett) were warring back and forth, and this kept the treasure trove of Hank Williams' legacy recordings relegated to bootlegs and...
View ArticleSheryl Crow’s Country Move a Trojan Horse for Toilet Paper Stance
Sources close to the Sheryl Crow camp have confided in Saving Country Music that part of Sheryl's country move is politically motivated. Sheryl is a staunch environmentalist, and has championed...
View ArticleHow Hip-Hop Stole Country Music: The Arrival of the Mono-Genre
All of a sudden hip-hop influences are dominating the top of the country music charts, asserting just as much influence, if not more than indigenous country influences, with a bevy of new country rap...
View ArticleMost Embarrassing Moments in Country Music History
When looking at the historical timeline of country music, many times it is big events that set the wheels of change in motion, for the good and the bad. Whether it is intrusion of pop or rap into...
View ArticleSheryl Crow: “Country Is More Pop Than Pop Was When I Came Up”
"The country format is more pop than pop was when I came up two decades ago," Sheryl explained to Reuters late last week when being interviewed about her new album, illustrating the degree of country's...
View ArticleVince Gill & Alan Jackson Show How To Grow Old Gracefully in Country
With 34 CMA Awards, over 20 Grammys, and and some 80 million records sold between the two, they both have seen their share of overwhelming commercial success, public notoriety, and peer recognition....
View ArticleSheryl Crow’s “Feels Like Home” Only Country By Name
It's not that there aren't some token homages to mark her move into the country format, but overall, except for one song that we will get to in due course, there is very, very little contrast between...
View ArticleSeason of Discontent: A Timeline of Country’s Recent Artist Criticism
Country music in the second half of 2013 is going through some of the most historic changes the format has ever seen. The ever-present erosion of what the term "country" defines has never been greater,...
View ArticleThere’s Bigger Problems Than Justin Timberlake “Going Country”
Last week pop and R&B superstar Justin Timberlake helped stir the music pot by proposing that he might make a country record. Timberlake told Sirius XM's "The Highway" show: "I just did an...
View ArticleMove Over Bro-Country, The “Bra-Country” Revolution Has Begun
In hopes of aligning themselves as the antithesis to the whole "bro-country" phenomenon gripping popular country music with its laundry list, truck and beer, mud-splashed and moonshine-soaked...
View ArticleMartina McBride Does What She Wants with “Everlasting”
With Martina McBride at the crossroads that every big country music superstar knows they must ultimately face at some point in their career, where their radio relevancy is slipping through their...
View ArticleBro-Country Is Just The Symptom. Here Are The Causes
Yeah, yeah, bro-country sucks. As satisfying as it is to finally see the rest of the American media waking up to a problem that had actually been gripping country music for half a decade before...
View ArticleStrait’s “Cowboy Rides Away” Album Butchered By Auto-Tune
Nobody could have anticipated that a George Strait album would be the vehicle for the most excessive, and most blatantly obvious use of the pitch correction software known as Auto-Tune that I have...
View ArticleAlbum Review – Allison Moorer’s “Down to Believing”
Down to Believing nestles right down in that classic alt-country approach of building up from a country foundation, but then striking out with a decidedly rock and roll sound. It's a bold, full...
View ArticleClay Walker is “Pissed Off” About Rock Artists Playing Country
"I can’t stand to see outdated rock-and-rollers coming in to play country music. That really pissed me off,” Clay Walker told The Modesto Bee recently. “We have great singers, great country musicians....
View ArticleTexas Country’s Prodigal Son Pat Green Returns “Home”
Without anyone left to please but himself, Pat Green is free to exorcise his demons, get some stuff off his chest, make the album he wants to, and hopefully reconnect with those grassroots in Texas...
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