Lady A started by changing their name to erase what some considered the racist connotations of “Antebellum” and to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Now that action has resulted in them publicly suing a well-respected black member of the music community and receiving a massive backlash for it.
There should be no shame in major music outfits taking money through the government’s Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, to keep their road crew and support staff financially stable, despite it being characterized as the cash grab of millionaires by some, aided by certain embellished and misleading headlines in the media.
If you’re looking for a solution of how to solve the crisis facing live music at the moment, this is it. And it’s not a hypothetical. Thanks to Granger Smith, his fans, and a forward-thinking city and baseball team, they’ve proven safe music concerts can be done, and done successfully.
Don’t regard this as a slandering. Please don’t mistake this as a rebuke. I bow down to the magnificent power of country music megastar Garth Brooks, and his ability to hoodwink hundreds of thousands of people and make millions of dollars even amidst an unprecedented pandemic and economic disparity.
Similar to the recent move by Lady Antebellum to change their name to Lady A, the concern with The Chicks is not the name change specifically, but the slippery slope it presents toward what language can and will be deemed as problematic.
Neither Amanda Shires, Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, nor The Highwomen collectively have addressed the issue publicly, or directly. We still don’t know why Mickey Guyton felt she was “disinvited” from the shoot, whether it was the fault of “a giant miscommunication” or otherwise.
Sure, Shooter Jennings as a record producer is nothing new. What has changed now is being a producer now feels like the primary focus, or at least an equal effort for the second generation performer. And most importantly, that’s where Shooter’s passion is.
Adult contemporary country trio Lady Antebellum will no longer be known by the name they’ve toured and recorded music under for some 14 years. Announced on Thursday (6-11), they have decided to shorten their name simply to “Lady A.” What it means, and how it should be regarded.
Sturgill Simpson will be appearing in a free live stream event via webcast on Friday, June 5th at 7 p.m. Central from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Plus he also has an album on the way of old songs recorded new, and a note on Sturgill coverage moving forward.
This idea to pause the entire music industry on Tuesday, June 2nd called Blackout Tuesday—and the calls by some to pause business for an entire week—can and possibly will be directly damaging to many independent artists, and independent music businesses at a time of already unprecedented pressure.
It’s not that it’s especially strange for someone to be a fan of Tom Petty. It’s just that when you think of George Strait, you think of the quintessential straight-laced and starched Wranglers good ol’ country guy, not singing along to “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”
At this point, it’s just as much about the principal as it is the money. Garth’s latest studio album was put up for pre-order as part of his exclusive distribution deal with Amazon nearly two years ago now, on June 19th, 2018 to be exact. Garth said the new record would be released in the spring … the spring of 2019 that is.
Viral songwriter Zach Bryan released his second album on Friday, May 8th called ‘Elisabeth’ to mostly rave reviews, but some criticisms for taking the same homespun approach he brought to his first album ‘DeAnn.’ Zach was spotted working with Dave Cobb last November.
This new song Rita Wilson just released called “Where’s My Country Song?” hits at the heart of something really important. Well-written aside from maybe the bouncy and somewhat list-like chorus, it’s the perspective forwarded in the song that makes it such an interesting specimen and discussion point.
“I’m trying to make Luke Bryan money singing Chris Knight-caliber songs,” Parker McCollum says. Parker says he’s taking his cues from folks like Chris Stapleton and Kacey Musgraves who’ve found huge reception for their music despite a cold shoulder from country radio.
Quite a few country fans were left angered and agog when they saw that Gwen Stefani would be receiving an Opry berth when many more deserving country artists—including some who could benefit from both performing during this period of hardship—are once again being passed over
It was June of 2014, and an unsolicited submission came into my inbox from an artist named Luke Bell, accompanied by a BandCamp link to an album called ‘Don’t Mind If I Do.’ Nearly six years later, the most common query that lands into that same inbox that Luke Bell first submitted his music to is “Where is Luke Bell?”
In some ways, bass singers are like the superheroes of music. The rarest of all the vocal ranges, they can doing things the rest of us just can’t do. But when nobody’s looking, when we’re behind the wheel or home alone, we try and pretend we can. Because singing bass is super cool. It’s the air guitar of vocal ranges.
This new Trolls movie is very explicitly lashing out against the monogenre, and the intrusion of other musical forms into other genres, just like what Saving Country Music has been actively advocating against for a dozen years now.
These Opry performances during the Coronavirus have held a unique gravity due to the circumstances, and you can feel that weight in each song and moment. But sticking out like a sore thumb through the process has been the presence of pop country radio personality Bobby Bones.
With the recent death of John Prine at the hands of COVID-19, the question has been posed by many about the legendary songwriter’s prospects of ever being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. It’s an interesting discussion point for sure, and one with a few important qualifiers.
We were lucky that we had John Prine as long as we did—on loan from the cosmos. But life on this cold ball of rock was always too ordered and normal for John. So now he’s moved on to where light and love comprise the ground and sky, to spin his little stories that might seem silly or even inane if written on paper, but rang profound in our hearts and souls.
And we’re not talking close approximations here that come up commonly in music. Whether it’s the latest symptom of the sameness permeating much of mainstream country at the moment, or a straight up ripoff is a matter for audio experts and the courts. But the similarities are patently obvious.
Any effort to give more emphasis to artists who are deserving of a greater share of the spotlight in country music should be seen as a sum positive, and generally supported, including this Indigo playlist. But there are some serious issues with Indigo, first and possibly foremost being that the name.