See, this is what happens when you have poorly-coordinated white doofuses with about as much soul as a solid state amplifier get up on stage and try to pretend they can move like Bruno Mars. We’ve already seen Luke Bryan eat it numerous times, and it was inevitable Thomas Rhett would be heading into the Stage Fall Hall of Fame now that he’s decided to become a dance first, and sing second “performer.”
As we get to mid February each year, it comes down to nut cutting time for deciding who the next class of inductees to the Country Music Hall of Fame will be. Though who gets to decide is a big secret kept by the Country Music Association, or CMA, we all should feel like we have a say so and voice our opinions and hope the right people listen.
The media loves a good feud story, but Taylor Swift’s speech wasn’t just meant for one person. Kanye West may have been the inspiration for Swift’s speech, but it wasn’t the target. The target was young women all across the world who are forced or coerced to having all their accomplishments measured by the men who also happened to be involved.
Welcome ladies and gentlemen to Saving Country Music’s LIVE blog for the 58th Annual Grammy Awards broadcast live from Los Angeles. This is an annual exercise in snark, criticism, and giving kudos where kudos are due, all unfolding without a net, unscripted, and unfiltered.
Though this is not necessarily reflected in the performances, the general consensus is the Grammy Awards this year could be a big night for country music. With Chris Stapleton up for Album of the Year, Little Big Town up for Song of the Year, and other high-profile and important nominations, this is one of the few years country music could come out on top.
Music is such a polarizing subject in popular culture already. We love to love our music, and we love to hate everyone else’s. Music is what we use to identify ourselves culturally. It’s what allows us to find camaraderie with other people who are more likely to be like-minded with ourselves. It’s what we pride ourselves in to tell us that we’re better than others.
A week from this evening, the music industry will be gathering in Los Angeles for the the world’s biggest music event of the year: The Grammy Awards. Unlike many years, fans of true and traditional country music will have someone to root for when it comes to the night’s biggest prize, even if it isn’t the most ideal artist to champion.
Chase was sure saying the right things, as are a lot of the Bro-Country acts who are now acknowledging the flight of interest in the bastardized style of country music. But words are cheap, and actions speak louder. And it didn’t take long for Chase to break his promise that his next album would be “all” about depth.
The artist known as Cam, best known for her breakout single “Burning House,” was on 92.5’s Electric Barnyard show with CMA and ACM-nominated DJ Broadway last week. And as Broadway is apt to do upon occasion, he pulled a disparaging quote from Saving Country Music to read to Cam to get her reaction and response.
For all the non-country artists, albums, and songs showing up on Billboard’s country charts recently, it was certainly a curious decision by Billboard chart managers to make an example of a poor band from Ft. Worth called Green River Ordinance this week. Despite the insistence of the band, and a clear sonic distinction to their music of country being the primary influence, their new album Fifteen was excluded from the country charts.
You could see this all unfolding when Scotty McCreery first released the ridiculous single “Southern Belle.” Even he knew it was well outside of the style he’d been known for previously. “This is probably about as far left as we’ll go,” McCreery said about it at the time. In a last ditch effort to salvage the song, Mercury Nashville released an equally embarrassing video for the song.
For the last couple of years country fans have been questioning how chart managers for Billboard and other entities could listen to certain songs or performers and consider them country in the slightest. Yet here is a band making music that’s more country than it is anything else, and more country than most of what you hear on country radio, and Billboard is denying their admittance on the country charts.
With Letterman’s retirement, the concern was this once important roots music outlet on television would dry up. But since Stephen Colbert has taken the reigns at The Late Show, quite the opposite has happened. Monday night (2-1), critically-acclaimed songwriter John Moreland will be making his network television debut from the Ed Sullivan Theater courtesy of Stephen Colbert.
Alright, so normally I wouldn’t post some silly, viral video such as this. But it’s Robert’s Western World—one of the last bastions of true country music on Lower Broadway in Nashville. And it’s the Don Kelley Band, which is one of Robert’s and Lower Broadway’s most legendary bands.
Purported country music “viral star” Kane Brown is now a major label artist. And if you thought your acid reflux got a workout when you watched Luke Bryan and Sam Hunt up on stage claiming to be country singers, Kane Brown is guaranteed to kick it up yet another notch. The lesson of Kane Brown is that you can cheat to get ahead, and you don’t have to pay any dues or prove yourself in the marketplace.
Along with the frequency of incidents involving bands being burglarized, it’s been the brazenness of the thieves, and the high-profile nature of the incidents that has put Houston in people’s crosshairs for not being hospitable to touring musicians.
So what in the hell are well-versed country and Americana fans who finds themselves in stiff opposition to folks like Luke Bryan and Sam Hunt supposed to feel about ol’ Isbell sharing the stage with these turkeys? I’ll tell you what they should feel, they should shut up and be happy because it’s yet another sign that the good stuff is breaking through, and is getting its deserved due on Nashville’s biggest stages.
“Been having to rebuild camp,” Hank3 said as he co-hosted a segment with Alamo from Jack Clement’s famous Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa in Nashville. The show aired last Saturday (1-16) on Outlaw Country Channel 60. “No camp, no war. So once the camp is officially taken care of, we’ll be back in the trenches.”
Consolidation of record labels and music catalogs continues in the independent roots realm with more big moves being made in the last week. Concord Bicycle Music, which has been on a big buying streak lately, has acquired the George Jones label imprint Bandit Records. In another deal, Concord Bicycle has acquired the library of Americana label HighTone Records.
Chris Stapleton got another crack at a national audience on Saturday, January 16th when he took the Saturday Night Live stage, but after the NFL matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Arizona Cardinals ran 45 minutes later than normal, some were worried Stapleton’s opportunity would be scuttled. However according to television ratings, the opposite […]
Are you waiting for your favorite music artists signed to MCA Nashville to release an album after a prolonged hiatus? Perhaps you heard the first single months or sometimes years ago, but still no record? Well you’re not alone. It looks like the unenviable position of being the most notorious label on Music Row is no longer a slam dunk for Curb Records.
Love them, hate them, evoke the strong opinions of the Coen Brothers’ fictional character Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski all you want, but Glen Frey and The Eagles turned millions of music fans from all around the world into country music listeners through the evocative power of simple, universal sentiments bathed in twangy tones, however filed off the edges may have been, or however commercially successful the pursuit ultimately was.
Chris Stapleton took the Saturday Night Live stage on January 16th in front of an All-Star band, furthering the off-the-charts momentum the songwriter has been riding since sweeping the three awards he was nominated for at the 2015 CMA Awards, including Male Vocalist of the Year, and Album of the Year. Since early November, Stapleton has been dominating Billboard’s Country Albums charts.
Producer Dave Cobb—known for his work with Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, and so many more—has signed on to be the new caretaker of the historic Studio ‘A’ on Music Row starting April 1st. Performer and pianist Ben Folds has been in charge of the space for the last 14 years, including helping to shepherd Studio ‘A’ through a stretch in 2014 where investors wanted to bulldoze it.