Country music, Nashville, and the American public doesn’t exactly know what to do with this guy after strings of incidents where Morgan Wallen has embarrassed himself and country music by proxy.
Though it’s fashionable to say that genres are dead and irrelevant, if not outright detrimental to the creativity of artists, they perhaps have never been more necessary as 120,000 new songs get uploaded each day.
Instead of importing pop stars to fill out the performance roster, why not pick up on some of the fast-rising independent stars that are quickly outpacing the popularity of country’s 2nd-tier mainstream performers?
You have to tip your hat to Sturgill Simpson on how he’s leveraged his absence into top tier headliner status here in 2024. As the old saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
In lieu of Randy being able to sing new, original songs due to his continued aphasia, he has partnered with his old label Warner Music Nashville to release a new song called “Where That Came From.”
As strange as it may sound, the term “saving country music” or “save country music” has been said and written more in the last few months than at any other time in history. This begs a deeper discussion about the term.
Instead of coming out with his regular band and performing some of his biggest hits such as “Drink In My Hand,” “Springsteen,” and “Talladega,” Eric Church instead capped off Night One of Stagecoach with an acoustic Gospel set.
Every once in a while, a reset of perspective on the ultimate purpose of Saving Country Music is in order. Now is one of those times. Saving Country Music was founded to tackle critically important topics to the country genre.
On Friday, April 12th, the widow of Americana singer and songwriter Justin Townes Earle took to social media to let her thoughts be known about the song “When We Were Close,” written and performed by Jason Isbell.
Every year as the nominations for country music awards come and go, it’s hard to not fall into a perfunctory attitude about them due to the cyclical and predictable nature of the nominees.
Once again, Morgan Wallen has made an embarrassment of himself. And once again, it’s an embarrassment that unfortunately country music has to answer for since Wallen continues to crown the genre.
Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is officially the #1 album on the Billboard Country Albums chart. This is despite Beyoncé explicitly stating in a March 19th statement, “This ain’t a Country album,” and later underscoring this statement.
The CMAs. The ACMs. The CMTs. The PCCAs. None of them come even close to truly recognizing the “best” that country music has to offer in a given year. It’s questionable if any of them truly deserve your undivided attention at all.
This Rolling Stone list of the 25 Best Country Soul Albums has so many holes you could strain your spaghetti with it, while simultaneously including some titles that have no business being there.
“She clearly was not trying to showcase the talents of black country artists in a real way, which I’m sure is extremely disappointing to the black country folks busting their asses to make it.”
Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is not a country album. It was never meant to be considered a country album. When the first songs were released, they were not labeled as country songs, and were not sent to country radio.
Along with clarifying that Beyoncé herself believes her upcoming release “Ain’t a country album,” she also further reiterates that the project came about from, “taking my time to bend and blend genres together…”
This doesn’t settle anything, either for Jimmie Allen, the accusers, the public, or the country music industry. It will still leave open questions about what actually happened, and potentially, an issue country needs to reckon with.
It nears the realm of impossibility to put enough emphasis on how monumentally important the seismic shifts occurring in the music business at the moment are, and how they’re reverberating throughout every sector of the industry.
Started in 2019, the Grand Ole Opry’s NextStage program looks to highlight rising talent by featuring them more regularly on the Opry stage, and across the Grand Ole Opry’s various programs and properties.
As you can imagine, the news of the #1 has been met with with praise for Beyoncé breaking down barriers and shattering glass ceilings in country. But this is more about a megastar worth $800 million cutting in line.
In 2024, everything that Dale Watson must have dreamed up as his ideal fantasy of what the Ameripolitan Awards could become was finally realized when it returned to Austin where it was originally held.
On Monday, February 19th, Wyatt Flores announced that he would be cancelling his upcoming show in Oxford, Ohio. Other upcoming shows in Detroit and Toronto will also be rescheduled to a later date.
Maybe Beyoncé’s new songs are country, or at least, they may be more country than they are anything else. But these are decisions that need to be determined irrespective of the noise already surrounding Beyoncé’s foray into country.