Jason Isbell’s “Something More Than Free” Sets All-Time Record on the Americana Chart
Jason Isbell is regarded as the current King of Americana by many, and if the recent performance of his 2015 record Something More Than Free is any indication, this is an all too appropriate moniker.
This week was the first week Something More Than Free has not graced the #1 spot on the Americana Radio Airplay chart in the last 20—an all-time record. The only other records to come close to the accomplishment were Isbell’s previous release Southeastern from 2013, and Robert Plant’s Band of Joy album, which both spent 15 weeks at the top of the charts. Isbell was dethroned this week by Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin’s new album Lost Time.
The Americana Airplay Chart is aggregated from reporting terrestrial radio stations, syndicated radio shows, satellite radio, and internet stations who report their playlists to the Americana organization.
Jason Isbell is no stranger to being on top. Earlier in 2015 upon the release of Something More Than Free, he shocked the country music world by hitting #1 on the Billboard Country Albums Chart, and doing it by inching out Alan Jackson. The album also hit #1 on the folk and rock charts. As of October, the album has sold over 100,000 copies and counting.
Next up for Isbell will be to see if he can get any love from the Grammy Awards. Even with Southeastern‘s stellar performance and critical praise, it couldn’t even garner a nomination in the Americana category at the 2014 awards. It was seen as one of the biggest snubs of the year. Sturgill Simpson’s nomination in 2015 hopefully bodes well for Isbell’s chances in 2016. The Grammy nominees are announced December 7th.
Jason Isbell also just released a new video for the song “Children of Children” that includes photos of his family and childhood.
November 18, 2015 @ 9:34 am
This song reminds me of Gordon Lightfoot.
November 18, 2015 @ 9:49 am
Neil Young
November 18, 2015 @ 3:28 pm
Both!
November 18, 2015 @ 10:08 am
Just a reminder that today in 1969 Conway Twitty recorded “Hello Darlin.”
November 18, 2015 @ 10:39 am
I’m a long name Isbell music fan, going back to DBT’s Decoration Day album, and I have pre-ordered every one of his solo albums. This one was a bit of a disappointment on first listen, but has continued to grow on me to the point where I currently have it at #3 in the list I’m building for my “vote” in the ND Reader’s Poll (#1 is James McMurtry’s Complicated Game and #2 is Patty Griffin’s Servant of Love). The best illustration of this album growing on me would be the song Flagship, which flat out bored me the first time I heard it. Now, it’s one of my favorite songs of the year.
Good to hear that the Alvin brothers were the ones to take over the top spot. Hopefully, they’ll get another Grammy nomination for best blues album. It’s an fine album of blues covers, but not typical ones. I have a fair amount of blues albums, but the only song I recognized was their cover of James Brown’s early R&B hit “Please, Please, Please.” Phil does a fine job on that one.
November 18, 2015 @ 5:18 pm
I’m still waiting for “Flagship” to grow on me. Perhaps the biggest issue is that I can’t bleeping hear it unless I crank the shit out of my speakers. I think “Children of Children” suffers that fate, too. They’re so quiet, much like Elephant was but that song is such a gut-punch that it doesn’t matter.
November 19, 2015 @ 7:39 am
The first time I heard it was the first time I played the CD. I was in the car and I was driving to go see a show (not Isbell). The spare arrangement and lack of much melody in the verses was what bored me at first. Also, the lyrics “we’ll call ourselves the flagship of the fleet” seemed kind of corny. And I was already underwhelmed with the songs before that and then even more so with Flagship.
What eventually pulled me in was the lyrics together with the droning understatement in Isbell’s vocals.
Love this verse:
There’s a lady shining shoes up by the door
and cowboy boots for seven dollars more
And I remember how you loved to see them shine
So I run upstairs and get a pair of mine
And there’s a painting on the wall beside the bed
The watercolor sky at Hilton Head
Then I see you in that summer when we met
And that boy you left in tears in his Corvette
November 19, 2015 @ 4:07 pm
Yeah, the production definitely felt a bit too antiseptic for me.
I loved Palmetto Rose, though.
November 18, 2015 @ 12:59 pm
I like the Isbell record , overall. I don’t like the production in places …and this song is one example.
Its not intimate enough for the lyric . For me it sounds like Isbell and the band ( orchestra ) playing on a big loud arena stage ,with big loud drums , big loud rock guitar …but singing about something more personal and intimate . This track should have been a solo acoustic and vocal track .Lotta unnecessary musical masturbation going on , in my opinion , which doesn’t marry up with the lyrical content ( prosody ).
And finally , Jason is NOT a rock singer and his vocals juxtaposed with this big arrangement and production only demonstrates that . But hey …..what do I know ? Apparently Dave Cobb is ‘ the man of the hour ‘. …..or 15 minutes .
November 19, 2015 @ 11:25 am
I would argue about Jason not being a rock singer, he has chosen to not be as much, but go find some old trucker videos. Jason was a great rock singer.
November 19, 2015 @ 4:11 pm
Yeah, part of why Palmetto Rose works better for me than much of the album is that he goes a lot further towards rock, and that works better with the production than his vocals in many of the other songs do.
November 18, 2015 @ 5:45 pm
Southeastern is better in my opinion, I just find myself going back to those songs more often. I’m not saying More Than Free is a slouch though. It’s just great to see someone like Isbell get sober, and then take his craft to a higher echelon. The guy’s life seems to be hitting on all cylinders now.
November 18, 2015 @ 6:14 pm
Children of Children just doesn’t resonate with me, something with his voice and the lyrics have a layer of abstraction that distance rather than pull me in — I realize it seems to mean a lot to HIM. And I bet it plays well live.
I am partial to Speed Trap Town and 24 Frames. Maybe it’s a personal thing, but several bits in both hit me like a punch to the gut, mainly around parents and family and aging and loss. Again, not saying it’s not a GOOD thing that some songs hit some listeners harder than others.
November 18, 2015 @ 8:27 pm
I used to have the same feeling about Children of Children, but then I saw him in an interview, and he said that his mom was only 17 when she had him, and growing up he felt like the first thing he did in his life (by being born) was to ruin a young girl’s life (his mom’s). So now lyrics like, “…All the years I took from her just by being born…” seem much more poignant to me. It’s become one of my favorite songs on the record.
November 19, 2015 @ 11:28 am
“….. abstraction that distance rather than pull me in ”
Exactly ….that’s the point I made above .This lyric demands an intimacy about its presentation .
November 18, 2015 @ 8:12 pm
See, I really like Children of Children. It’s one of my favorites from the album. I like how the progression in the song matches the lyric. It starts off with just the acoustic guitar and the story of his parents and his mom having a baby on the way at a young age – children having children. As the mellotron helps to give the feeling of time passing, now the baby from the first verse is 17 but he is the first in generations not to have a child while still a teenager. The extended outro, with the lead slide guitar solo, represents the turning point and a new beginning of better days is seen as we see the positives in children not having children.
November 19, 2015 @ 9:58 am
Yeah, the video is pretty cool in getting that across too, I agree.
November 19, 2015 @ 12:04 pm
And here I am still trying to figure out what exactly Americana as a genre is. Much of it sounds country or folk or bluegrass kind like a lot of Ronstadt’s early work that crossed genres just got labeled as rock simply because we hadn’t become so obsessed over genres yet.
November 19, 2015 @ 4:11 pm
I just say it’s country music that NPR people like.
November 23, 2015 @ 12:02 pm
Americana is the “boneyard”, so to speak, of genres that got bastardized and lost their place. So, something was created. Rock n’ roll (” ‘n roll” is an important distinction), country; blended with countless other roots genres. A lot of people just use it as an outlet for hipster bullshit, but it allows me to not be ostracized by saying “I like country music.” I just say, “I listen to Americana,” helps to alleviate a ton of explaining and defining. Again, this is just personally speaking.
November 19, 2015 @ 5:37 pm
The making of “24 Frames”…
http://www.npr.org/event/music/416469910/the-making-of-jason-isbells-24-frames?autoplay=true
November 28, 2015 @ 8:56 am
Trigger,
I usually agree with the majority of your opinions, but I just don’t know about this guy. He has some ok songs, and a decent voice, but how is he special in any way? There’s plenty of artists making music 100 times better then him that this website doesn’t glorify nearly as much. If he is your favorite artist, then that’s fine, that’s great even, but I just don’t get it. Maybe it’s just not my type of music. It doesn’t seem real to me. I was reading an article the other day (not from this site) about how Elephant on Southeastern was the “best song of 2013” but I hate that song. It’s just an attempt to make you think he’s different by singing a song about cancer and then throwing the F word in there to show he’s edgy, and then tries to probe it even more by talking about marijuana, it just seemed so fake to me. I know the focus now is Something More Than Free, but still. It’s not groundbreaking or anything. Sure it’s not nearly as bad as the pop music they put on the radio, but it’s not as spectacular as I feel this site makes it. I feel this way a lot actually, not just on your site, but on a lot. Personally I thought Chris Stapleton was so much better as the lead singer for The Steeldrivers. I feel like people only hold Jason and Chris so high up just because they use real instruments and sing country songs, not because they’re truly incredible artists, but because they’re better than the alternative. Maybe I’m in the minority and I’m just missing something. Is there something I’m not getting?
November 28, 2015 @ 11:28 am
Benjamin,
Obviously we all have different tastes in music. I do think “Something More Than Free” and “Traveller” are great albums, but I’ll say this, and it’s something that is going to be repeated numerous times over the next month as the whole “end-of-year lists” thing gets up and running: 2015 has been a terrible year for music. There was not an album released in 2015 that would have made some of my Top 5’s in previous years. Nonetheless, you have to ask yourself what the best is in a given year, and I would put those two near the top. But landmark albums? I would probably agree with you, neither of those qualify.
As far as there being plenty of artists that are 100 times better, I don’t review artists, I review albums and songs. Not every artist is going to speak to everyone. That’s why I try to cover a wide array of music under the country music umbrella. If you think there’s something I’m missing, I’m always open to suggestions. We’re all products of our own experiences.
November 29, 2015 @ 7:13 am
I also think Something More Than Free and Traveller are great albums too, I was just noticing that people are losing their minds over them, like no better music has ever, or will ever be made. I completely get what you’re saying about judging them by year, because I agree that Stapleton deserved all of those awards, if not more, at the CMA’s. I think Jason Isbell is a lot better then his mainstream counterparts, but like I said in my last comment, it’s not groundbreaking. As I’m typing this I think I’ve realized my own issues with this. When people hear real music, they freak out and don’t know what to do so they praise it beyond belief. It’s sad that even in country music we have to differentiate between “real” music and then “music” made on a MacBook or with a machine. They’re both great albums, I’ve just heard better, more real albums. And when I said artists making better music, I just meant bands and singers are making better albums and songs. I don’t delve to deeply into personal lives of musicians. Thanks for your time
November 29, 2015 @ 10:01 am
I think the general feeling among Isbell fans is that SMTF is a great (or very good) album, but not the landmark album that Southeastern was. And yes, I do believe that Southeastern is a landmark singer-songwriter album. In the Americana/Alt-Country world, I think that album is spoken of in the same breath as classics such as Lucinda’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and Gillian Welch’s Time (The Revelator). And that’s a crowd that by and large gave up on the mainstream a long time ago. I think the general feeling among long time Isbell fans is that he finally made the great album that we hoped he had in him. And by the way, Trigger’s not one of those long time Isbell fans. In his review of Here We Rest, it was apparent that he wasn’t a big fan of Isbell the person (this was before Rehab) and I believe he was hoping to ignore the album altogether. He rated it at 1.5 guns up (good but not great). I thought it was a fair review, although I didn’t quite agree with the intensity of some of his particular criticisms.
November 29, 2015 @ 11:00 am
Yes, I was not a ground floor guy with Isbell like I was Sturgill Simpson or some others. I think the sober Isbell is much easier to get behind. Before “Southeastern,” my Isbell appeal was based around certain songs, not really albums. “Codeine” and “Alabama Pines” for “Here We Rest” were great, and I think were the precursor to what we would get in “Southeastern.”