The Grand Ole Opry’s 100th Anniversary celebration on Wednesday, March 19th was a big hit. The 3-hour special on NBC also did really well in the ratings, despite focusing on legends more than current stars.
We didn’t really know what to expect from the Grand Ole Opry’s 100th Anniversary celebration on NBC Wednesday night (3-19). We hoped it would be a cavalcade of actual country stars singing actual country music.
Promising to deliver a unifying moment, Carrie Underwood accomplished that very thing, despite the incredibly polarizing circumstances, and technical difficulties. And she did it through her talent, poise, and grace.
Well here we go again. And the same people who were defending Garth Brooks four years ago are now calling Carrie Underwood a completely washed-up has-been who needs to be completely canceled.
‘Leather (Deluxe Edition)’ doesn’t just add 13 tracks to his current album. It continues to add to Cody Johnson’s solid legacy as a consistent and trusted traditional-leaning performer, impervious to the temptation to sell out.
This is one of the problems with modern popular country radio: the pervasive sameness and predictability. You can seen the next turn-of-phrase coming from a mile away because you’ve heard the same basic song.
This weekend, Police and Fire personnel had large swaths of downtown Austin cordoned off due to a mass casualty/hazardous exposure event, also known as the CMT Awards. The barriers and checkpoints weren’t there to keep freeloaders out, it was to keep the grotesque infection of pop country quarantined.
Alan Jackson is being honored as the 2022 recipient of the Country Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. One of the top honors in country music, the Lifetime Achievement Award was established in 2012 with Willie Nelson as the inaugural recipient. Alan Jackson will be on hand at the CMA Awards.
According to numerous journalists, artists, and activists, after MIranda Lambert’s appearance on stage at the Bridgestone on Friday evening with Jason Aldean, all of her good will and Miranda’s active efforts to make country music a more inclusive place deserves to be called into question.
There may not be another collection of voices more commonly featured via the recordings and live performances of country and roots artists than The McCrary Sisters—from the top reaches of mainstream commercial country, to the most revered Americana performers.
Country music as a genre is unique in how it has its own dedicated award show organizations, and two of them as a matter of fact, and both of which that have been around for well over 50 years. But neither of them is the CMT Awards.
The Grammy Awards Premier Ceremony transpired Sunday afternoon, and though some worthy artists and valued projects walked away with deserved awards, it’s hard not to describe 2022’s Grammy haul in country and roots as anything but somewhat deflating.
Unlike country music’s big award shows like the CMAs and ACMs, The Grammys actually take the time to recognize artists in the bluegrass, Americana, folk, and blues realms, along with pulling from a more expanded list of nominees in the country categories.
It had been since 1997—or 25 years—since Warner Bros. had done a proper accounting on Randy’s catalog, and made sure his Gold and Platinum Certifications were current. Now Randy Travis has received five new RIAA Certifications.
If 90% of mainstream country music is bad, then it stands to reason that 10% of it must be good, or at least decent. So under the philosophy of celebrating what stands out in hopes it sustains, the idea that mainstream country fans deserve good music too, and to not be independent music music snobs […]
Like so many media outlets native to the print realm, Rolling Stone has experienced hard times over the last decade-plus while transitioning to the digital world, and also trying to evolve beyond their original baby boomer readership. Rolling Stone is still one of the most recognized media brands in music and culture, but what it’s […]
Jason Aldean’s wife’s Instagram account has about as much to do with country music as Dog The Bounty Hunter, which is absolutely positively nothing, despite country media’s strange and lingering obsession with these subject matters. And now for the second time…
So now the biggest radio personality in mainstream country—the grandiose and bespectacled Bobby Bones—who is always laboring to be the undivided center of attention, took to TikTok to say the quiet part out loud, and is now drawing the ire of many in the industry.
The outrage shouldn’t be toward Carrie Underwood, it should be at the way public fervor can result in such a complete detachment from perspective that a liked tweet can launch a viral moment and scores of articles in major periodicals authored by political apparatchiks.
The implications for this mischaracterization are serious. Such widespread negative media coverage can and will have a chilling effect on promoters, performers, local health and elected officials, and could directly result in the postponing, canceling, or refusing to approve live outdoor events.
It wasn’t just the arrangement, the cool special guests, the poignant setting, and the timing of it all, it’s how it all conspired to create a special moment and a rather spectacular performance that in the throes of the otherwise mediocre ACM Awards really shined out as something sincere.
It’s not often you see an album dart dramatically up in the charts some five months after it’s been released, but such is the case for the second installment of Sturgill Simpson’s foray into bluegrass, ‘Cuttin Grass Vol. 2 – The Cowboy Arms Sessions’ originally released on December 11th, 2020
This is not a country record. This is a Christian record. But along with turning in her 1st volume of exclusively religious material, Carrie Underwood might have also delivered her most country record yet, not just from the nature of the material, but the rootsy aspect of some of the music.
The fact that Loretta Lynn is still with us is grace enough, especially after the merciless culling of souls we experienced over the last year from the ranks of country royalty. But without any hyperbole or bias, after listening to her latest album ‘Still Woman Enough,’ Loretta Lynn still sounds excellent.