Miranda Lambert, Parker McCollum, Kelly Clarkson, and Cody Johnson will headline the “Band Together Texas” benefit at Austin’s Moody Center on August 17th.
I haven’t wanted to do this. I’ve held my tongue for years at this point. And even now as I speak up, I do so reluctantly, and as a last resort, though confident in what needs to be said.
The ACM Awards continue to spiral towards irrelevancy. That said, there are some interesting names in the nominations for the 2025 ACM Awards released Thursday.
Blackstone is far and away the largest commercial landlord in history, and now these cretins have decided that the way to entice new investors to their funds is to “go country,” dressing their executive suite robber barons in cowboy duds.
You can’t save country music while ignoring commercial country. One of the ways we address the mainstream is by highlighting the best albums in the mainstream in hopes they help influence country moving forward.
A joke is a joke, and not meant to be taken seriously. And one would hope that we’re finally moving past the era when a predatory media isn’t preoccupied with taking opportunistic pull quotes out-of-context.
‘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.
Recently I was in a tire shop getting the ol’ truck some new rubber and trying to reset the tire warning light, when my ears immediately latched on to the music they were playing in the background.
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.
Like many other mainstream festivals, in 2024 the Gulf Coast Jam started looking beyond the major label/Music Row rosters for talent as independent performers are surging in popularity. Now Tyler Childers will headline.
It’s one of the saddest and most compelling stories in rodeo history. And with the way country & Western music is so synonymous with the rodeo, it’s no surprise country music has taken a large share of inspiration from it.
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.”
The rise of the independent country megafestival with support from ’90s country stars has been one of the biggest illustrations for how significant, sustainable, and broad-based the resurgence of roots in country music has been.
Saving Country Music spends the vast majority of the time focusing on artists and bands that get overlooked and under-appreciated in popular country music. But that doesn’t mean that mainstream country is entirely terrible.
Cody doubles down on his country roots, strengthens his commitment to quality songs, and even refines his sound with surprising sparsity and depth to the point where you’re nearly stunned at some of the results.
After 2023 sold out, you knew Two Step Inn would be returning for 2024. Returning it is, and with just as mouthwatering of a lineup as it had in 2023, but sans as many of the hip-hop wild cards.
The 2023 CMT Awards could very well go down in country music history as a significant moment, but it won’t be for the reasons the producers of the presentation or their proponents in the media hoped for, or will purport it to be. And no, we’re not just talking about the polarizing political moments…
Sam Munsick’s specialty is songwriting, and that comes into sharp focus on Johnny Faraway. With nine original Western songs all solely written by Sam, the album is a spirited entry into the Western music canon, studied and reverent to the songwriting modes of authentic Western music.
For the last dozen years or so, one of the most contentious battles within the realm of commercial country music has centered around the incursion of hip-hop influences into the genre, and specifically the use of verses that are rapped as opposed to sung, and electronic beats replacing organic drums.
Before all the pomp, pop, and circumstance of the televised portions of the 2023 Grammy Awards, the Grammy Premier Ceremony transpired Sunday (2-5) afternoon in Los Angeles. This is where many of the country awards are given out, as well as awards for bluegrass, folk, Americana.
Vince Gill really is the closest thing that country music has to the five-tool baseball player. He can do it all. As a solo artist, he’s a Country Music Hall of Famer and Grand Ole Opry stalwart. He can throw a high harmony on any song and make it shine, or turn in a guitar solo that is good or better than any session player.
A pretty universal consensus from the country fans who did suffer through the presentation to see the extended Alan Jackson tribute at the end was that in 2022, the CMA Awards seemed to do a 180-degree turn, and started going back in the right direction toward featuring more actual country music.
Luke Combs said it best while accepting the trophy for Entertainer of the Year Wednesday night (11-9) at the 2022 CMA Awards: “This is my fifth or sixth year being at this awards show, and country sounded more country than it has in a long time tonight.” In truth, the CMA Awards righting the ship goes back even further.
The album ‘Purgatory’ by Tyler Childers will go down in history as one of the most important and successful releases by any country music artist in the last ten years, and perhaps in history. But now it’s time for Tyler’s ‘Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven?’ to attempt to grip our attention.