Album Review – Morgan Wallen’s “I’m The Problem”
“I’m The Problem” sounds like 37 slightly different versions of the same song over and over. resulting in a grayish goulash of a mono-genre sound for many of these tracks.
“I’m The Problem” sounds like 37 slightly different versions of the same song over and over. resulting in a grayish goulash of a mono-genre sound for many of these tracks.
Congratulations Eric Church fans, this is what you waited four years for—seven new songs and a Tom Waits cover spectacularly overproduced by Jay Joyce. “Evangeline vs. The Machine” is right…
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.
Crunching election data, a plan was hatched under the premise that if the institution of country music could be assuaged to become a political tool, it could help persuade the rural slice of the American electorate from red to blue.
Right before Billy was set to take the stage for his headlining performance Friday night to play songs from the new album, he got a call from back home. His wife was in labor, and about to give birth to the couple’s first child.
On Saturday (6/15) at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, George Strait officially shattered the all-time record for attendance at a single concert with 110,905 tickets sold. The attendance breaks the previous record.
When the broadcast schedule for Sunday was revealed, Morgan Wallen fans quickly noticed that his name was curiously absent, including some fans who claimed they signed up for the Amazon service solely to see Wallen.
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.
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.
In 1974 while a sophomore in college at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Reba McEntire performed the National Anthem at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City, or NFR.
Now there are multiple country music megafests planned for the spring of 2024, and all within a few hours of each other, all catering more to independent fans than mainstream ones, three of which that are on consecutive weekends.
While speaking with Esquire as part of a spread about his foray into the whiskey business, Eric Church dropped what have turned out to be some pretty incendiary comments about country radio.
You can’t let fans load into the venue, get a beer in their hand, and then last minute, pull the plug. It’s not cool. And this is what Morgan Wallen did in Oxford, Mississippi on Sunday night, April 23rd at the Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, even waiting until after openers Hardy and Ernest had performed.
Luke Combs may be the reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year, but you get the distinct impression that he’s barely aware of it. There’s no cocksure attitude as he stands up there on stage in his Bass Pro fishing shirt with the flap across the back. He’s just a grown up pudgy choir kid from North Carolina.
Chris Stapleton needs no stepping stone or discovery at this moment in his career, but we all know he will slay the National Anthem on Sunday, because this is what Chris Stapleton does. He’s such a good singer, it’s one of the reasons purists love to claim he isn’t country.
There is no better example of just how damaging a mischaracterizing article can be to an artist than the “Rolling Stone” cover story that came out about Eric Church in the summer of 2018. And in this instance, it came in the form of a puff piece feature, not some attempted take down of Church.
Eric Church is a fan of country music’s “Outsiders” if you will. That is why for his “Outsiders Revival” tour, Church will be reviving the practice of featuring some of the cooler folks in country music as opposed to whatever boilerplate star the industry is trying to shove down the public’s throats at the moment.
From performers, to songwriters, to executives and producers, to the strong scene of bluegrass entertainers from New York that have gone on to define the very highest reaches of the discipline, these Jewish contributors deserve our recognition and appreciation.
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.
It’s a remarkable achievement that an album like this was even made under the otherwise repressive jurisdiction of the Music Row system in Nashville. No, you should not consider this like a conventional album release by Ashley McBryde, meaning a succession of potential radio singles and album cuts.
They love to say that in Texas, the women are more beautiful, and the beer is colder. I’m not sure that can be scientifically proven. But there is something that is most certainly palpable—though in many ways indefinable—that does make the musical moments down in Texas feel significantly more meaningful.
It is a bittersweet time this Labor Day weekend down in Texas, and specifically at the legendary Floore’s Country Store in Helotes where Robert Earl Keen is wrapping up 41 years of touring with three final shows. Eric Church, and rodeo legend Phil Lyne showed up to help.
As reported by Saving Country Music in July, a new 6-part, 12-hour documentary named ‘They Called Us Outlaws: Cosmic Cowboys, Honky Tonk Heroes, and the Rise of Renegade Troubadours’ is on the way, featuring over 90 interviews and 75 live performances, with Jessi Colter executive producing.