Yes, there was actually a country music awards show on Thursday night (9-28). But unless you are a massive Dan + Shay fan or just a glutton for punishment, you probably didn’t even notice or know about it.
Hey, Saving Country Music is advocating that listeners actually wait to hear the upcoming country music record from Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler before passing judgement upon it. But you can’t help but appreciate the strange thought of Steven Tyler as a country star, so let’s take a second to try and predict what actually might happen once Steven Tyler officially goes country.
How in the world did we get to this place in country music where a pop DJ who hasn’t even been in the format but for a year feels like artists have an obligation to not only acknowledge his presence, but pander to his adolescent and self-centered insecurities, and furthermore, that said DJ would use those personal insecurities publicly as fodder for his bullshit syndicated wacky morning radio show?
In typical Austin fashion, the festival and live feed started 12 minutes late. Though iHeartRadio was touting the experience as a “festival”, the outdoor, multi-day and multi-stage discovery of new music that usually accompanies the music festival experience was swapped for a very structured environment centered around the most familiar names in the format…
The 56th Annual Grammy Awards transpire tonight at 7 PM Central, 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific on CBS. This is your rundown for things to watch for, the country performances and collaborations, a rundown of the nominees and my picks and prognostications.
Today it was announced that Austin, TX would be the site for iHeartRadio’s first ever country music festival, transpiring at Austin’s Frank Erwin Center on March 29th, with a list of top tier headliner talent. There is so much that is ill-conceived about this, I’m not sure where to start. Throwing a corporate country event in Austin, especially at that time of the year will be about as popular in Austin as running over a bicyclist in your Hummer.
Billboard and the echo chamber that is much of the entertainment media/blogosphere made much hoopla last week over Florida-Georgia Line’s “Cruise” breaking the all-time record for weeks at #1 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Closer scrutiny of the charts shows that, contrary to the flashy press releases and hype you may see regarding Florida-Georgia Line’s “Cruise,” its “record-setting” week is the historical achievement that isn’t.
Since music no longer holds any intrinsic value to the American consumer and they’d rather steal a song than have it be sold to them for less than a pack of gum, merch, MERCH is where all the money is now. Major labels manufacture merch in the textile industry’s version of puppy mills somewhere in southeast Asia. Here’s some country music T Shirts you won’t see for sale anytime soon.
Sunday night is the most important night in music of the year as the 55th annual Grammy Awards will be transpiring in Los Angeles. Independent-minded music consumers can go back and forth about just how important Grammy night is, but regardless if you like the winners or even care to pay attention, what transpires Sunday night will have effects on the entire music world.
Leaping off the pages of the latest issue of Tiger Beat, Hunter Hayes and his prepubescent, non-gender-specific style have gripped the nation’s middle schools with Hunter mania, spearheaded by his smash hit “Wanted”– a saccharine, ultra-diluted white boy R&B B-side at best, only finding commercial traction in country because legions of affluent, glitter-faced suburban girls in training bras want to see Hunter’s penis.