Here we are in a moment in country music custom made for the neotraditional sounds of Midland, and here they are invoking the era in music when folk rock turned into mom rock on the easy listening station.
With an uncommon adherence to country sounds for a contemporary popular artist, and bolstered by reams of clever songwriting and spirited performances, Carly Pearce turns in an inspired and compelling album.
It’s not that those “authenticity” concerns don’t continue to linger. But Midland is most certainly a mainstream country music bright spot, and has been ever since the band’s inception. This new album is no exception, once again taking Midland’s throwback 90s-era style…
Beginning in the 00’s, songwriting in country music began to change, and by the early 2010’s, the population of country music songwriters had contracted by as much as 90% by some estimates, as the royalties that helped sustain these writers also began to dry up.
We’ve known for a while now that Carly Pearce has the heart, and the history to become something special in the country mainstream. Now with her new 7-song album ’29,’ the Carly Pierce we’ve been impatiently waiting to reveal herself finally emerges.
The trouble with Trace Adkins has never been a lack of talent. The dude has one of the coolest, baritone and bass singing voices in all of modern country music. The bigger problem with the Trace Adkins career track has always been his terrible, terrible song selection. Perhaps Adkins would learn from his past mistakes, and start taking the music more seriously.
Regardless of how you feel about Kacey Musgraves, her music, her politics, or the ideologies she espouses, she symbolizes nothing short of a victory in the effort to save country music. To have a major label artist release an album like Pageant Material, full of traditional country leanings and songwriter-based material, is a sizable leap forward for the genre.
Well that’s it folks. If we weren’t starring at the moment when any and all vestiges of the roots of country music had been completely eradicated from the mainstream before, then we are certainly doing so right now. It’s no longer a narrative about trying to hold onto the last little pieces of what made country music different from other genres.
Despite your desire to see Musgraves become that artist that can deliver a more traditional sound and intelligent scope to country, desire doesn’t always match execution. Criticism for Musgraves as a “boring” live performer is pretty common. And similar to Same Trailer, Different Park, the roll out of the new album so far has been less than smooth.