Better him than his son. But it’s really hard to feel one way or another about the Grand Ole Opry choosing songwriter and performer Rhett Akins as its newest inductee. Nonetheless, he will be the next Grand Ole Opry member.
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.
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.
It’s a cool program the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion has put together, with local bands opening for big-named acts all summer. But apparently when the team for Maren Morris caught wind that there would be a local act playing on the Hazy Little Stage, they cited a “no local openers” clause.
Shit! No, not necessarily these nominations. Well, kind of the nominations as well. But the fact that by some obligatory sense of duty by the powers vested in me as the owner/operator of a country music website, I must convey the nominees of the 2022 ACM Awards, which have fallen so far down in relevancy […]
You know how this drill works. Make sure your tray tables are in their full upright position, make sure all electronic devices are set to airplane mode, and don’t believe a pop country star when they say they’re going back to their roots until you actually hear it.
To be country again, you had to have been country in the first place, at least at some point. And country is as country does. You want to be country? Then be country. Don’t tell us about being country. Chances are if you’re telling us how country you are, it’s because it’s not self-evident you’re country.
Look, Thomas Rhett seems like a really swell guy. You want someone to date your sister or daughter, or watch over the dues payments to your local youth soccer association, who better? But as a “country” artist, the guy’s got a whole bunch of nothing. But his wife, Lauren Akins?
Despite George Strait officially retiring from full-time touring in 2014—a commitment he’s actually stuck to unlike other superstars, only playing sporadic stadium shows and limited-run Las Vegas residencies—Strait surprisingly walked away with Billboard’s “Top Country Tour” award.
Just remember, “It’s only the ACM Awards.” It’s just disappointing that one of their best presentations in perhaps a decade or more—and under difficult circumstances—had to be sullied at the very end by a silly and avoidable decision.
Remember, it’s just the ACM Awards. Less prestigious than the CMAs, and more susceptible to bloc voting and other dubious practices than most any other awards apparatus in country music and beyond, think of it more as a performative infomercial for the mainstream of country music.
Sure, perhaps absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the indefinite hiatus of the boys from Oklahoma has us all foggy-eyed in recollection. But according to one industrious Twitter user’s social experiment in the midst of the Coronavirus quarantine, the Turnpike Troubadours rule the roost.
Like someone with the Coronavirus coughing in your face, here come the 2020 ACM Awards nominations. With Maren Morris and Thomas Rhett leading the pack of nominees with five nominations each, Justin Bieber receiving three nominations, you might as well be getting news from the local doctor where you’re quarantine station is located.
Alright, so we’ve run down the Saving Country Music Album of the Year nominees, and awarded The Winner. And we’ve also populated the 2019 Essential Albums List. Now it’s time to single out the dogs of the last calendar year and let them hear it. Here ladies and gentlemen are your WORST “Country” Albums for 2019.
One sign that mainstream country music continues to improve is the decrease in “country” songs that were worthy of rants in 2019 compared to previous years. However there were a few exceptions in 2019, and songs worthy of taking out back to the woodshed. Our full-throated opposition to these monstrosities misappropriated as “country.”
Actual country music is actually starting to emerge as a serious trend in mainstream country today, but we still need to see more widespread adoption before we declare ourselves in the midst of another neotraditionalist resurgence. Instead, the new trend that has begun to emerge is being described as “Boyfriend Country.”
We knew the release of the latest Luke Combs album ‘What You See Is What You Get’ would be big, and that’s exactly what it was, bringing in the biggest numbers for a country title all year, topping all the charts, and setting a new record in the country space. Luke Combs is now indisputably the biggest artist in country music.
The Country Music Antichrist Scott Borchetta is hellbent on world domination ladies and gentlemen, and in the process expect him to pull country music in the pop direction more than ever before. In an interview, he downplayed Luke Combs and Kane Brown, while touting Thomas Rhett as the only true 20-something headliner.
The great American country music goober is back ladies and gentlemen, riding a wave of nepotistic opportunity and slavish trend chasing to launch his own insipid bid in a crowded field of hopefuls to be considered the most non-country “country” star stultifying the American country music airwaves with knockoff R&B rubbish.
The news coming out of the Carrie Underwood camp is that she will be debuting a brand new single at the ACM Awards on Sunday (4-15), and regardless of how good or godawful the song is, I couldn’t be more happy, regardless of what the song turns out to be.
So here we are once again staring at a list of the nominees for the ACM Awards, with few surprises, lots of predictable stuff, and finding ourselves full of self-reflection on if we should even care about the annual country music gala that is most susceptible to bloc voting and horse trading.
The promise of technology and its interfacing with music is a great equalization of the playing field, both opening up the creative possibilities for artists, and the ability to discover new music for fans. For too long the stuffy and outmoded system of radio feeding us what they wanted us to hear reigned over music […]
We were so swept up in praising ourselves for all the gains made in the independent realm of country music in 2017, it wasn’t until here in the dwindling moments of the year that we realized just what a dreadful era 2017 posed in the mainstream.
Netflix released the latest season of its comedy drama ‘The Ranch’ on December 15th, and just like the first three seasons, country music plays a big role in both the dialog and the soundtrack. Apparently the creators want to make discovering the songs part of the fun of the series, because they keep their soundtrack close to the vest.