After a quarter century, and a very messy last eight years or so, Gary Allan has just made it official: he’s leaving his long time label home of Universal Music Group Nashville. And though we won’t know for a while just where he’ll land or how everything will shake out, it feels like it can only be a positive development.
It wasn’t like Michael and Tanya Trotter, known together as The War And Treaty, were struggling for attention and support or something. But signing with a major Nashville label is always significant.
A Grammy Awards screening committee who must make the tough decisions of which albums are considered “country” in the ever-mutating world of popular music has deemed that the latest album from Kacey Musgraves called Star-Crossed should not be eligible for ‘Best Country Album.’
The strategy and reasoning here are pretty obvious. Kacey Musgraves has been a critical darling in country music for years. But the country music industry and especially country radio has never known what to do with her.
The alter ego of Dierks Bentley and his touring band have signed a label deal. “The Knights are promising to bring real ’90s country music back to a format that’s been drowning in male sensitivity, cashmere cardigan sweaters and programmed drum loops,” reads a portion of the press release—funny because it’s also patently true.
It’s tough enough for female-fronted mainstream artists the days, and it became even tougher for the songwriting duo Maddie & Tae when their division of Big Machine Records was dissolved in a downsizing. The fate of the duo was left in the air after it was announced that Dot Records would be ceasing operations.