CMT Blog: 2009 June

Taylor Swift writes her own songs. That much, we knew. But when she decides to take on a rare cover song, she can make it her own before she even gets to the chorus. She's done that with this live cover of Tom Petty's "American Girl." You can get it as a download, a ringtone or even a ringback if you like it so much you want to share it with the world. The song is literally about a decade older than Swift, having been released back in the late '70s. But it's one of those classics everybody knows. Even Def Leppard covered it. So this song is inevitably what happens when young country artists spend any quality time with old rock stars.

Mat Kearney lives in Nashville and collaborates with local songwriters, but his new album, City of Black & White, is not a country album. Instead, he's a young singer-songwriter with songs placed in shows like Grey's Anatomy, Bones and Friday Night Lights. For this album, he's toned down the urban influences and concentrated more on creating intriguing melodies with some of Nashville's finest (yet fledgling) fringe artists like Trent Dabbs, Matthew Perryman Jones and Kate York. It's literate but not obscure. Meanwhile, the production is interesting but never obnoxious. His music reminds me a little bit of the Fray and John Legend. Whenever I get pop albums in the mail, I usually give them a courtesy listen, then move on to something more rootsy, but I've been keeping City of Black & White in heavy rotation while driving around Nashville. Makes me proud to live here. If you're curious to hear more, here's a video for "Closer to Love."

It is very probable that I like country music more than the average country fan. But even I don't want to watch it for three straight hours on TV. Who's got that kind of time to devote to the ABC television special, CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock? Who can just drop everything for a country music special? I suppose I can, and I will likely watch every minute of it on Aug. 31. But three hours is just a really long time for anything, even something good. Then again, they did have to edit all this high-def footage down from hours of concerts from Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley, Sugarland, Kid Rock, Taylor Swift and more. And I guess since I didn't spend the four days in Nashville for the fest, the least I can do is watch this show for three hours. That's my rationale, and I'm sticking to it.

Yesterday, I wrote my 1,000th blog. You can see that big fat number right next to my name on CMT.com's blog page. So I spent a completely inordinate amount of time sifting through those 1,000 blogs trying to find some kind of rhyme or reason or pattern in the way people respond. I gave up around midnight when all I had determined was that sometimes you just strike a nerve. And sometimes you don't.

I could pour out my heart about a new album. Rave about lyrics. Rant about haters. Or I could try to put into words my devotion to Garth Brooks' music. I could talk nonstop about concerts and awards shows and the battles of the blondes. But in a way, this blog is a bit like the music business it's intended to cover, because it's really all about timing. If I wrote something particularly controversial, it could very well fall on deaf ears if, say, Taylor Swift had a new single out that day or Kenny Chesney broke his foot.

Still, you can't help but notice when the comments for a particular blog start to rack up higher numbers than others. So I give you the top blogs, if comments matter as much as I think they do:

Mark Chesnutt made some remarks about Taylor Swift's music.

Read more...

"It's a Business Doing Pleasure With You." I haven't even heard it and I'm almost positive I will love it. That's the title of Tim McGraw's latest single, and it hits radio stations today (June 30). It's also the first track released from his upcoming album, Southern Voice. Why am I so sure I will love it? Because I love word plays, and the title creates an image in my head of a man who's tired of trying too hard to have fun with some woman. And because in all the years I've been listening to McGraw, I don't think he's ever released a song I didn't love. It's been way too long since he came out with Let It Go, so I'm just ready for another McGraw album, single ... anything. His label people have described this new song as "up-tempo and fun ... a great summer song." As soon as I hear it, I'll write my own seven-sentence description as well.

I don't really think of Brad Paisley as anybody's boss because he just doesn't seem very bossy. At least not in that hands-on-your-hips boss kind of way. When Taylor Swift was on his 2007 tour as one of his opening acts, she cut a show short because she had a bad cold. When she said she was sorry for letting him down, he was the best kind of boss: a sympathetic one. "He sat there and talked to me for a half hour about all the times he's gotten sick and made me laugh so hard, I didn't feel so bad anymore. I had to cancel the next show, and I was blown away to find later that Brad was going to pay me anyway. I never forgot that he did that." She told The Los Angeles Times that because Paisley set such a positive example for her, she's trying to do the same for her opening acts now that she has her own headlining tour. That's good news for Kellie Pickler and Gloriana.

Last winter a young bluegrass group called the Abrams Brothers filed off their bus at the CMT offices after a long and snowy trip from their home in Canada. Groups or artists stop by and perform here once in a while, but this band of two brothers and a cousin was especially memorable. They were definitely a bluegrass group and had the type of chops that would be at home on the Grand Ole Opry stage -- which they played in 2005 -- but being teenagers, they were also very eager to experiment with the genre. One song in particular showed that -- a well thought-out arrangement of Coldplay's "Viva la Vida." I'm glad to see that now they have a video to go along with the track, so enjoy as they walk crowded city streets singing about a once-powerful king on the verge of losing it all.

Rhett Miller is that rare singer-songwriter who can write lyrics about desperation, frustration, deception, etc., only to have listeners happily bouncing along with his upbeat choruses. In other words, the lyrics don't always seem to match up with the melodies, so that's probably why his new album, Rhett Miller, is holding up to repeated listening. For the last week or so, I've been stuck on "Refusing Temptation," which is about fidelity -- or not, depending on how you interpret his attachment to the girl of his dreams. Is she haunting him? Part of me thinks so, but the other part is too busy singing along to decide for sure.

Read more...

My Brad Paisley advance album is ruined. That's how good it is. Do you remember those days when you played an album over and over and over until it started scratching and skipping? But CDs are indestructible, right? Not if it's so good that you play the hell out of it, like I've done with Brad Paisley's American Saturday Night. This is his best album ever. No doubt. Hands down. Is it because he co-wrote every single song on it? Is it because he's the one country artist right now who can be at once hopelessly sentimental, brutally honest and laugh-out-loud funny? Or is it because since he debuted in 1999, he's just done a lot of musical maturing?

Read more...

I saw Night Ranger this weekend. Yes, the rock band from the '80s best known for hits like "Sister Christian" and "Don't Tell Me You Love Me." And after their 90-minute concert (actually concert is probably the wrong word because they were just playing a little festival in a little suburb), I found myself craving anything but rock. Anything with a lot of twang, steel, fiddle, banjo and a redneck theme. Again, anything but rock. So I've been quenching that thirst for country with songs like these:

"Give It to Me Strait," Tim McGraw
"Very Last Country Song," Sugarland
"Tackle Box," Luke Bryan
Read more...