CMT Blog: Around The Web

I know Carrie Underwood is crazy about her new husband, Mike Fisher, but is she seriously letting him handle the interior design of their new house in Ontario? That is true love right there. That's what Us Magazine is reporting about the new house Mr. & Mrs. Mike Fisher are building in Ottawa, where Fisher needs to be for his position with the Ottawa Senators hockey team. It must be so hard to choose where to live as a couple when both of you travel for a living and when your current homes are separated by more than 1,000 miles. I suppose they could've split the difference and set down their roots midway between the two, perhaps in Akron, Ohio, or Pittsburgh. But Ottawa won. Fisher apparently told Canada's CTV that he loves it up there and that "Home is where we are." Aw. How sweet is that?

Photo credit: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Roman White is the man behind the new Taylor Swift video, "Mine." You can scour the Internet for details on the shoot (what designer was wore, how hot was that guy in it, is there some kind of kissing scene, where did they shoot it), and you will never find more comprehensive scoop than in White's own blog now that the video is officially finished. He rants a bit about how hot it was in Maine ("I'm talking eggs boiling on your buns HOT!"). And he reminisces about the producer getting accosted by a sea gull and about getting a Hugs A Lot bear from Swift at the end of the project. The shoot started on a 2,000-acre estate, then the cast and crew headed to a small town called Cape Porpoise. White doesn't give a premiere date for this insanely anticipated video, but since the song itself was released earlier than planned, maybe the same will happen with the video.

Photo credit: Peter Kramer

Nightline now has a segment called Nightline Playlist and they let the person they're interviewing do all the talking. In this story with Martina McBride, she raves about the music she loves for a good five minutes. She spends the first minute talking about what a career song "Independence Day" was for her and how important it was for her to not record fluffy girl songs or novelty songs. But then she goes on to list what's at the very top of her playlist from other artists. And they are: "Crazy" by Patsy Cline, "Mad Love" by Linda Ronstadt, "Respect" by Aretha Franklin, "Friends in Low Place" by Garth Brooks and "Somewhere Over the Raindow," the Eva Cassidy version. "I never get tired of it," McBride says of the song she sings so well in concert.

Kanye West wants a fur coat. Kanye West orders bellinis too early. Kanye West drinks New York City tap water. Kanye West likes his new collaboration with Beyoncé. And Kanye West is thrilled he has more than 600,000 followers on Twitter. And that's all well and good, for Kanye West. But have those 600,000 people forgotten what West did? Do they not remember that just about a year ago, he yanked the microphone out of Taylor Swift's hands during her MTV VMA acceptance speech for "Love Story" "You Belong With Me" and told her and the millions watching that, essentially, Beyoncé had the better video? I am not quite over that. So I don't know that I'd want to follow him. Plus, nothing says "It's All About Me" quite like a man with around 610,000 followers and 0 people on his following list.

Photo credit: Christopher Polk/Getty Images

Luke Bryan and his wife, Caroline, just welcomed another baby boy to their growing family. Baby Tatum "Tate" Christopher Bryan was born yesterday morning (Aug. 11) and was 6 pounds, 8 ounces and 21 inches long. And Luke already knows just what his future holds now that he has two boys. "All the fishing holes in Nashville better look out when I get out there in the next few years with Tate and big brother Bo," he told People.com. "Bo" is Thomas Boyer Bryan, the couple's 2-year-old son. The singer added that there was nothing like coming home after eight shows out on the road and having baby Tate surprise them. "Such an amazing day for me and my family. We are so blessed to have another healthy baby boy," he said in a statement. When I met Bo at a concert when he was just a tiny little thing, he had an adorable all-access lanyard on that was about 1" X 2". I hope they saved that. That will make a nice hand-me-down for baby Tate.

Photo credit: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Today (Aug. 10) is the day you can get in on what the Zac Brown Band has going on. Specifically, you can preorder the new album on the band's website and download the insanely cool first single which they sing with Alan Jackson. It's called "As She's Walking Away" and it will be on ZBB's You Get What You Give album due out on Sept. 21. (If you pre-order, you'll have access to all kinds of goodies like an exclusive lithograph, a cookbook, a T-shirt and trucker cap, some cooking rub from Brown's own recipe and a chance to win a free cabin on the band's Sailing Southern Ground cruise next month). The new album will also feature vocals from another singer you may have heard of, Jimmy Buffett, on "Knee Deep." These Zac Brown Band guys do not mess around when they pick who to collaborate with.

What did we do before Twitter? Seriously. It gives country fans so much random but hysterical nuggets of information. And it's not just Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley and Brad Paisley who are cracking people up. Girls are getting in on it, too. This weekend, Miranda Lambert sent out a tweet after her show on Saturday (Aug. 7) night that said, "Soooo.....some crazy girl showed her boobs to us all night while we were on stage. And they were not the pretty kind. Ew!" That was about the same time that Kellie Pickler was on her tour bus rolling down the highway saying, "can't quit looking down at my left hand and thanking God that I get to spend the rest of my life with @kylecjacobs." Martina McBride tweeted a little movie of her husband (and an audience) singing "Happy Birthday" to her. Even LeAnn Rimes, who is back on Twitter after a week-long hiatus, was retweeting the always-pensive John Mayer, with his quote, "I have found the key to a happy life is to surround myself with like-minded people who agree with me constantly."

Say you've lined up Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Zac Brown Band, Kenny Chesney and a whole onslaught of talent from all kinds of music for an outdoor festival. Sounds like a moneymaker, doesn't it? So how on earth did Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., lose $5 million in three days with HullabaLOU? I could see taking a bit of a loss, but come on. Five million? The president of Churchill Downs Entertainment said that he wanted to create the Kentucky Derby of music festivals (which is a nice goal, by the way) and noted, "When we started out with Derby, it didn't start out with 155,000 people. And it's grown for 135 years. Hopefully this thing will grow over the next five to ten years and become something that's meaningful." They had hoped to have 90,000 people but wound up with about 78,000. And the lost income from slow tickets, parking and concessions is partly what caused the big loss. They aren't giving up just yet, though. Organizers say they will try again in 2011.

Photo Credit: Erika Goldring/Getty Images
(HullabaLOU 2010)

When Taylor Swift was interrupted by Kanye West at the MTV VMA Awards last year, someone joked about how it was like kicking a kitten. Swift is extremely likeable, so why would anyone want to do something so hateful to her? And I feel a little bit like that today since her first single off her next album was leaked to the Internet without her blessing. It's like kicking the kitten all over again.

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I've met Jaron from Jaron and the Long Road to Love. And he's not shy. On the contrary, actually. When it comes to interviews, he's a journalist's best friend. There's pretty much nothing he won't say. In this Q&A with EW.com, he goes on and on about how he was a bit of a smart-ass 10 years ago when he had a pop band with his identical twin brother Evan, why he doesn't talk about synagogues and rabbis in "Pray for You" and how his audience's opinions matter much more than his own. But when the discussion turns to the pop in country -- and how pop stars like Darius Rucker and Kid Rock didn't go country, but rather how country went pop -- I don't know if I agree. "If you listen to a Keith Urban or Lady Antebellum song, those are straight-up pop songs. There's that whole wink-wink ‘I'll throw a banjo or a mandolin in' thing," he says. "But it's pop."