CMT Blog: Gone Country

If I’m interpreting a sidebar on the People magazine Web site correctly, Barbara Mandrell is tabbed in the publication’s annual “Most Beautiful People” list, which this year is being expanded from 50 to 100. That’s a nice compliment to Babs, who turns 60 this Christmas.

During her heyday, she was one of country music’s greatest ambassadors, in part because her television show, Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters, put the genre on prime time every Saturday night. The show was dismissed by critics, but the public loved it, and Barbara stopped only because it took time away from her family and her music.

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Heard an interesting experiment on local radio this morning. Gerry House, the morning man at WSIX-Nashville, played some Spanish language country songs and announced that station management had decided to broaden their listener base by embracing all elements of the local community. And Nashville does have a sizable and growing Mexican and Latino populace. Then - oh boy, then House opened his phone lines and listeners started calling in. Did they ever. And most of them were angry. Angry that another culture was being “forced” on them. Vowed to leave the station and never return. Forget the fact that Spanish-language singers and writers are a big part of country music history. I guess House waited too long to remind his listeners that it was April Fool’s Day. Oh - and then he played the new single by Gone Country winner Julio Iglesias Jr. and invited listeners to vote on that song. It’s a good thing he wasn’t playing any Dixie Chicks music. God knows what would have happened.

Love can build a bridge, and so can Julio Iglesias Jr. — if he gets a shot at country music success.

Julio’s fellow Gone Country contestant, Carnie Wilson, says she’s determined to lose 40-50 pounds and get pregnant again.

I wonder why Kellie Pickler chose a conservative red dress for American Idol. Didn’t stop Ryan Seacrest from cracking jokes, though.

Lisa Marie Presley is craving fruit during her pregnancy. By the way, we’ve heard that peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches are delicious when they’re fried.

The show is sold out, but you can still win seats on the Red Carpet for the 2008 CMT Music Awards.

What an incredible predicament I found myself in on the finale of Gone Country. I gotta tell you, I was actually secretly hoping that the episode where I heard the original songs for the first time that I would be able to start crossing people off the list. I liked everybody’s personality and everybody was bringing something great to the table, but I was hoping that a few of them would write songs that weren’t very good, and I could just cross them off the list based on the lack of greatness of the song. But then everybody wrote a viable song, in my opinion. Literally everybody. And if you know me, you know I’m a real hardcore guy when it comes to integrity of songwriting. I mean, I’ve made my career on songwriting, but I wasn’t able to cross anybody off the list at that point, which was a little concerning to me because then I knew it was all going to boil down to the performances.

So on the finale, as I’m watching everybody perform, once again it was not extremely clear who was in the lead up until I saw Julio [Iglesias Jr.] perform. You can actually see my reaction on TV where my eyes kinda got wide and I went, “Wow.” There was a palpable magnetism between Julio and that audience, and not just the women — men and women. The whole entire place moved about three feet closer to the stage when he hit that chorus. It was the X-factor that I talked about in the final episode. I kinda laid out the criteria of what it was going to take for somebody to get that final little edge and the final little edge to me was the X-factor — the X-factor being that thing that you can’t put your finger on, but you witnessed it, you felt it, and it was real. And gotta tell you, Julio had that.

Diana DeGarmo’s vocals were so incredible. Had it just been based on vocal performance, Diana would have won it hands down. She had a strong response from the audience, but it was not, in my opinion, as strong as the one Julio had. So that was one real major factor in me picking Julio. And, to be quite honest with you, the other real major factor was, I think, that Julio Iglesias Jr. brings an element to country music that does not exist — and that being the Spanish-English element. I remember growing up in Texas and hearing Johnny Rodriguez on my radio station, and about half my friends were Spanish kids — Mexican kids — and their first language was Spanish. They were all my buddies. I remember Johnny Rodriguez turning them on to country music. They liked it, but it wasn’t something they completely related to until they saw Johnny Rodriguez.

Well, I think, it’s been 30 years since that, and I think it’s time we pay attention to that audience again. I see Spanish-speaking people coming to Big & Rich shows by the hundreds and thousands, depending on the part of the country that we’re in, and right now, there’s nobody in our format speaking to that audience. So that was another major factor for me that I didn’t think anybody else on the cast brought to the table, obviously. He is a true international artist. Anybody that knows me knows I love country music so much, I want to see it become the most popular format of music in the world. I want it to be the biggest thing in the world, and one thing we have to do to do that is to embrace artists that can help us take it around the world and that can educate the world about how great our music is. Julio is such a class act and always carries himself with integrity. Those are the factors that weighed in to me to pick him as the winner of Gone Country.

I was not greatly surprised that Julio Iglesias Jr. won the CMT Gone Country competition. As John Rich posts in his CMT shows blog, Iglesias’ Hispanic heritage was a factor in Iglesias’ appeal and in Rich’s decision-making process. People in the country music industry have been saying for years that they wish they could find the “next Johnny Rodriguez.” He was a dynamic, handsome Mexican-America singer with a great voice and a real ear for country and he attracted multi-racial audiences across the board. As has Rick Trevino, who has had many country hits. And Freddy Fender, the late singer who had several No. 1 country hits. Julio Jr.’s father, of course, had two Top 10 country duets with Willie Nelson, including his No. 1, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.” So, Julio Jr.’s career will be watched closely.
 

In this interview with Access Hollywood, Miley Cyrus meets Maureen McCormick – bringing two of America’s most famous teenagers together. Billy Ray Cyrus is on the set too, since he and Miley (a.k.a. Hannah Montana) were doing a photo shoot for the 2008 CMT Music Awards. Meanwhile, McCormick (better known as Marcia Brady) is back in the spotlight as a star of the CMT series, Gone Country.

I grew up watching reruns of The Brady Bunch, and one of my friends has always reminded me of Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. Plus, I met Ms. McCormick in 1995 when she was signing autographs at Fan Fair to promote her country album. Someday I should post that picture on here. She was wearing that famous Marcia smile. But until today I have never heard Miley speak – and that deep voice is not at all what I expected…

Vince Gill gave the Washington Post some totally awesome quotes about Taylor Swift, and how she’s like so completely seriously amazing or whatever.

Another teen who’s super awesome? Miley Cyrus, for rescuing a lost dog and comforting him until his owner was retreived.

If you’re a Kenny Chesney fan, you won’t want to miss tonight’s premiere of Biography on A&E. Even though Chesney didn’t speak to the A&E crew for the show, his manager and songwriters did.

The soldiers in Fort Bragg better get ready to rock. Miranda Lambert’s going to perform just for them and their families on Saturday (3/1) night at the Ritz-Epps center.

As if he wasn’t busy enough educating B-list celebs on country music, now John Rich is going to conduct monthly talent contests at 12th & Porter in Nashville.

I welcome criticism from other artists, as long as I ask for it, and I ask for it a lot. I’ll go to other artists and say, “What do you think about that song I wrote? What do you think about an idea to do this, that or the other thing?” Some artists will come up and critique you without you asking them, and that can sometimes rub you the wrong way. But when the artists were working on Gone Country, it was a situation where these guys were fish out of water. They wrote a song and they had a work tape on it — just them and a guitar or them and a piano. They really had no idea if they were close to hitting the mark or not. So for me to be able to critique those songs, I had to be able to tell them, “That part’s good. That part’s not. This works. That doesn’t.” They were wide open to it. I mean, they were soaking up everything I told them. It was a pretty big responsibility for me, though, to tell them the right thing. But it’s no different then when I listen to songs that come in for records I’m going to produce or whatever. I’ll listen to probably 100 songs a week from different people, and I’ll know within the first 60 seconds if it’s right or not.

To pair the cast members with some people who really know what they’re doing, I called up a laundry list of the best songwriters in town, people I’ve been able to become friends with over the years. Most of them I’ve written with on one occasion or another, as well. And I put two writers per artist because I didn’t know which artists would be good writers or not. Some of them might be great, and some of them might not be able to write at all. I teamed them up based on what I knew about their personalities and what would be the best combos. I think I matched them up pretty well because everybody wrote a great song. As far as the Nashville equation on how to write a hit song, I think I plugged them right in to that thing. It worked.

Maureen McCormick, of all people, exceeded my expectations. Now, Maureen is probably the weakest singer on the show. She’s not really a vocalist or anything, but she wrote this song called “The Price I’ve Got to Pay for Being Me,” that — I swear to God — is a hit song. It sounds like something Loretta Lynn would have written early on. It’s just so direct — three-chord country that just rips your heart out. When the cast heard her song, we all looked at her and went, “You’ve got to be kidding!” When I heard that, I said, “She went just way, way, way up on the totem pole as to who might win this show.” I mean, that song is incredible.

Maureen McCormick (better known as Marcia Brady) recently admitted to having a bit of a girl crush on Gretchen Wilson on Gone Country. Then CMT.com columnist Hazel Smith was raving about Crystal Gayle’s skin, eyes, smile and hair. And Miley Cyrus had some mildly suggestive pictures taken with another girl a few months ago. Is everyone everywhere having these girl crushes, and if so, shouldn’t someone write a song about the new trend?

Back in 2006, Willie Nelson released a song called “Cowboys are Secretly, Frequently (Fond of Each Other).” I think it might be the time for another tune about homosexual tendencies. Not a straight-up lesbian love song, but more of an exploration of the crushing craze, because it really has less to do with actual, physical lust and more to do with an infatuation of another girl’s mind, body and soul. (Although McCormick’s forthcoming book reportedly reveals a girl crush that actually progressed to sexual play with Eve Plumb, who played younger sister Jan Brady.)

I’m not suggesting country music’s on the verge of a girl-on-girl kiss a la Madonna and Britney. However, a Jennifer Nettles/Carrie Underwood awards-show kiss would certainly give us something to talk about, wouldn’t it? But I do think the phenomenon of girl love doesn’t seem to be as taboo as it once was. In the new book, Sexual Fluidity, the author reports that women are more fluid with their emotions when it comes to other women — that it’s not as black and white as it is with men, and that the occasional attraction to women is natural.

Maybe in the conservative world of country radio, the potential lack of spins might be holding songwriters back. But radio has crossed some lines in the sand before, and the timing may be right for a little more flirtation with controversy. Just think of the untouched lyrical territory. Fans always want music they can relate to. And who can’t relate to a page out of Marcia Brady’s life?

The one place where I really kinda had an issue with the producers of Gone Country was when they were wanting to take these artists and slap cowboy hats on them and put the rhinestones on them and all this. And I’m going, “Well, if they want to do that, then they should be allowed to do that, but these people have their images already. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be multi-platinum artists.” So, to me, that’s one way people who produce TV shows really screw up what’s going on here in Nashville. I mean, I’ve seen some of the unbelievable stuff that really just infuriates me, honestly, because it makes us look like a bunch of hicks and ding-dongs. Now, maybe we are a bunch of hicks, but we’re not stupid. We’re country folks, but we know what’s going on. We’re just as cool as anybody else. We know how to do it. I think this stereotypical nonsense that sometimes gets thrown at you is detrimental to the progress of country music, and I didn’t want to be a part of that at all.

So when it came time for the cast members to find some clothing to complement their personalities, we took them to Manuel, the tailor on Music Row who’s made clothing for Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and many others. As it turned out, Manuel didn’t really get to work with them because we just stormed his store, but was doing all he could to help. Of course, he spent more time with the ladies … because he’s Manuel. Manuel likes the ladies, so Diana DeGarmo ended up with a really, really cool piece that she ended up wearing. It looked great on her, and I think Maureen McCormick ended up with something really cool, too. I think all the ladies wound up with something to wear. As for the guys, I can’t recall exactly who ended up with what, but Sisqo ended up with a cool piece. But its one of those things where you have to say, “If what’s in Manuel’s store is cool for you, wear it. And if it ain’t, don’t.” I was really going out of my way to make sure they understood that I wasn’t sitting there looking at them and saying, “Put on some country clothes or you’re not going to win this show. I didn’t want them feeling that way. Image is one thing, but it’s about their music more then about what kind of clothes they’re going to wear.