Country Music Blog: Keith Urban

Thanks to Garth Brooks, the Second Harvest Food Bank is now 20,000 cans richer. He had a tractor trailer deliver the good stuff to Knoxville, Tenn.
The Los Angeles Times thinks the 5 percent of people who chose George Jones over Carrie Underwood at Stagecoach got a taste of nuance and lyrics the newbies can't match.

Did Trisha Yearwood cheat in high school? You bet, but only on her yearbook entry.

Naomi Watts tell People she knows Mrs. Keith Urban will be a great mum.

Get a front row "seat" to Lady Antebellum's concert on DeepRockDrive.com. It's on May 16 at 9 p.m. ET and is free for the streaming.

Last week's Billboard magazine had a story about concert security. Yes, those pesky windbreaker-wearing guys who stand between you and say, Brad Paisley. And while they do get in the way of potential autographs and hand shakes, they really are there to make concerts safer. Yet this article paints a picture of budget tightening and staff cutting. That scares me.

Have you been to a country concert, or worse, an all-day festival lately? The crowds come rowdy and ready to party. By the time the headliner takes the stage, there is a lot of pent up energy, often fueled by long neck beers and $15 margaritas. And that buzz apparently gives those fans permission to stand up on flimsy folding chairs, dance with the unwilling, and shout along to the lyrics at the top of their lungs.

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Cold beer, pulled pork and Keith Urban? Is there anyone alive who won't enter this contest to win a private BBQ with him?

It seems there was some heavy alcohol consumption at Arizona's Country Thunder festival.

Cheatin' and eatin?. Those are just a couple of the topics Carrie Underwood's covering in this month's InStyle magazine.

Planned obsolescence, anyone? That seems to be Apple's only hope for reviving sales of its iPod line. Make the old ones seem old, so sales of the new ones go up.

Julianne Hough vs. Vanessa Hudgins in Us magazine's race for the Who Wore it Best title. You can vote for yourself, but we're on Hough's side.

Architectural pieces, fixtures and building materials from Randy Travis' former home at Dogwood Farm near Nashville are being auctioned off this weekend.

Blogger's note: To celebrate Take Our Daughters to Work Day, I've let my oldest daughter write my blog today to show her what life is like in this grueling career I've chosen. And while she's literally rolling her eyes as I type this (as if to say "OMG, Mom, you are so totally lame"), she knows that what I get to do every day is pretty cool.

By Maddy Bonaguro

I like all types of music. Well, most types anyway, but I'm going to tell you why I like country. To make it in country, you have to bring something new. Like how Taylor Swift writes her own songs about things like the boys that she knows. I like the new kind of country. I'm not exactly into bluegrass, and my friends and I don't really ever dance around to Johnny Cash. But I do like Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts, and lots of other people. They mix pop, rock and country.

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Will she blame this on the Cuervo? Carrie Underwood is up to no good in Las Vegas, playing a bad girl for her video for new single "Last Name."

For a few more months, Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman can still travel alone (without diaper bags and strollers). So off they went to French Polynesia for a second honeymoon.

After that, it was back to Nashville for the CMT Awards and a Predators game.

It's unclear whether Tim McGraw and Faith Hill were actually the "two international superstars in the country music business" who were scheduled to perform, but an Aug. 23 was cancelled in Hamilton, Ontario, because the venue just didn't have the cash to bring everything up to meet safety codes.

British actor Ewan McGregor suffered miserably when his neighbor at a NYC hotel played melancholy country music loud enough to force him into a pair of earplugs..

Whit Wright is a lucky young man. He brought Taylor Swift to his high school prom in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and the local media report proves it wasn't just a teenage fantasy.

Naomi Judd has a message for American Idol contestant David Archuleta's dad: Leave him alone!

Billboard has good advice from Dolly Parton, who says she wakes up with new dreams every day.

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Hey everyone,

Monday night was AMAZING. I am still smiling. My sister and I sat next to my tourmates Jewel and Chuck Wicks, and behind us was James Otto, who tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the "biggest fan" award. I've grown up idolizing these artists, and I actually got to meet most of them, one in particular, Faith Hill, who has inspired me so much. It was an honor meeting her.

It was so much fun being up on that stage. I got to introduce my tourmate, Brad Paisley, with Sara Evans and Josh Turner, who kept making me laugh during rehearsals that day. Not to mention I was pretty nervous. You would think after performing on TV with 30 million people watching each week the nerves would leave. Well, well think again! :)

The performances blew me away, they were all so amazing. I really enjoyed LeAnn Rimes, Sugarland and Keith Urban. I can only hope to perform up there one day. What an unforgettable night!

Photo: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

I didn't see any of Keith Urban's co-headlining dates with Carrie Underwood, but it appears after reading numerous reviews, they missed an opportunity to slip the same title into their set lists. Urban released "I Told You So" a year ago (April 17), and I remember at the time thinking when I first saw the title that maybe he was covering Randy Travis.

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Yes, even high-class movie stars get sick sometimes. Especially the preggers ones, like Nicole Kidman, who admits to severe morning sickness.

Could that be why Carrie Underwood hasn't seen much of Nicole Kidman while out on tour with Keith Urban?

Everything about Jeff Bates gets a stellar review, except for the little soul patch on his chin.

Drinks, dinner and a handful of Nashville's finest songwriters. That's what you get for helping raise funds for the Belle Meade Plantation at the charity event on April 30.

Looks like soon-to-be country star Darius Rucker is also quite the golfer, winning the top honors at a Myrtle Beach pro-am tournament with Annika Sorenstam.

Those 99 cent downloads from iTunes may soon cost a little more, if the government finds a way to make it all a little more taxing.

There were many memorable moments in the house at the CMT Music Awards Show on Monday night (April 14). There were of course the ear-splitting shrieks for Miley Cyrus at first. And the same for Keith Urban and Rascal Flatts. But there was also the genuinely spontaneous standing ovation for Alison Krauss and Robert Plant when they walked up the stage steps to receive their Buckle award. The audience gave a similarly genuine ovation after seeing and hearing Faith Hill and Tim McGraw together on the show.

But the musical moment of the evening for me was the powerful and haunting delivery of "Life in a Northern Town," sung by Sugarland, Little Big Town and Jake Owen. It seems at first an unlikely choice for a country awards show. It was written and recorded in 1985 by the British folk-rock group The Dream Academy and ostensibly is about the British singer Nick Drake, who died of a drug overdose in 1974. The three artists covered it on the Sugarland "Change for Change Tour." Subsequently, the concert footage of "Life in a Northern Town" was made into a music video for CMT.

It's full of dreamy, folk music lyrics such as:

They sat on the stoney ground
And he took a cigarette out
And everyone else came down
To listen.
He said, "In winter 1963
It felt like the world would freeze
With John F. Kennedy
And the Beatles."

But the hook is the hypnotic chant of:

Ah hey ma ma ma
Life in a northern town.
Ah hey ma ma ma
Life in a northern town.

All together, these song elements along with Little Big Town's four intricately intertwined harmonies, Jennifer Nettles' sugary yet gritty vocal and Owen's grounded singing make this a gorgeous song. Many people in this audience were seeing Sugarland, Little Big Town and Owen do it together live for the first time. And they liked it very much. Even the young Miley Cyrus fans around me, who had gotten bored once they had seen their Miley, quit their wrestling and whining and grew silent and listened to the song, especially to the chanting.