CMT Blog: Sugarland

Not every one is crazy about deluxe album reissues. Why pay for songs you already have just to get a couple new ones, right? Well, I have three words for you: forever and always. On Taylor Swift's new Fearless Platinum Edition, she has six new songs, one of which is the piano version of her "Forever & Always." One listen gave me goosebumps. I'm kind of a sucker for piano songs and for songs that have only one instrument. So it was only natural that I'd like it. But I didn't know how much until I put it on. Using such sparse music makes the lyrics so much more powerful. It's kind of like the way a dash of salt on an orange makes the orange taste so much sweeter. You strip away the layers of guitars and you're left with a beautiful, although heartbreaking, story. (Remember Sugarland's "Stay"? I felt just as strongly about the way that song was arranged.)

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Country music and professional sports are hopelessly intertwined. Country stars go to the games, athletes show up at their concerts, and then those stars go to even more games. It's like a never-ending circle of mutual admiration.

And on Nov. 13, it gets even better for Chicago. Greg Olsen, the Chicago Bears' tight end, is hosting a Shake the Lake country concert to benefit breast cancer, brain cancer and Children's Memorial Hospital. Keith Anderson and David Nail will both be on hand to entertain and raise a little cash.

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I met Chris Young last week and he couldn't have been sweeter. Until he started singing. Then his smoky, dirty, sexy, I-want-you-naked side came out when he sang "Gettin' You Home." It's the one about her black dress hitting the floor and loving him all night long. In a way, songs like this are aspirational more than they are relatable. I think I speak for a lot of married couples when I say that it's been a while since the lyrics of this song have rung true. So I put together a playlist of country songs to kind of bring the sexy back.

"Gettin' You Home," Chris Young
"Need You Now," Lady Antebellum
"What I'd Give," Sugarland
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The holidays are still a couple of months away, but that's not stopping Sugarland from rocking Twitter with a little listening party starting today. Their first holiday album, Gold and Green is streaming right this minute, and you can hear it as soon as you log on to Twitter and tweet that you are indeed listening to Sugarland. (If you don't do Twitter, it takes about one minute to sign up. If you never want to go back to tweet or follow or be followed after today, so be it.)

What's cool about these online streams, to me, is that it does more than just play you the music. It puts you in a mood. In this case, it's an uber-twangy holiday mood. One that seems a little more festive because of Jennifer Nettles' distinctive vocals heaped on top of that mood. And five of the songs are originals, so the album has a good mix of songs you grew up with and ones your kids will grow up with.

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A total of nine new music videos flooded the CMT New Music Video Evaluation Team this week, as CMT launches its New Music Weekend. Fresh work comes from Sugarland, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, Michelle Branch, Miranda Lambert, Tim McGraw, Reba, and Billy Currington. So, out of that whole bunch, which one do you watch first? We'll never tell. In no particular order:

Artist: Carrie Underwood
Video: "Cowboy Casanova'"
Director: Theresa Wingert

Carrie Underwood's first single from her upcoming album, Play On, is a lush and brash song and video. The latter finds Carrie wearing a series of elaborate outfits and presiding over a flock of dancing girls in what some viewers see as a dancehall and others interpret as a fancy bordello.

Panelists comments: "Very impressive." "I love those gorgeous outfits." "A very good-looking video."

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I am so blessed. With my family, my health, this job. But I'm also feeling blessed with really good friendships today. I celebrated my birthday this weekend (I turned 29. Again.) and just feel so lucky to have a group of good pals to make the party such a blast. These are friends who make me laugh, but are there when you need a good cry. Friends who know all your dirty secrets but would never tell a soul. And friends who will buy you one too many Jack & Cokes, but then make sure you get home OK. So this morning I'm celebrating every song that has anything to do with friendships.

"Find Out Who Your Friends Are," Tracy Lawrence
"My Old Friend," Tim McGraw
"Friends in Low Places," Garth Brooks
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When I blogged that Carrie Underwood's new video for "Cowboy Casanova" would be premiering next weekend, readers wanted to know if they'd get to see any other new ones. Well, be careful what you wish for, because there are a lot. Starting on Oct. 2, it is literally CMT's Big New Music Weekend. So you can see them on TV and on CMT.com. But since I work in Chicago and not in the Nashville office, I haven't had the honoring of seeing any of them. Still, I have some theories about what they'll look like based on what they sound like. But I'd love to know what you think will transpire in these videos. Take your best guess, then come Oct. 5 we'll check back here and see who had the best vision for Tim McGraw's "Southern Voice," Kenny Chesney's "I'm Alive," Keith Urban's "Hit the Ground Runnin'," Sugarland's "Keep You," Reba's "Consider Me Gone," Miranda Lambert's "White Liar" and more.

Tomorrow at 10 a.m.? Thursday at 10 a.m.? Or Saturday at 10 a.m.? There are so many presales and promotions going on for the CMA Awards tickets that my head is spinning. That's good, though, right? That means there are a lot of opportunities to see this must-see show live in Nashville on Nov. 11. Ticketmaster doesn't give you a whole lot of relevant info. Like tickets prices. Or the necessary super special secret codes to get into these presales. Sometimes it's a fan club thing. But I don't know that I'd recommend joining several fan clubs just to get CMA tickets because, generally, fan clubs don't guarantee that you'll get good seats. You may be sitting next to Jennifer Nettles or George Strait, but then again you may run the risk of sitting where altitude sickness is a very real possibility. It's your choice. But once you decide, please let us know which ticket on-sale date you used and what kind of tickets you scored.

Updated 4:15 p.m. ET, Tuesday (Sept. 15)

The promotional code to be used for access to CMT's CMA Awards Tickets Presale on Sept. 16-18 is CMT2009. The presale expires at 11 p.m. ET on Friday (Sept. 18). Regular ticket sales begin on Saturday (Sept. 19).

A friend of mine just bragged to me that he'd be watching AC/DC's L.A. show in Oct. from the third row. When I asked how much he paid for such a privilege, he was not the least bit ashamed to admit he'd paid $632 for each ticket. So, with two tickets and all those processing and shipping fees, that's $1394.95. Which is absurd.

Unless AC/DC was a country band. See, I think the concept of premium concert ticket prices is all so relative. I wouldn't pay $5 to see AC/DC even if I was sitting on Angus Young's lap. But I have paid what my friend paid to see a Keith Urban/Tim McGraw show. I have paid nearly that much to see Sugarland. And I've probably come close to $600 for a few Kenny Chesney shows as well.

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Not sure how I ever did this before the invention of the blessed DVR, but I had so much fun watching the three-hour immersion of the CMA Music Festival on ABC that I thought I'd go through the show and give you my highlights. And while I always love, love, love the music, sometimes it's the little details that stand out to me. Feel free to share yours, too.

• Kid Rock bringing "All Summer Long" down so that you could really feel him on the line about how nothing seems as strange as when the leaves begin to change or how he thought those days would never end.

• Julianne Hough curling her own hair, getting a little starstruck around Martina McBride and then sharing a story about trading earrings with a little 8-year-old girl.

• Taylor Swift talking about how embarrassing it was to always be announced as Taylor Hicks early on in her career.

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