We’ve been way too upbeat lately with our Daily Fives! Today, we’re asking a different question about your favorite artists.
What are the five albums from artists you usually love that really disappointed you? The ones that are lucky to have a handful of tracks that are still on your iPod, or made you think twice before you bought the album that followed?
Here’s My Top Five:
- Mary Chapin Carpenter, A Place in the World
- Sugarland, The Incredible Machine
- Trisha Yearwood, Where Your Road Leads
- Todd Snider, Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables
- Lori McKenna, Numbered Doors
What’s your top five?
Well I’ll just do disappointing singles
1. Gary Allan Hangover Tonight
2. Eli Young Band Turn It On
3. Alan Jackson Long Way To Go
4. Reba Going Out Like That
5. Lady Antebellum Freestyle
All songs pure trash.
1. “Tailgates and Tanlines” – Luke Bryan (it’s been downhill ever since)
2. “Overexposed” – Maroon 5 (not country, but I really thought this was a boring album from my favourite non-country act)
3. “Emotional Traffic” – Tim McGraw
4. “It’s Gonna be Okay” Adam Brand
5. “A.M.” – Chris Young
1. Martina McBride, Martina
2. Trisha Yearwood, Jasper County
3. Mary Chapin Carpenter, Time* Sex* Love*
4. Wynonna Judd, Sing, Volume 1
5. Reba McEntire, So Good Together
1. Julie Roberts – Good Wine and Bad Decisions
2. Martina McBride – Shine
3. Miranda Lambert – Platinum
4. Lee Ann Womack – Something Worth Leaving Behind
5. — can’t think anymore lol
(surprised with your inclusion of Numbered Doors, though)
BONUS: Brad Paisley, American Saturday Night
1. Brad Paisley: “American Saturday Night” and all subsequent albums except “Wheelhouse”
2. Lori McKenna: “Numbered Doors” album
3. Little Big Town “Pain Killer” album
4. Zac Brown Band “No Hurry” single
5. – That’s pretty much all I’ve got.
1. 10,000 Towns – Eli Young Band (love the band, but this was a step down)
2. Pain Killer – Little Big Town (preferred their Wayne Kirkpatrick sound)
3. Like Red On A Rose – Alan Jackson
4. Platinum – Miranda Lambert
5. You Can’t Make Old Friends – Kenny Rogers (love Kenny, but not this one)
Jonathan,
You didn’t like Jasper County and it was your least favorite Yearwood album? I’m surprised, because I like it and it’s certainly not what I’d call my least favorite album of hers. In fact, according to my iTunes, along with Heaven, Heartache & the Power of Love, it might be one of my favorite Yearwood albums with 7 songs from it in my iTunes.
As far as my least favorite albums from my favorite artists, I’ll go with:
1. Vince Gill, Lets Make Sure We Kiss Goodbye
2. Alan Jackson, Like Red on A Rose (I respect him for trying something different. But I’m glad it was just a one off thing.)
3. Dierks Bentley, Feel that Fire (though I’m wondering if I should revisit that album now.)
4. Miranda Lambert, Four the Record
5. Nickel Creek, Why Should the Fire Die (I have warmed up to this album significantly over the years, but was disappointed by it for awhile when it first came out, since it was a real departure from their first two albums.)
I’ll have to say that American Saturday Night is one of my favorite Paisley albums, but the most disappointing one (and I should’ve included it on my list instead of the Nickel Creek album) is This Is Country Music. I only liked one song from that album and I didn’t even love that one, which is not typical for a Paisley album for me.
Caj,
I don’t know about the album, but I do love “You Can’t Make Old Friends” the song.
1. Band Perry – Pioneer
love Better Dig Two but hardly ever play any of the other songs
2. Brad Paisley – This Is Country Music (agree with Leeann’s comments)
3. Sugarland – The Incredible Machine (but I love the Nettles solo effort “That Girl”)
4. James Otto – Shake What God Gave Ya
5. Joe Nichols – It’s All Good (No!)
1. American Saturday Night: Brad Paisley <———– Pinpointing the start of Paisley's musical decline.
2. Wheelhouse: Brad Paisley
3. This is Country Music: Brad Paisley
4. Twang: George Strait
5 (A). A.M.: Chris Young
5 (B). Headlights, Taillights and Radios: Tracy Lawrence
1. Brad Paisley – This is Country Music
2. Chris Young – A.M.
3. Eric Church – The Outsiders
4. Tim McGraw – Emotional Traffic
5. Toby Keith – White Trash With Money
1. Moonshine in the Trunk – Brad Paisley (American Saturday Night is actually one of my favorites by him)
2. The Big Revival – Kenny Chesney
3. Haywire – Josh Turner (not a bad album per se, just didn’t live up to his previous efforts as I had hoped)
4. AM – Chris Young
5. High Noon – Jerrod Niemann (maybe the worst sellout moment I’ve ever seen)
It’s so interesting how people’s tastes can be so different, even among people who have a lot of similar tastes. One of my best friends and I like a lot of the same artists in country music, but it’s almost inevitable that we’ll like and dislike different songs from them. With that said, I liked George Strait’s Twang and Toby Keith’s White Trash with Money is probably my favorite or second favorite album of his.
Fun Fact about White Trash with Money: Lari White produced it. It’s still unusual in country music for a female to produce an album that’s not her own and Toby’s not exactly the person that you’d think would be one of the few to make that choice. I thought that some of her production choices on that album were fun and I tend to like Toby best when he seems to be having fun.
“All The Women I Am,” Reba McEntire
“Incredible Machine,” Sugarland
“Stronger,” Sara Evans
“Four The Record,” Miranda Lambert
“Eleven,” Martina McBride
Leeann,
Jasper County : It just doesn’t do it for me, overall. It isn’t a terrible album, but it’s no where near her most significant work. I really like a handful of the tracks (“Trying To Love You,” “Standing Out in a Crowd” and “Georgia Rain”) but that’s about it. I wish “Just A Cup of Coffee” had made the album, but at least it saw the light of day on the Greatest Hits album MCA released once her contract had expired.
Re: American Saturday Night. The first time I was listening through I got to the second track, “Everybody’s Here” and froze. In that moment my relationship had changed. That song is so bad, it isn’t even funny. Until that point each of his releases were appointment listening. I’ve paid little to no attention to him since. Harsh as that comes off, as country music changed in recent years his music changed along with it. Paisley’s last truly masterful single was “Letter To Me.”
Interesting. I like “Everybody’s Here”, but then again, I’ve always been a little bored by “Letter to Me”, though I appreciate it more now than I did when it came out.
I’m not one to give up on an artist that I really like, though I’ll admit that American Saturday Night is the last album that I’ve really enjoyed by Paisley. All of his albums after that have had good songs, but I haven’t loved the albums in general. I actually didn’t like Fifth Gear very much, the album before American Saturday Night, so I was relieved when I ended up liking American Saturday Night. I also wouldn’t say that Paisley’s music has changed all that much and it’s definitely still much more country, though with a progressive slant, than people like Aldean, FGL, Rhett, etc. With that said, I hold onto my enjoyment of Paisley, but I can’t say that I’m as big of a fan as I once was, including thinking “Crushing It” is a dumb song and knowing that while he tries to be poignant sometimes, he’s not very good at it.
From Jasper County, my favorite song is “It’s Alright” with Jim Lauderdale singing backup. I just think that there are a few least favorite albums of Yearwoods than Jasper that I have.
I still love that particular Todd Snider album!
Mainstream artists:
1. Four the Record, Miranda Lambert. No surprise there.
2. 5th Gear, Brad Paisley. I actually like American Saturday Night but think this was where his decline started.
3. Where Your Road Leads, Trisha Yearwood. The only one of her albums I don’t still own.
4. The Age of Miracles, Mary Chapin Carpenter. I nearly fell asleep typing that.
5. Taking the Long Way, Dixie Chicks.
Alt-ish artists:
1. Getting Somewhere, Allison Moorer.
2. Love, Shelby, Shelby Lynne.
3. The Big To-Do, Drive-By Truckers.
4. The Wheel, Rosanne Cash.
5. 29, Ryan Adams.
Ha, Jonathan K/! I love the MCC comment!:)
I feel like for me this is more a question of when mainstream artists started the inevitable downhill turn, so…
1. Old Boots, New Dirt – Jason Aldean (My Kinda Party was pushing it, this is just awful)
2. Still Feels Good – Rascal Flatts (And everything since)
3. Crash My Party – Luke Bryan (At least T&T had some country left in it)
4. Life At Best – Eli Young Band (finally left the Texas scene and sold out to the mainstream)
5. I’m A Fire – David Nail (still think he’s a great songwriter/singer, but I was disappointed by the attempt at more commercial appeal as a whole with this one)
Leeann, I’m probably being unfair to Kenny Rogers’ latest cd, but I’m so spoiled with his classic albums that I just didn’t feel it lived up to his best days.
I can’t make it five; and in fact, just doing the two that I’m doing here is hard enough:
PrizeFighter – Trisha Yearwood: I consider it not only a disappointing album, but, because there’s only six new songs and ten re-do’s of her previous hits, even a dishonest album. And the re-do’s don’t work for me nearly as well as the originals do.
Feels Like Home – Linda Ronstadt: I still like this 1995 album of Linda’s for the most part, but I also have felt more and more over the years, knowing that it was originally supposed to be what Trio II became in 1999, that it is a problematic album in Linda’s discography. Two songs on this album, “High Sierra” and “Lover’s Return”, have never done anything for me, and in my opinion are among the worst vocal performances of Linda’s otherwise largely super-stellar career.
1. Gary Allan-“Hangover Tonight”
This song is doubly depressing since it involves two of my favorites in Gary Allan, but also Chris Stapleton.
2.Dierks Bentley-“5-1-5-0”
Between this and “Sideways”, this was a period that felt like Dierks was mailing it in after the critical success that his bluegrass album was. Dierks is one of the more talented mainstream artists in Country music right now, thankfully Riser is much closer to what the man has shown he is capable of.
3.Tim McGraw–“Truck Yeah”
Much like Bentley, McGraw has shown a penchant for picking good songs and letting the lyrics do the talking for what he vocally make lack in comparison to other artists. This song was embarrassing on so many levels, even for Tim who has been sliding down hill in terms of quality BEFORE this song was put out. Thankfully, much like Bentley, McGraw seems to have righted the ship with his last album which is filled with much stronger material aside from “Looking For That Girl”.
4. Jamey Johnson-“You Can”
Hating on this song probably isnt fair, since production and lyrically it’s still better than Country radio has to offer (for the most part). That said, as excited as I was for Johnson to start writing and recording music independently after slipping from Mercury, his first two “indie” singles have been bland to me. While Johnson may not want to be pigeon holed as the guy who “only writes depressing stuff”, the fact is he knocks those songs out of the park. Much like Gary Allan, some guys were just born to explore the rougher and grittier side of life and it just doesnt feel right when they dont.
5. Joe Nichols-“Yeah”
Honestly, this started with “Sunny and 75”, but at least that song did not totally annoy me the way “Yeah” did. Joe Nichols doing Bro-Country songs sucks. Period. It’s a shame that the only way for Joe to resurrect his career was to pander to the lowest common denominator of music fans/Country radio.
“Long Way To Go” was an excellent escapist/get over her song!
Miranda Lambert – Platinum
Blake Shelton – Based on a True Story
Sugarland – Incredible Machine
Little Big Town – Pain Killer
Carrie Underwood – Blown Away
The theme seems to be that more mainstream artists disappoint.
I haven’t liked a Justin Townes Earle album since his second album, but I loved those first two. I’ll have to think of other non-mainstream artists, because I know they exist too, though there’s something to be said about independent artists not having the same pressure as mainstream artists to chase the radio trends.
Funnily enough, I’ve been reflecting the last few days on my favorite albums of the 21st Century to date and Alan Jackson’s Like Red on a Rose is one of them. I understand why it was problematic for a lot of his fans, but I loved it. Just to be sure, I played it three nights ago and, yeah; I still love it.
The Dixie Chicks’s Taking the Long Way falls just outside my shortlist. I love about 3/4 of it, but it runs out of steam before it runs out of music.
I also noted that the two artists who’ve come up the most so far are Martina McBride and Brad Paisley. I was into both of them about a decade ago, but fell off after her Martina and his 5th Gear, respectively. Haven’t given a listen to anything of either of theirs since. Reading Chely Wright’s account of her relationship with Paisley also soured me on him, so I’m pretty much officially done with him – though, man, I did love his Time Well Wasted album once upon a time. It’s the only one of his I’ve kept in my library, and I’m hesitant to revisit it.
As for my picks, I don’t know that I’d say I outright “hated” any of my five selections but they’re the albums where I bailed on artists whom I’d followed for at least awhile until then:
Gary Allan – Living Hard
Alan Jackson – Good Time
Toby Keith – White Trash with Money
Tim McGraw – Let It Go
Brad Paisley – 5th Gear
Curiously enough, the immediate predecessors of four of these are among my favorites (the odd one out is Toby Keith; I never fully loved any of his albums, but at least half of the songs on each). I don’t know how much of my disappointment had to do with the feeling that their follow-ups didn’t live up to the albums I loved, versus how much of it had to do with the fact they all came out around the time I felt I’d phased out of contemporary mainstream country.
Though there’s a chicken-and-the-egg syndrome here, because I wonder if I’d have become disillusioned with the genre if I hadn’t felt so disappointed across the board by so many favorites all at the same time.
Incidentally, I almost bailed on Brooks & Dunn after Hillbilly Deluxe, but gave them the benefit of the doubt since their Steers & Stripes (still a favorite) had followed Tight Rope. I would have bailed on them for sure after Cowboy Town, except that turned out to be their final album anyway (for now).
Hmmm…I thought there were some great songs on Tim McGraw’s Let It Go.
I didn’t like Steers and Stripes, except for “The Long Goodbye”, but I did like a good portion of Waitin’ on Sundown.
Yes, Time Well Wasted is a great album and, ultimately, my favorite Paisley album, though American Saturday is a close second (at the time of my review of that album, I wondered if it had exceeded Time Well Wasted). What was it about Paisley and Chely Wright that soured you about him? The only thing that I’ve read about that whole thing is that she felt/regretted that she’d wronged and hurt him by dating him while knowing she would never be able to be in love with him? I didn’t read that he had treated her bably, but that she admitted that she didn’t treat him very well.
There’s a chapter in Chely Wright’s book, Like Me, “Hard to Be a Husband, Hard to Be a Wife” (the title of her Opry duet with Paisley) dedicated to recounting their relationship. The actions she recounts are of someone who does not respect boundaries at all.
She tells of him calling her cell phone and leaving voice mail after voice mail, and ultimately going to her hotel room – the location of which she hadn’t told him – and knocking on her, insisting he wouldn’t leave until she let him in and talked with him. She got her manager to get him to leave (page 149). On another night, he found her tour bus and ambushed her there, insisting on going with her. Despite her insistence otherwise, she found when the bus left the parking lot that someone had let him aboard (150-151).
She concludes the chapter with the following remarks that read somewhere between diplomacy, self-blame, and outright rationalization:
That “cruelty” was her having misled him into believing she was straight and romantically interested in him. She and her partner Julia had a fantastic relationship that was eventually snuffed out by their respective rises to prominence and their need to remain closeted: “I began having thoughts about wanting to be normal and actually just making a choice to live a straight life. If I wasn’t going to be able to have Julia as my partner and if we weren’t going to make it…well, I decided that if I was going to be unhappy and unfulfilled anyway, why not just try to be with a man” (142).
She describes them as being fast friends, with him falling for her just about as fast. He also needled her that it would be advantageous for both of their careers since so many fans and people in the business seemed to like the idea of them being a couple (145). It’s a crass reason for a relationship to my mind, but that judgment aside, it seems to me that if he was willing to accept her being involved with him as a career move, then it’s just as fair for her to have done so.
After all, he himself had reinforced the homophobia of that business to her. She quotes his begrudging acceptance of one of her openly gay friends: “Hey, I like the guy, even though he’s gay. I sat at the dinner table with him, anyway, didn’t I?” (147). Here he is, an easily-made friend in the business affirming that he wouldn’t be her ally and neither would anyone else. That’s a lot of pressure.
She also writes that “Being physical with Brad did not come quickly or easily for me. After all, I am gay. I often cried during those moments of physical intimacy, and I have no idea what he made of it when I cried” (page 146). Sorry, but I have no use for someone who persists with a sexual relationship with a partner who’s crying each time.
Carrie Underwood – Play On (I just can’t even. Undo It, Unapologize, Mama’s Song, Play On track…..shudder, shudder)
Miranda Lambert – Four The Record
Brad Paisley – This Is Country Music
Martina McBride – Eleven
Trisha Yearwood – Jasper County
Imma do singles because I don’t listen to albums much.
1. Reba – “I’m a Survivor”. Always thought this song was horribly overblown and too Martina-esque in subject matter.
2. Keith Urban – “Without You”. Total snooze fest with no melody and an uncharacteristically phoned-in vocal. I predicted the line “suddenly my whole world just got a little bigger” on the very first listen. If I can predict an entire line, you might wanna try a little harder not to be so cliché.
3. Brad Paisley – “Then”. Another total cliché storm that seems way out of character for the artist. At least this is one of his better vocals.
4. Alan Jackson – “Country Boy”. He sounds like a dirty old man on it. The AJ I know doesn’t make eye rolling double entendres like “climb in my bed, I’ll take you for a ride”.
5. Steve Wariner – “Holes in the Floor of Heaven”. This glurge-fest is hands down the worst song in this underrated artist’s discography.
If I had to pick a weakest album for a given artist whose discography I know well enough, I’d say “Stompin’ Grounds” from the Kentucky Headhunters. It just had no energy to it, and the original songs were totally lifeless and boring.
Travis,
You’re right. Those things are definitely alarming. I would hope that some of it was due to being young and dumb and that, dare I say it, his wife’s Hollywood influence has opened his mind, but it’s still problematic for sure.
As I was scrolling down to reply just now, I did catch where I omitted a word. He knocked on her *door*, not her, at the hotel. It seemed important to clarify that, in case your eye and mind didn’t automatically fill in the missing word and conjured a physical assault that wasn’t indicated in the book.
Anyway, what I came to say is that I do believe that people can change and grow, that they can be more than their past choices, and that redemption is within reach for all of us. It’s just that in the five years(!) since Like Me was published, I’ve yet to come across any evidence of such growth in Paisley – though, admittedly, I’ve made no effort to go looking for any, either. I wasn’t invested enough in his music in the first place that I particularly care whether he’s a better person now than then.
I certainly can’t speak to his growth or lack of it, but the incidences that she recounted had to have been 15years ago, since they dated for a few months in 2000. As someone in my thirties, I know that I’m a more secure, open minded person than I was in my twenties. While I wasn’t as extreme as her accounts of him, I was conservative, didn’t like many female country singers, didn’t like traditional country music and stifled jealousies/insecurities in relationships. Luckily, none of those things are true about me now. So, there’s hope for all of us.:)
I imagine if we’re honest with ourselves, we can all point to areas in which we’ve grown over the years, including some of which we might now be embarrassed or outright ashamed. I certainly can.
But without diverting this thread into a contemplation on the nature of growth and redemption – which is, of course, a discussion I will happily have! – I’m content to leave it that 5th Gear is where I lost my interest in Brad Paisley as an artist and Like Me is where I lost my interest in him, period.
I’ve been up all night (cranky guts, natch) and I’ve given some more thought to the matter of these disappointing albums and the correlation between the rash of them and my falling away from mainstream country music. When I look at my list of five disappointing albums, what I see are artists who had been central to “my” life cycle as a radio listener but didn’t move on with me. I’m not sure they really stayed where they wanted to stay, either.
Alan Jackson never seemed to recover his place as a given on radio after Like Red on a Rose, and Good Time, which was meant to be a reassuring return to form, just felt soulless to me. When I listened to that album, all I could hear was “I’m sorry! I tried something different and you didn’t like it and I promise I’ll never do it again!” from start to finish.Good Time didn’t even feel like a standard Alan Jackson album to me; it felt like a pastiche of one. That was even more disappointing for me because I loved Like Red on a Rose.
Gary Allan seemed to have the opposite problem; he finally had a mainstream audience, and with it came label pressure to make mainstream music. He’s candidly admitted as much in some interviews I’ve read over the last several years. It’s a shame, because the quartet of Smoke Rings in the Dark, Alright Guy, See If I Care, and Tough All Over was one of the richest runs anyone had throughout the 00’s.
There was some kind of paradigm shift at that time. Country music used to be a lot like Looney Tunes cartoons: you could enjoy them as a child on one level, but then appreciate their nuances and genius as an adult. I’ll give you an example of such a dual-layered song: “Strawberry Wine”.
Listening to that song when it first came out, I was at the age where I was desperately looking for that “first taste of love”, and I got it on that level. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to appreciate the looking back aspect of the writing. It’s not a song about having that experience; it’s a song about having had it.
Country radio became about actively having experiences instead, and specifically having coming-of-age/young adulthood experiences. Those are fine for listeners who are coming of age or are young adults – as I was going into that paradigm shift. But coming out of that shift, I stopped hearing anyone singing about what was going on in my life as it was then happening, and instead I started to feel like an inadvertent voyeur eavesdropping on younger people.
The one artist who threaded that needle the most diligently at that time was Kenny Chesney. He knew how to shift from being the life of the party to remembering the party better than anyone else in mainstream country music in the 00’s, which I think is why I feel his albums from that era hold up pretty well today. His singles almost always overstayed their welcome on the charts, but here we are all these years later and what remains are some terrific albums.
It didn’t make my Top Five list, but just for the record, I bailed on Chesney after his Lucky Old Sun album. Like AJ’s Good Time, it felt like a mimicry of a Kenny Chesney album more than it felt like the real thing. I did give Hemingway’s Whiskey a listen later on, and while I felt it was an improvement, it wasn’t strong enough to lure me back.
Travis,
What seems to be a difference between you and me is that I don’t bail on artists if they have a bad album unless it becomes a pattern. Despite Blake Shelton’s awful decline, I still check out his albums just in case there are at least a couple of good songs hidden on the album and I’ve been rewarded for doing so. I’m still hopeful that he’ll eventually pull a Tim McGraw and come back to making better music someday, as I feel McGraw has done with his current album. So, I was disappointed by Paisley’s Fifth Gear, but loved American Saturday night. Likewise, I wasn’t a fan of Like Red on a Rose and only found a few good songs on Good Time, but I’ve enjoyed albums of his after Good Time. So, I’m glad I didn’t completely give up on them. There are other artist that I’ve had the same experiences with.
I do feel the need to elaborate on my bailing a bit, because I can easily see how you would construct from just my comments in this thread that I’m a fairly fickle listener. There’s more to it than that.
Circa 2006-2008, there was just this perfect storm of factors that led me to bailing not just on those five artists I’ve named, and not just contemporary country music, but music damn near entirely. The rash of disappointing albums in those couple of years was one factor, and there were a lot more than just those five. During that same time, I also gave up going to concerts because the combination of my health and rising ticket costs made every ticket purchase a costly game of roulette.
I bought an iPod in 2007, but there for awhile, I mostly used it for podcasts. I came to feel detached from music in general. Hell, in 2011, I even passed on a new George Strait album (Here for a Good Time), after buying each of his albums the day they came out since 1998’s One Step at a Time.
It wasn’t really until early 2012 that I finally returned to music. I started to go back and replay my CD’s. I found I’d lost my enthusiasm for a lot of them, and I went through a few rounds of purges – both trading/giving away CD’s and deleting digital songs. What survived were actual favorites, rather than something I held onto because it completed someone’s discography.
Since then, I’ve rebuilt my library around a core of favorites, some newcomers that have caught my attention in the last few years, and back catalogs of some older artists I’ve begun exploring.
One fun thing is that some of the artists I used to listen to have reached the point in their careers where they’re making albums more for themselves and less for radio, and those tend to be more interesting. Case in point: Vince Gill. I dug his These Days box set (one of the few new releases I bothered to get during my detached period), and I’ve been playing his Bakersfield album regularly for about a month now.
Oh, and hey: Garth’s back!
1. “Good Time” Alan Jackson
2. “Chainsaw” The Band Perry
3. “Four Down and Twelve Across” George Strait
4. “Half the Way” Crystal Gayle
5. “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” Kenny Chesney
Travis,
It sounds like you and Jonathan P have a similar perspective on artists who you liked but then put out an album that you don’t like. You probably noticed that he said that he doesn’t give somebody the time of day once they’ve put out something that he doesn’t like. That’s just not something that I can relate to, but then, I’m somebody who has to finish a television series that I’ve started and liked, even if there’s a dud season. I guess it’s the same way for me with artists. Also, I get some sort of excitement from hearing a song that I like from somebody that I don’t normally like or that I haven’t liked in awhile. For example, I’ll be checking out the songs that were mentioned in the Favorite Songs by Least Favorite Artists discussion to see if there are songs that I might like by artists that I’d normally dismiss. Of course, I’ll only be checking out the songs suggested by commenter’s whose tastes I typically agree with, but I’ll be excited if I’m introduced to at least a couple of songs that I would have otherwise overlooked..
The issue is not that I keep artists on short leashes; it’s that I went through a period of “salutary neglect” and I’ve been slowly rebuilding my relationship with music.
I’m a loyalist by nature. I’ve been a Reds fan since 1988 and believe me; that hasn’t always been easy to do! I’ve worn my everyday shoes for twelve years now. In the past, I stuck with artists after disappointing albums. Just offhand: Alan Jackson’s High Mileage, Garth’s Fresh Horses, Brooks & Dunn’s Tight Rope, and my love for Randy Travis’s Storms of Life kept me coming back to his albums throughout the 90’s when they weren’t particularly consistent (though his ’98 You and You Alone was terrific and remains my second favorite of his entire discography).
Oh, I also just thought about Dwight Yoakam. I’ve followed him from his first album onward. I didn’t fully keep up with him during my detached period, and I haven’t entirely caught up with him. Thankfully, though, his output during those years wasn’t all that much anyway. I’m excited to get his new album and the stuff I missed (I did get Dwight Sings Buck when it came out and love it still). He’s always been interesting, album in and album out, though I confess I was underwhelmed by Dwight Live. A friend of mine bought 3 Pears and we listened to it one night a few months ago and I dug it. Just haven’t gotten around to buying it myself.
01. Keith Urban – ‘Get Closer’
02. Josh Turner – ‘Haywire’
03. Sugarland – ‘The Incredible Machine’
04. Hunter Hayes – ‘Storyline’
05. Dierks Bentley – ‘Feel That Fire’
1. Tim McGraw – Emotional Traffic (How or why would he blast that this is his best album ever?
Die by My Own Hand, Better Than I Used to Be, and Felt Good on My Lips are about the only listenable songs to me)
2. Dierks Bentley – Feel That Fire (Didn’t have the same energy to me as the other three albums he did
Life on the Run, Feel That Fire are my favorites on this one)
3. Joe Nichols – It’s All Good (Nothing on this album stood out to me, I did like his version of This Ole Boy though)
4. Josh Turner – Haywire (The rest of his albums are much stronger than this
Why Don’t We Just Dance, I Wouldn’t Be a Man)
5. Gary Allan –
a.Used Heart for Sale (Her Man, From Where I’m Sitting, and Wine Me Up are standouts to me on this one)
b. It Would Be You (It Would Be You, I Ain’t Runnin’ Yet, and No Judgement Day are the standouts)
(Neither are necessarily bad albums but he didn’t become the artist I love until Smoke Rings in the Dark and has been consistent ever since)
Least Favourites from the Favourites!
1. “Feel That Fire” -Dierks Bentley
2. “All The Woman I Am” – Reba
3. “Stronger” – Sara Evans
4. “This is Country Music” Brad Paisley
5. “Get Closer” – Keith Urban
(dis)Honourable Mentions: “I Don’t Dance” Lee Brice, “Painkiller” – Little Big Town, “Waking Up Laughing” or “Shine” – Martina McBride , Eli Young Band – “Turn It On” EP, Jerrod Niemann – “High Noon”
I know I am late on this but had to comment. I am a huge Dolly fan, but there are a few albums and songs that are way beneath her talents.
Dolly’s worst CD’s:
1. The Great Pretender
2. For God and Country
Dolly’s worst Songs:
1. Real Love
2. Romeo