Where, exactly?
Besides the fact that Wilson has once again turned out a country pride anthem in the vein of “Redneck Woman”, she name drops several legends of Southern Rock while appropriating their style for her own.
Gretchen, I’ll give you a pass on Hank Jr. and Charlie Daniels, even though you sang about both of them on your first hit. But come on, the Allman Brothers Band? ZZ Top? Are you kidding?
Any song that starts with a guitar melody so eerily reminiscent of Rosanne Cash’s “Blue Moon With Heartache” is going to reel me in right away. Throw in an understated production that recalls early Alan Jackson, and the fact that Corbin is an actual country singer instead of just a country personality, and things get even better.
The song is beautiful. Really, really beautiful. Like so many great country ballads, someone who’s been left alone because a relationship failed can relate to it just as well as someone who has been left alone because they’re a widow. On the verses, Corbin sounds so good that he could’ve sent this to radio in 1992 and stood tall among the Mark Chesnutts and Collin Rayes of that time.
I’m not going to argue with quiet, since so much of country radio these days is way too loud.
So yes, “Who Are You When I’m Not Looking” is laid back, almost too laid back. It certainly would be a snoozer with a lesser vocalist. But Blake Shelton demonstrates why he’s finally in the Male Vocalist race with the nuances that he brings to a song that could’ve been too dull or too leery in the wrong hands.
I like the creativity of some of the questions here, most especially when he wonders if she paints her toes because she bites her nails. I had to think about that one for a few seconds, but it made me crack a smile.
The new Sugarland album is a failure. Of this, I am sure. But as I wrote in my review, the problem isn’t that they made an eighties rock album. It’s that they didn’t make a good one.
Which got me thinking about others who made pop or rock albums after building a fan base as a country artist. Sometimes it works, and their pop/rock music is as good or better than what they did under the country umbrella.
So I ask this question:
What artist did the best job of transition from country to pop?
Sugarland
The Incredible Machine
There’s no point in dancing around it.
The Incredible Machine is a terrible album, an unmitigated disaster that manages to fail in ways that shouldn’t even be possible, especially on a mainstream album created by established professionals and released by a major label.
At its best, Sugarland has made successful music by combining clever musical arrangements with strong lyrical hooks, delivered by the inimitable vocal talent that is Jennifer Nettles. I would have deemed a full album being completely devoid of all three components inconceivable, but The Incredible Machine comes frighteningly close.
I guess I’ve been living under a rock, because the First Annual American Country Awards caught me by surprise. I assumed it was some online poll and that was it, but, no. It’s apparently a full-fledged network award show airing on Fox in December.
I’m actually on board for this. For all the talk about country music being about the fans, there hasn’t been a proper fan-voted award show since the TNN/Music City News thing ended. The CMT Awards is the closest thing, but its category structure prevents it from being a Fan’s Choice CMA or ACM Awards. I also find it funny that the five nominees for Artist of the Year are the exact same five that I thought deserved CMA Entertainer nominations this year.
Dear Country Music,
More fiddle and steel guitar, please.
From an interview with The Boston Globe, via Country California:
Country music has always been filled with artists who write their own songs. But I think in the ’80s and ’90s it went through a phase where everyone was recording songs written by other songwriters; which gives those songwriters great success and a way to provide for their families, but I think the fans also love to hear what the artist has to say from the artist’s mouth. And that’s, I think, one of the reasons why Taylor Swift has done such an amazing job and has been so successful, because she’s baring her heart to her fans and it’s so relatable. – Hillary Scott of Lady Antebellum
Where to begin? I’ll start with the fact that Scott is wrong on the merits. There were plenty of artists who wrote their own songs during the eighties and nineties, though the best ones had the good judgment to balance their best compositions with great songs written by others, rather than weaken an album by not recording outside material that’s superior to what they’ve written themselves.
We’re proud to note that our very own Dan Milliken has been published by CMT.com for the first time.
Check out his write-up of the Toby Keith classic, “Who’s That Man”:
The impossible question of divorce is how to divide lives that have become so intricately knitted together. As Keith demonstrates in this dark, brooding song, no answer to that question comes without its toll. The narrator of “Who’s That Man” has lost every staple of his former life in the collapse of his marriage, and as if that weren’t bad enough, someone else is filling his shoes without any apparent hitch.
Of course, this is an awesome and impressive new platform for Dan’s writing, but let’s be honest. Just like Country Universe got a hell of a lot better once he joined us, CMT can only be elevated by his trademark wit and undeniable talent.
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