1999 | #1
So let’s talk about hooks and melodies for a minute.
Single Review: Blake Shelton, "Over"
This one’s a dead ringer for one of those nineties lukewarm rock ballads. You know the kind.
A faceless band with a generic frontman singing a plaintive love song that relies on pounding guitars for its intensity. It’s their one hit that gets played everywhere, but nobody buys the album because it’s just going to pop up on some late-night hits collection anyway.
Album Review: Carrie Underwood, Blown Away
Carrie Underwood
Blown Away
At this point, it’s easy to forget that Carrie Underwood first kicked off her country music career as an American Idol graduate. Besides being one of country music’s most technically gifted female vocalists, she’s gone on to become one of its strongest commercial forces, with a seven-year-long string of Top-2 hit singles, not to mention albums that consistently sell like hotcakes. But a noteworthy gap has often been seen between the impressiveness of Underwood’s talent and success and the quality of her material. In terms of lyrics and production, at least, Underwood’s new album Blown Away finds her taking steps forward that are small, but steps forward nonetheless.
Retro Single Review: Alan Jackson, "(Who Says) You Can't Have it All"
1993 | Peak: #4
“(Who Says) You Can’t Have It All” is not just an average song of lost love. Rather, the loss translates into a certain resolution from a man who is the lord and master of his proverbial castle that has turned into nothing more than a lonely room with “a ceiling, a floor and four walls”, full of pictures and memories of the broken past.
Retro Single Review: Shania Twain, "Rock This Country!"
2000 | #30
The eleventh single from Shania Twain’s Come On Over was one of the least successful in the U.S., barely scraping the bottom of the Top 30. This was due in part to a lack of promotion for the single, though it did go Top 5 in Twain’s native Canada. In some ways, “Rock This Country!” comes across as a standard Twain up-tempo – peppy, with a fun Mutt Lange-style pop-country production, but the lyrics are surprisingly flavorless.
Album Review: Marty Stuart, <i>Nashville, Vol. 1: Tear the Woodpile Down</i>
Marty Stuart
Nashville, Vol. 1: Tear the Woodpile Down
The casual listener may remember Marty Stuart for the string of country radio hits he enjoyed in the late eighties and early nineties. However, Stuart’s legacy was cemented by groundbreaking projects released after his commercial heyday had drawn to a close, particularly 1999’s landmark The Pilgrim as well as 2010’s career-best effort Ghost Train: The Studio B Sessions. Through such critically lauded work Stuart has built up a reputation as an elder statesman of country music, acting to preserve country music’s heritage and traditions, while simultaneously working to move the genre forward.