Picking the CMA Nominees: Male Vocalist of the Year
If turnover has been slow in the Entertainer category, it’s been nothing less than glacial in the Male Vocalist race. Over the past ten years, only eleven men have received nominations. Four of those eleven – Dierks Bentley, Vince Gill, Darius Rucker, and Josh Turner – have been nominated only once.
Now, Toby Keith and Tim McGraw were regularly invited to the party in the first half of the last decade, with four and three nominations, respectively. But the race has essentially been dominated by the same five men: Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson, Brad Paisley, George Strait, and Keith Urban, who combine for forty nominations in just one decade.
The recent history has been pretty boring. After two consecutive wins by Alan Jackson, we’ve had three consecutive wins each by Keith Urban and reigning champ Brad Paisley.
Will there be a new winner this year, or even a new nominee? Should there be?
Single Review: Rascal Flatts, “Why Wait”
Maybe it’s a product of their new home, Big Machine Records, or maybe it’s their way of responding to the monster success of Lady Antebellum – but the Flatts boys are back on their game.
For five years and three albums, we’ve heard only a watered-down brand of Rascal Flatts: their signature tight harmonies have been masked by overblown production, and their typically well-crafted melodies have seemed stale. Their music as of late has generally lacked the spark that turned their early 2000s hits into gems.
Single Review: Sugarland, “Stuck Like Glue”
I could write a few paragraphs about why I love this song, but what’s the point?
They don’t sing the praises of Bubble Yum and S’Mores in Food & Wine magazine, but boy, do those treats taste good.
So you’ll have to look for the country connoisseur perspective elsewhere. All I have to say about “Stuck Like Glue” is this:
Single Review: Taylor Swift, “Mine”
Where do you go from the top of the world? It’s a question all kinds of music icons have had to answer, but it’s hard to imagine most of them facing Taylor Swift’s level of pressure. Consider her standing: an American Sweetheart adored by young people and respected by their parents, staple of multiple radio formats, winner of commercial music’s very biggest awards, but facing sharp backlash for embarrassing live vocals, for a narrow songwriting perspective, and all in the most media-pervasive climate ever, a fame minefield where one bad move can mean national embarrassment – and all, of course, before she turns twenty-one.
Single Review: Brad Paisley, “Anything Like Me”
A common element that runs through Brad Paisley’s songs is a style of conversational storytelling. To many it seems simple and authentic while others just feel it’s simplistic without real depth. Depending on the song, either opinion is relevant or in some instances, both views are valid within the same song. “Anything Like Me” just may be one such song, but leaning closer to the positive than negative. The song is written in the trademark conversational tone, but the personal sentimentality of the subject matter is strongly present.
iPod Check: Back to the Nineties
To continue Country Universe’s celebration of the nineties, I’m throwing in a nineties edition of iPod Check. The rules are simple: put your iPod on shuffle and list the first ten songs to pop up that were released in the nineties. They don’t have to be singles, and they don’t have to be country.
I’ve listed my ten songs below. Share yours in the comments, and check your shame at the door! (I’ve got 1994’s “Hakuna Matata” on my iPod, but sadly, it did not come up in shuffle.)