The Music of Our Parents
One of the albums that I’m anticipating most this year is Rosanne Cash’s album, The List, which comes out on October 6. Anything new from Rosanne Cash is eagerly welcomed by me, but this project is bound to be particularly special. The album will be comprised of 12 classic songs culled from a list that her father, Johnny Cash (obviously), gave to her as essential listening back when she was eighteen-years old. Since she had to choose only 12 songs out of a reported list of one-hundred, it’s pretty safe to assume that these 12 choices are among her favorites of the list that was lovingly compiled by her father, even if she did not fully appreciate them at the young age of eighteen.
Sing for the common man and heaven help the working girl. Country music is full of songs about the working folk. The ones that work a 40 hour week for a livin’, the ones that worked all night in the Van Lear coalmine, the ones who did what they had to do because they didn’t want to let Mama down. Hey, even a girl named Fancy has gotta pay the bills.
It’s been well established by this point that Carrie Underwood’s eighties pop/rock runs deep in her musical roots. Being part of the MTV generation, this isn’t surprising, as the days of country artists who were only exposed to country music are long gone.
It’s hard to fault Craig Morgan for recording yet another “we’re a bunch of rednecks having a good time” anthem. Such songs have been his bread and butter.
In lesser hands, “To Say Goodbye” could have been hopelessly maudlin. But Joey + Rory deliver a heavy message with a light touch, without any bells and whistles in the production or the vocal. The end result is that the stories of a woman who loses her husband in a plane crash and of a man who tends to his elderly wife who has lost her memory don’t focus on the tragedy. Rather, there’s an emphasis on the quiet emptiness left in the wake of these events.
Somewhere underneath “Everywhere I Go” is a great song, but to find it, you have to dig a little too deep. The song’s pleasing melody and bittersweet lyrics –Vassar sings of haunting, lingering memories of a lost love– are coated with layers of dramatic, distracting production. Even the conviction Vassar brings to the song starts to feel slightly artificial when he pushes his vocals over the top in the chorus, the most off-putting aspect of the song. 
Yesterday marked the end of the eligibility period for the 2010 Grammy Awards, which will be presented in January. To accommodate the earlier award ceremony, this year’s period lasted one month shy of a year: October 1, 2008 – August 31, 2009.