Feel that chill in the air? It’s not just climate change, friends. The music industry is suffering through historic lows in record sales, the worst since SoundScan started tallying them in 1991.
How are country artists faring? Let’s take a look at cumulative sales for current albums. Sales are rounded to the nearest hundred.
Top Selling Current Country Albums
The bulk of our work at Country Universe this month has been catching up on singles currently at radio. Collectively, they’ve been abysmal, with review grades rarely reaching a B, let alone an A.
How can we turn this around? Here are five songs that I’d love to see sent to radio tomorrow. Share your own in the comments!
Zac Brown Band, “Let it Go”
A dizzying dose of positivity, with a few great musical twists to boot. The Serenity Prayer never sounded so good.
The good folks at Show Dog-Universal have given us an autographed copy of Toby Keith’s new album, Bullets in the Gun to give away to one lucky Country Universe winner.
This is my favorite Toby Keith album since 2006’s White Trash with Money. As was the case with that album, Keith seems loose and mostly good-natured, which results in a friendlier more relaxed album than we’re accustomed to hearing from him.
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.
I think Tim McGraw is one of country music’s strongest singers. He doesn’t have the range or depth of a Vince Gill or a Toby Keith, but he can do what a great singer is supposed to do: deliver a song with sincerity and believability. That may seem like a low bar to clear, but it never ceases to amaze me how many country artists trip over it these days.
McGraw has a stellar track record in this area, but you’d never know it listening to “Felt Good On My Lips.” In fact, it seems that the record itself has so little confidence in McGraw’s ability to deliver a song that it puts every modern recording barrier it can think of between his vocal and the listener.
Most of us can admit that Toby Keith is a premier balladeer. Something that has been largely forgotten about him in the last few years, however, is that he’s also rather good at having good fun too. Lately, he’s mostly associated with swagger and subpar music (with the exception of some decent ballads here and there), but “Trailerhood” is here to remind us of how jovial Keith can sound when he lets his boisterous guard down and just allows himself to have some fun.
Thank you to everyone who participated in our recent Marty Stuart giveaway. It’s heartening that such a strong response was received for an artist who is no longer in the mainstream. I hope our five winners will enjoy Stuart’s fine new album.
Now, we are pleased to announce that courtesy of Show Dog-Universal, Country Universe is giving away two (2) autographed copies of Trace Adkins’ brand new album, Cowboy’s Back in Town, which was released last Tuesday, August 17.
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?
Copyright © 2025 | MH Magazine WordPress Theme by MH Themes
