2009 country #1's

for the record: two songs each with "country" or "america" in the title. one that isn't an eagles cover even tho you think it's going to be, another that isn't a van morrison cover. two by hootie. one about a tractor, one about a cowboy, one about a small town. 3 by nicole kidman's hubby, 2 by renee zellweger's ex. two by guys over 50. two by the unending horror that is rascal flatts.

"Need You Now" finished highest on my Nashville Scene ballot, so that. Also voted for "You Belong With Me," so that'd be second place.

Others I liked a lot: "American Ride" (despite its dunderhead politics), "People Are Crazy," "Out Last Night," "I Run To You," sometimes "She's Country" (for the riff).

Most annoying: "It's America," "River Of Love."

My favorite '09 single by the unending horror that is Rascal Flatts, "Summer Nights," would have gotten my vote had it gone #1. (I've never had any use for anything else they've done, including the two up there.)

i'll give that one a listen, i try to avoid anything with their name on it ...

is the co-ed country band (sugarland, lady antebellum) a relatively new phenomenon? i'm trying to think of precedents. i guess it's an outgrowth of the long history of duets, but in terms of an act that has both men and women i can't think of many.

"need you now" is lovely

xp Well, Trick Pony was one. And now there's also Little Big Town, and Gloriana, and Jypsi. (Probably plenty of others, if I give it a little more thought.) But yeah, there do seem to be more out there lately.

Stuff I like: Taylor Swift, Lady Antebellum "Need You Now", Darius Rucker "Alright", Billy Currington, Zac Brown.

Stuff that's okay, but not great: Kenny Chesney/McAnally, both Keith Urban solo ones and "It Happens".

Stuff I never want to hear again: Justin Moore, "Big Green Tractor", "American Ride", both Rascall Flatts and the Rodney Atkins.

resurrect the American Ride debate!!!

just kidding. i need to listen to a few more of these before i vote

would definitely take "american ride" over hokey pap like "it's america" and "small town usa." at least "american ride" exists in the real world where america is sort of fucked, instead of in some insipid picket-fence fantasyland.

and it's not my favorite song on the list, but "then" is a nice tune and is the kind of grown-up love song that i think country music does better than any other genre. "i could just see you when your hair is turning gray."

ha "Then" is my least favorite song from the Paisley album. He can do wonders with one-word songs about stuff, but all he wrings out of this one is bathos.

"Need You Now" has been my song of the moment.

but poke around before voting, there's some good stuff.

no fuck you

:votes 4 tswift:

all he wrings out of this one is bathos.

it's a thin line. he's not an overbearing singer, which i think keeps it from tipping over.

really fucking love "need you now" (and taylor obv) but don't feel qualified to vote really

"Already Gone" is by far my favorite--moving as hell.

Also like:

"Start a Band" Brad Paisley with Keith Urban
"She Wouldn't Be Gone" Blake Shelton
"Down the Road" Kenny Chesney with Mac McAnally
"God Love Her" Toby Keith
"Sweet Thing" Keith Urban
"I Run to You" Lady Antebellum
"People Are Crazy" Billy Currington
"You Belong With Me" Taylor Swift
"American Ride" Toby Keith
"Gettin' You Home" Chris Young
"Only You Can Love Me This Way" Keith Urban
"Need You Now" Lady Antebellum

"Getting You Home" is probably my 2nd choice.

only know a few of these but "Need You Now" is such a fuckin jam

i am not an avid country fan but it is like almost all dudes, is that normal?

i noticed that compiling it. bit more manly than usual, i think. though a 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 male:female ratio on the charts is probably normal.

otoh the current top 10 country albums have 4 by women (2 by taylor swift, plus carrie underwood and miley cyrus), 2 co-ed (lady antebellum and sugarland) and 4 by guys.

"need you now" is a fairly ordinary song. It's not that great. If "white liar" was a number one, I'd choose that. It's a much better song than all of these listed. With that, I pick "American Ride"

I voted for "You Belong With Me" but "Need You Now" is really great too.

wrt the co-ed bands in country question: that's interesting. I think there have been more bands in country lately, though I could be wrong about that. There have been big profile bands in the 2000s, of course: Montgomery Gentry, Big and Rich, Rascal Flatts, among others. But I think of the highest profile acts in country typically being solo acts, or occasionally "family" bands like the Judds.

there was a big band boom in the '80s too, with alabama, confederate railroad, diamond rio, undoubtedly lots of others i don't know. seems to me like a reaction to/offshoot from southern rock.

Good point---maybe it's the 90s where there was a dearth of bands, though surely I'm forgetting the big ones. But the 90s seemed dominated by solo acts---Garth, Shania, Tricia Yearwood, Travis Tritt, Alan Jackson, plus old favorites like George Strait and Clint Black. It could just be my perception.

Well, which it's a fuzzy distincation I guess (and really doesn't say much about how they sound on record, since Nashville has great session pros), but most newer "bands" are really more what I'd call "groups" -- i.e., not self-contained, in the sense that the guys playing instruments don't get their photos on album covers. As opposed to say, the Lost Trailers or Flynville Train or Cole Deggs & the Lonesome or (going back a little) the Kentucky Headhunters or some of the older acts Tipsy named (or even, really, the Dixie Chicks I guess.) All of whom have had some chart country-chart success, at least a little. But vocal duos and groups still seem bigger than bands per se'.

wrt to the co-ed-ness of bands today: my pet theory is that it's the legacy of Fleetwood Mac as a main shaper of country's sound today. But that's probably way overblown---I mean, why now rather than ten or twenty years ago? I'm surely missing something.

And yeah, the '90s did have bands (or groups? who knows) like say Little Texas and Blackhawk and (much bigger I guess) Lonestar, not that rock critics (myself included) paid very much attention. (Actually,
I just checked -- Little Texas and Lonestar were self-contained.)

xhuxk---great point, and it gets at something I was thinking about wrt the Fleetwood Mac point: Sugarland is a duo and Lady Antebellum is a trio, but obv. their records feature more musicians than just those. So the Mac comparison breaks down there. Also Sugarland, at least on their hits, is mostly a vehicle for Jennifer Nettles' voice (though Kristian Bush co-writes the songs).

I don't even know who Little Big Town's drummer is, but my impression is that they're like CSN---vocalists and guitars who then hire drummers, though I may be off with that.

Alabama and Confederate Railroad self-contained too, I guess.

I honestly think what's missing in most discussions of the evolution of Nashville country (and this goes for me too) is that there's this huge historical gap where almost nobody who writes about rock and pop music was keeping tabs on the stuff. Outside of Garth and Shania and a couple others, I'm still fairly clueless about most pop-country from the mid '80s to early '00s -- when, I assume, lotsa evolving was going on.

I sort of have this theory that Garth and Shania figured out how to make real consistent and varied country albums, like rock bands had been making for years (and had pretty much stopped making my the mid '90s to my ears), and once they did it the rest of Nashville caught on. Which would explain why so many of my favorite '00s albums were country. But it might be just as likely that great pop-country albums were being made in the late '80s and '90s, and I just wasn't hearing them. Not that I've had much luck trying to figure out what they were.

I mean, obviously there were great country albums before Garth and Shania, going back to the neo-trad and outlaw eras and way beyond. But I definitely got the idea in the '90s (or maybe at least starting back with the urban cowboys in the early '80s?) that even most albums with a catchy single or two on them just tossed in nine perfunctory filler tracks and got it over with. But somehow, for me anyway, that changed. (One change may have been that country started sounding more like the hard rock I grew up with, but going back now and listening to say the Kentucky Headhunters, I'm wondering if that was new in the '00s at all.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

typical ilm!

(i voted for taylor too.)

I love Taylor Swift, but that song isn't anywhere near Then.

I like Paisley a lot but "Then" is terrible.