I have no investment in country music, so whether or not a particular album indicates “a star is born” is irrelevant to me. Perhaps if there was something truly distinct, I might notice but I don’t know that Yearwood’s from Georgia and, having heard numerous singers from many different genres, I’m not sure why Yearwood’s …
Tag: Contemporary Country
Set This Circus Down (2001) by Tim McGraw
All I really know about Tim McGraw is that he likes to hold his cowboy hat on his head and he’s married to Faith Hill. I assumed he was a singer-songwriter, actually.
Feels So Right (1981) by Alabama
Alabama are one of the few country bands I sort of knew when I was young. For some reason, my father had a few of their records (not this one as far as I know) and my dad would play them sometimes, so I was exposed to Alabama’s sound before CMT existed (or we got …
The Trouble with the Truth (1996) by Patty Loveless
I don’t know Patty Loveless and I must say that, even after watching Country Music, I don’t really know much mainstream country music from this era. I’m familiar with country pop and what I like to call “arena country” (i.e. rock-influenced equivalent of country pop) but I’m not really familiar with what was the more …
Country Music (2019)
This is an engrossing, thorough, occasionally moving and, for its first six episodes, authoritative history of country music. It follows the usual rhythms of a Ken Burns’ documentary, which is something I thoroughly enjoy, and has the usual strengths and weaknesses of his approach to storytelling.
No Fences (1990) by Garth Brooks
I honestly thought Garth Brooks was a songwriter. I have a memory of channel-surfing and finding a show on which he and some other country songwriters were discussing songs they wrote. So I just assumed he wrote all or most of his material. Going by this album, his breakout hit, he doesn’t. (He co-writes 4 …
The Woman In Me (1995) by Shania Twain
All I remember of this record from when I was young is that I thought Shania was hot. (And that I was far from the only one who thought so: the record – and next one – suddenly popped up on a lot of male’s record shelves all of a sudden.) I had no feelings …
Fly (1999) by Dixie Chicks
This is my second Dixie Chicks album and I feel like I just basically feel the same way about it. That’s a frustrating experience for me because I feel like I should have some kind of new take. Moreover, given the general feelings of fans that this is (slightly?) inferior to Wide Open Spaces, I …
Wide Open Spaces (1998) by Dixie Chicks
I understand why this was a hit: it finds a middle ground between the slick sound of Nashville and a rootsier sound of bluegrass that was, I assume, mostly completely out of favour with the Nashville sound due to Garth Brooks, Shania, et al. And Maines is a compelling, alluring lead singer. Though I literally …