Might as well get these going, though I guess as a prediction this is pretty safe and obvious:

Taylor Swift joins Pistol Annies, who incorporate dance steps, harmonies, and raps using Bell Biv DeVoe/Backstreet Boys as template, w/ Big Bang and Danity Kane as modern analogues but Big-&-Rich tight country harmonies mixing with the R&B. Most parts ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Here's my ballot for the Nashville Scene's Country Critics Poll ( Read more... )

Country singer Miranda Lambert makes her first visit ever into the mainstream singles top thirty. Don't know yet if this is a blip or a true crossover; a lot depends on if she breaks onto AC radio. Click the cut to see what I think of the song. She's the week's only highlight.

( Glee Cast )

Tom asks on Blue Lines Revisited: "If you could have reviewed any record in history at the time it first came out, which would you choose and why?" This is my response, which will shock no one:

Ashlee Simpson's Autobiography. Who knows if I'd have reviewed it with insight, arriving cold; Mikael Wood's review in the Voice was excellent; the point ( Read more... )

I'm reposting my country critics ballot, since I'd originally put it under flock so that Geoff could have first shot at my comments for the Nashville Scene's poll issue. That's up now - Ashley Monroe made the top twenty! - so here this is again, for the lurkers. I thought Geoff ducked my most interesting contentions, in the bit he posted of mine, ( Read more... )

My country critics ballot for the Nashville Scene. Down in my comments I'm responding to what Geoff wrote in last year's poll writeup, "Suburban teenagers need their own bards who can work the established themes and techniques of pop-rock into something new. But small-town, divorced, blue-collar wastrels also deserve their own bards who can draw ( Read more... )

Lady Antebellum's excellently mushy "Need You Now" jumps to #5 (also is collectively rated the 21st best single reviewed on the Jukebox this year, and is currently #41 for the year on the koganbox, which draws from a larger sample than do the other two charts). Meanwhile, as predicted here last week, "Russian Roulette" takes a dip (to 16), though I ( Read more... )

Not sure yet what I think of the new Miranda Lambert album, Revolution* (in other words, so far I'm disappointed), but the following stanza cracks me up:

Time to get a gun
That's what I been thinking
I could afford one...

OK, I won't spoilerate it for you. Here it is on MySpace ( Read more... )

--Strong analysis and advocacy by girlboymusic and skyecaptain for Maia Hirasawa's "South Again," a song I'd hitherto casually disliked. E.g., from girlboymusic:

She loves him, but her heart isn't with him - it's everywhere else. In the south with the cows, in the north with his parents, in the east with her sister and her friends. (And those are the places where she's surrounded ( Read more... )