Rewriting life: my country critics ballot, 2009
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 from a hillbilly history of song-making. All music grows out of the past, and if we refuse to distinguish one lineage from another, the discussion of new music becomes hopelessly muddied. Swift is a great artist, but it's not clear that she's a great country artist." And at the end I'm responding to his assertion two years ago that we critics were voting Miranda Lambert over Carrie Underwood because, unlike the majority of record buyers, we shun reassurance and instead want our assumptions challenged and want to hear something we don't already know.
TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift Fearless (Platinum Edition)
2. Ashley Monroe Satisfied
3. Martina McBride Shine
4. Pat Green What I'm For
5. Brad Paisley American Saturday Night
6. Miranda Lambert Revolution
7. Collin Raye Never Going Back
8. Holly Williams Here With Me
9. Willie Nelson American Classic
10. Charlie Robison Beautiful Day
TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2009:
1. Love And Theft "Runaway"
2. Jamey Johnson "High Cost Of Living"
3. Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me"
4. Sarah Buxton "Space"
5. Lady Antebellum "Need You Now"
6. Caitlin & Will "Even Now"
7. Sarah Borges And The Broken Singles "Do It For Free"
8. Taylor Swift "White Horse"
9. Brooks & Dunn ft. Reba McEntire "Cowgirls Don't Cry"
10. Jack Ingram "Barefoot & Crazy (Double Dog Dare Ya Mix)"
TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2009:
--
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:
1. Ronnie Dunn
2. Toby Keith
3. Jamey Johnson
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Jamie O'Neal
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2009:
--
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift
2. Ashley Monroe
3. Brad Paisley
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2009:
1. Brooks & Dunn
2. Caitlin & Will
3. --
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2009:
--
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift
2. Ashley Monroe
3. --
Geoff - You'll notice that I stuck Taylor Swift up top of my ballot for the "Platinum Edition" of Fearless, and I can rationalize this because three of the six new tracks are significantly great - even if one of those three has been floating around the Web for a couple of years and another is an alternate version of a song that's already on the album. But honestly, I'm putting the album on my list because I missed the boat on it last year, ranked it number three but hadn't truly digested it yet, how good it was or what it was doing. But also I want to argue against your zero-sum dichotomy that implies that the "suburban" Taylors aren't leaving room for the "small town" Jameys. I don't see this happening - if "High Cost Of Living" doesn't get radio play, that's hardly because "You Belong With Me" does - but also I don't accept your suburban-rural mapping of this. My mapping would be more like: What's going on is that country is absorbing both male folkie romanticism and feminine folkie romanticism, but the latter is harder for you to swallow.
There's a line that runs from Dylan to Springsteen to Mellencamp to a whole shitload of country, and that's pretty well accepted, or anyway I don't see vast ire at the Eric Church types who rock like mothers even while pledging allegiance to the Hag, or at Brooks & Dunn for wallowing in Stones and Skynyrd. And folk-rock that goes Dylan-James Taylor-Garth is pretty much accepted too. But there's a line that goes from Dylan and Joan Baez to Judy Collins to Joni Mitchell to Stevie Nicks to Tori Amos to Alanis Morissette, a feminine line that becomes more and more singer-songwriter and that comes from a girly-girlie world of English-class poetry and teen diary self-expression; and it jumped to teenpop in the '00s via Nelly Furtado and Michelle Branch and Pink and a slew of others, but it also has worked its way into country, in Deana Carter and Natalie Maines and SheDaisy, and then Michelle Branch and Jewel moved it explicitly into country from teenpop and pop respectively. (Not that anyone I mention comes from a single line of music. Everyone's a mongrel here.)
So, here's Taylor Swift, who draws on the female singer-songwriter insistence that the story of her music be very much her story, her sensibility, her voice finding itself and finding its way, while her character develops by way of romantic relationships recounted in song. What I'm seeing is that bohemian romanticism has long since rolled into country in male rambler garb (and male drug fuckup garb), but meanwhile it's also rolling into country by way of female self-expression, the rambling being frankly psychological and emotional rather than taking place only in bars and motels or wearing a cowboy hat in honor of a lost prairie, but it's still roaming the range anyway, even if it's shepherding thoughts rather than herding cattle.
Taylor is pretty much her own genre at this point, and she's the greatest singer within my earshot, using the wavers and quavers of her voice for whipsaw effect as much as for vulnerability. From the YouTube evidence it's something of a crap shoot whether she'll be on pitch live, and award shows cause her to stumble, so maybe Taylor doesn't happen without the modern recording studio. So hurrah for the modern recording studio.
Taylor's sensibility isn't necessarily mine; take the excellently written line, "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind; we both cried." Well, when I was fifteen there were U.S. soldiers who really gave everything they had, for a country that was changing its mind, and I was helping the country change its mind by way of antiwar activities. (And I hear that some Vietnamese died too.) Taylor's actual fifteen surely contained thoughts about wars and global warming etc., such thoughts not making it into her songs, this absence maybe being timidity or may just indicate what works for her as a songwriter. But within her chosen topics she never cheats. E.g., compare to Brad Paisley's pretty good "Anything Like Me," which is full of standard events, boy climbing tree that's too tall, and so on, an implied, "You know what this is like, you know what childhood is like, you know what we're like." Well, Taylor doesn't assume that you know what it's like, so she's going to tell you, whether it's a day in school or a day with her dad. And if the country genre does accept her - which it sure seems to, and she's now its biggest seller - that means she's part of a process where country rewrites what life is like, doesn't take its sharing of experience for granted.
* * *
Quick thoughts going back to what you wrote in your essay two years ago; I don't accept that my liking Miranda Lambert is a sign of my willingness to challenge my own assumptions or to hear something I don't already know. There's a line of music that goes from Dylan and the Stones and the Yardbirds to the Velvet Underground to the Stooges to the Dolls to the Sex Pistols, and that's the music I lived and breathed for years. So my voting for Miranda Lambert is my chance to vote for the home team, or at least for the closest that Nashville will come to giving me one. So Miranda's great expressive hyperbolized rage and vengeance doesn't challenge me in the least. Whereas what does challenge me is Carrie Underwood's "Jesus Take The Wheel." I identified hard with the narrator in that one, the sense that I don't have control over my own spinouts, the song challenging me to reach outside myself for help and direction and getting my shit together. That the word "Jesus" doesn't contain an answer for atheist me doesn't change my situation or my need in the slightest.
Also, for what it's worth, the anger in Taylor songs such as "Cold As You" and "You're Not Sorry" and "Forever & Always" gutslugs me even harder than the anger in Miranda's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Revolution. "It rains when you're here and it rains when you're gone." What a fierce, vulnerable line!
Frank Kogan
TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift Fearless (Platinum Edition)
2. Ashley Monroe Satisfied
3. Martina McBride Shine
4. Pat Green What I'm For
5. Brad Paisley American Saturday Night
6. Miranda Lambert Revolution
7. Collin Raye Never Going Back
8. Holly Williams Here With Me
9. Willie Nelson American Classic
10. Charlie Robison Beautiful Day
TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2009:
1. Love And Theft "Runaway"
2. Jamey Johnson "High Cost Of Living"
3. Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me"
4. Sarah Buxton "Space"
5. Lady Antebellum "Need You Now"
6. Caitlin & Will "Even Now"
7. Sarah Borges And The Broken Singles "Do It For Free"
8. Taylor Swift "White Horse"
9. Brooks & Dunn ft. Reba McEntire "Cowgirls Don't Cry"
10. Jack Ingram "Barefoot & Crazy (Double Dog Dare Ya Mix)"
TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2009:
--
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:
1. Ronnie Dunn
2. Toby Keith
3. Jamey Johnson
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Jamie O'Neal
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2009:
--
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift
2. Ashley Monroe
3. Brad Paisley
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2009:
1. Brooks & Dunn
2. Caitlin & Will
3. --
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2009:
--
COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2009:
1. Taylor Swift
2. Ashley Monroe
3. --
Geoff - You'll notice that I stuck Taylor Swift up top of my ballot for the "Platinum Edition" of Fearless, and I can rationalize this because three of the six new tracks are significantly great - even if one of those three has been floating around the Web for a couple of years and another is an alternate version of a song that's already on the album. But honestly, I'm putting the album on my list because I missed the boat on it last year, ranked it number three but hadn't truly digested it yet, how good it was or what it was doing. But also I want to argue against your zero-sum dichotomy that implies that the "suburban" Taylors aren't leaving room for the "small town" Jameys. I don't see this happening - if "High Cost Of Living" doesn't get radio play, that's hardly because "You Belong With Me" does - but also I don't accept your suburban-rural mapping of this. My mapping would be more like: What's going on is that country is absorbing both male folkie romanticism and feminine folkie romanticism, but the latter is harder for you to swallow.
There's a line that runs from Dylan to Springsteen to Mellencamp to a whole shitload of country, and that's pretty well accepted, or anyway I don't see vast ire at the Eric Church types who rock like mothers even while pledging allegiance to the Hag, or at Brooks & Dunn for wallowing in Stones and Skynyrd. And folk-rock that goes Dylan-James Taylor-Garth is pretty much accepted too. But there's a line that goes from Dylan and Joan Baez to Judy Collins to Joni Mitchell to Stevie Nicks to Tori Amos to Alanis Morissette, a feminine line that becomes more and more singer-songwriter and that comes from a girly-girlie world of English-class poetry and teen diary self-expression; and it jumped to teenpop in the '00s via Nelly Furtado and Michelle Branch and Pink and a slew of others, but it also has worked its way into country, in Deana Carter and Natalie Maines and SheDaisy, and then Michelle Branch and Jewel moved it explicitly into country from teenpop and pop respectively. (Not that anyone I mention comes from a single line of music. Everyone's a mongrel here.)
So, here's Taylor Swift, who draws on the female singer-songwriter insistence that the story of her music be very much her story, her sensibility, her voice finding itself and finding its way, while her character develops by way of romantic relationships recounted in song. What I'm seeing is that bohemian romanticism has long since rolled into country in male rambler garb (and male drug fuckup garb), but meanwhile it's also rolling into country by way of female self-expression, the rambling being frankly psychological and emotional rather than taking place only in bars and motels or wearing a cowboy hat in honor of a lost prairie, but it's still roaming the range anyway, even if it's shepherding thoughts rather than herding cattle.
Taylor is pretty much her own genre at this point, and she's the greatest singer within my earshot, using the wavers and quavers of her voice for whipsaw effect as much as for vulnerability. From the YouTube evidence it's something of a crap shoot whether she'll be on pitch live, and award shows cause her to stumble, so maybe Taylor doesn't happen without the modern recording studio. So hurrah for the modern recording studio.
Taylor's sensibility isn't necessarily mine; take the excellently written line, "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind; we both cried." Well, when I was fifteen there were U.S. soldiers who really gave everything they had, for a country that was changing its mind, and I was helping the country change its mind by way of antiwar activities. (And I hear that some Vietnamese died too.) Taylor's actual fifteen surely contained thoughts about wars and global warming etc., such thoughts not making it into her songs, this absence maybe being timidity or may just indicate what works for her as a songwriter. But within her chosen topics she never cheats. E.g., compare to Brad Paisley's pretty good "Anything Like Me," which is full of standard events, boy climbing tree that's too tall, and so on, an implied, "You know what this is like, you know what childhood is like, you know what we're like." Well, Taylor doesn't assume that you know what it's like, so she's going to tell you, whether it's a day in school or a day with her dad. And if the country genre does accept her - which it sure seems to, and she's now its biggest seller - that means she's part of a process where country rewrites what life is like, doesn't take its sharing of experience for granted.
* * *
Quick thoughts going back to what you wrote in your essay two years ago; I don't accept that my liking Miranda Lambert is a sign of my willingness to challenge my own assumptions or to hear something I don't already know. There's a line of music that goes from Dylan and the Stones and the Yardbirds to the Velvet Underground to the Stooges to the Dolls to the Sex Pistols, and that's the music I lived and breathed for years. So my voting for Miranda Lambert is my chance to vote for the home team, or at least for the closest that Nashville will come to giving me one. So Miranda's great expressive hyperbolized rage and vengeance doesn't challenge me in the least. Whereas what does challenge me is Carrie Underwood's "Jesus Take The Wheel." I identified hard with the narrator in that one, the sense that I don't have control over my own spinouts, the song challenging me to reach outside myself for help and direction and getting my shit together. That the word "Jesus" doesn't contain an answer for atheist me doesn't change my situation or my need in the slightest.
Also, for what it's worth, the anger in Taylor songs such as "Cold As You" and "You're Not Sorry" and "Forever & Always" gutslugs me even harder than the anger in Miranda's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Revolution. "It rains when you're here and it rains when you're gone." What a fierce, vulnerable line!
Frank Kogan