Archive for October, 2006
Thursday, October 26th, 2006
#40
Girl of Your Dreams
Bobbie Cryner
1996
Cryner’s achingly honest writing on the best of this album’s tracks rivals the greatest music to come out of Nashville during this era. Her nuanced portraits of dying relationships, especially in the riveting “You’d Think He’d Know Me Better”, allow for the narrator to be realistically flawed. She’s since contributed wonderful material to Lee Ann Womack (“Stronger Than I Am”), Trisha Yearwood (“Real Live Woman”) and Suzy Bogguss (“Nobody Love, Nobody Gets Hurt”.)
Download This: “The Girl of Your Dreams”, “You’d Think He’d Know Me Better”, “Vision of Loneliness”
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Sunday, October 15th, 2006
#50
Seminole Wind
John Anderson
1992
The comeback album to end all comeback albums. Anderson resurfaced with a new label and suddenly hit the top of the charts again, despite all of the competition surrounding him. He possesses one of the most distinctive male voices of his generation, and when matched with the excellent material here, the results are spellbinding.
RIAA: 2x Platinum
Download This: “Straight Tequila Night”, “When it Comes to You”, “Seminole Wind”
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Saturday, October 14th, 2006
#60
Songs for the Daily Planet
Todd Snider
1994
Snark hit country music in full-force when Snider made his kick-ass debut album. Produced by the usually timid Tony Brown, Snider’s sharp wit tackled everything from the banality of Generation X’ers (“My Generation (Part 2)”), the waning alternative music scene (“Talking Seattle Grunge Rock Blues”) and even the forceful acquisition of land from Native Americans (“This Land is Our Land”).
Download This: “Alright Guy”, “This Land is Our Land”, “Easy Money”
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Monday, October 9th, 2006
#70
Little Love Letters
Carlene Carter
1993
Carter honed her rockabilly-tinged style on the follow-up to her hit album I Fell in Love, and while there was only one hit this time around (“Every Little Thing”), the album succeeded as a cohesive whole, even including a kick-ass instrumental (“First Kiss”) and an old-time tent revival gospel song (“Hallelujah in my Heart”).
Download This: “Nowhere Train”, “Sweet Meant to Be”, “Long Hard Fall”
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Sunday, October 1st, 2006
Alzheimer’s Disease may seem an unlikely topic to deal with in song. It’s certainly difficult to deal with in a way that isn’t too maudlin or melodramatic, and the sensitive nature of a degenerative disease that robs the inflicted of their memory has not enticed many songwriters or artists.
When one of Nashville’s best writers, Jon Vezner, penned a song that dealt with the topic, even his future wife, Kathy Mattea, was taken aback by it. He played it for her after the #1 party for her hit “Goin’ Gone,” as she recalls in the liner notes of The Definitive Collection:
We went upstairs to the listening room, and when the first chorus went down, my head spun around. I knew the story, and I couldn’t believe he wrote it in a song.
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