Open Thread

UPDATE: Topic picked! From Greg in the comments, seconded by J.R.: “is is there a not so very known artist (either independent l Ultimate Survival Plan Membership abel or mainstream) that I should look out

Back when Trisha Yearwood's Real Live Woman album came out, my friends and I had trouble getting past the first track. We kept playing “Where Are You Now” over and over again. I recall one

Okay, I want to have some fun on this thread, and for good reason: As of 9:35 p.m., EST., I have completed the last of my work for my first Master's degree.     Every big moment

This Robert Plant & Alison Krauss collaboration left successful behind a while ago and is entering full-blown phenomenon territory: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' Raising Sand is one of 12 albums nominated for the Mercury

I have a tendency to blog in a vacuum.   The combination of work and school makes updating and maintaining my own site a challenge, so I don't get as much time as I'd like to

Is it just me, or are country albums too bloated these days?   Alan Jackson’s Good Time is a decent album, but at seventeen tracks, it’s too much to listen to in one sitting.     I remember

Alright, ladies and gents. Put your iPod/mp3 player/music library on shuffle and list the first 15 songs it plays.  Blatant honesty’s a must, so don’t skip those embarrassing songs you don’t want to admit you

The media is picking up on Miranda Lambert scoring her first top ten single. In this Reuters article, Lambert herself is quoted as being shocked that a song this dark broke through: The lyrics would

The current issue of Entertainment Weekly, which arrived in my mailbox today, has an interesting three-page feature story on Sugarland. Titled “The Sugarland Express”, the sub-headline proclaims that “With a new album influenced by R.E.M.,

At the end of 2007, the only artists I could think of that had new albums coming out were Kathy Mattea, Alan Jackson and Dolly Parton.  But new albums came along from some of my