Some songs live or die on the strength of the artist’s vocal interpretation.  Tim McGraw’s “My Best Friend” could be considered one such song.

The funny thing is that’s not necessarily an indication of poor songwriting.  Sometimes it just takes the right vocalist to find the layers of emotion woven into a lyric that could scan as pedestrian in the hands of another performer.  In this instance, Tim McGraw indeed proves to be the right vocalist.

Lyrics like “I don’t know where I’d be/ Without you here with me/ Life with you makes perfect sense”  could very easily come across as rote statements with no real emotional heft.  When Tim McGraw delivers them, you get the sense that he means it from the depths of his soul.

McGraw’s heartfelt performance is bolstered by a pleasant lilting melody and a laid-back arrangement featuring generous amounts of fiddle and steel guitar.  Thanks to such fitting treatment, the song exudes such an irresistible warmth that it’s easy to see why it’s become a dance floor favorite in the twelve years since its release.

Written by Bill Luther and Aimee Mayo

Grade:  B+

Next:  Some Things Never Change

Previous:  Something Like That

Does country radio still have room for a song about drinkin’ and cheatin’?  How about one sung by a female artist?

Enter Arista newcomer Kristen Kelly, currently making waves at radio with her debut single “Ex-Old Man,” which she co-wrote along with nineties star Paul Overstreet.  The premise is simple.  Husband cheats on her with her best friend.  She calls it quits with her man, and hits the bar, assuring us in no uncertain terms that “There’s a damn good reason for this drink in my hand.”  The lyric and performance are brash and bitter with an undercurrent of vulnerability as Kelly fumes over the double betrayal. (“I was cryin’ on her shoulder, he was cheatin’ on me… She never let on that it was her stealin’ his love”)

In a country radio environment where there are far too many bells and whistles, it’s a refreshing change of pace to hear a new artist taking a back-to-basics approach – revisiting a classic yet often ignored country music theme, with a simple drum and acoustic guitar-driven arrangement that actually makes the song feel like country music (Overstreet and Tony Brown take producer’s credit).  At the same time, the jaunty acoustic chords and hand claps are subtly infectious, setting the toe tapping in short order.

It’s encouraging to see that this single seems to be getting some attention at radio.  If Kelly’s lyrical material remains strong, she along with fellow rising talent Jana Kramer could potentially act as an effective counterbalance toward the polished, hook-heavy country-pop of Swift and Underwood and company, imbuing some welcome variety into country radio’s pool of female talent.

Grade:  B+

Listen:  Ex-Old Man

They’re kind of important, you know.  They give the listener something to grab onto, making the song accessible and memorable.  A great melody can hold as much power to connect with a listener as a great lyric, and a great hook can convey thoughts and emotions beyond what words themselves mean.

 That’s a large part of what’s missing from the new Lady Antebellum single, as it was missing from a large portion of their previous output.  “I guess I wanted you more” is not a great hook, nor even a reasonably good one.  The melody has so little rise and fall that it comes across as little more than monotony.

Great hooks and melodies are particularly important if the lyric itself has no real heft or substance to it, which is undoubtedly the case here.  This particular lyric, penned by a seven-head writing committee, crumbles under the weight of vague, hollow imagery and awkwardly forced rhyme schemes.  The lyric is also an ill fit for the duet treatment it is here given, as we hear two vocalists singing “I guess I wanted you more” back and forth to each other. (So who wanted who more?)

As if to compensate for the song’s manifold weaknesses, producer Paul Worley attempts to lend intensity to the track by surrounding the vocalists with a chaotic mess of orchestral swells, while Charles Kelley and Hillary Scott are screaming their heads off.  That leaves ”Wanted You More” a shoddily constructed, miscalculated mess of a single.

Written by Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley, Dave Haywood, Matt Billingslea, Dennis Edwards, Jonathan Long, and Jason “Slim” Gambill

Grade:  D

Listen:  Wanted You More

A faceless band with a generic frontman singing a plaintive love song that relies on pounding guitars for its intensity. It’s their one hit that gets played everywhere, but nobody buys the album because it’s just going to pop up on some late-night hits collection anyway.

(Side note for younger readers: before Now made its way stateside, the only multi-artist hits collections were sold late at night on cable television.)

But it’s 2012, and this is a single from someone who’s supposed to be country music’s premier male singer. That fact alone should make the mediocrity of “Over” quite remarkable.

But who are we kidding? Mediocrity is enough to get you in the winner’s circle these days. Blake Shelton’s doing well in this climate, and this song will certainly follow his previous singles right up the charts.

But country music is in trouble. Its enthusiastic embrace of Shelton and many of his contemporaries as the best it has to offer sounds an awful lot like its death rattle.  When it’s no longer expected that our core acts sound country or sound good, how much longer can the genre survive?

Written by Paul Jenkins and David Elliott Johnson

Grade: D

Listen:  Over

At this point, it’s easy to forget that Carrie Underwood first kicked off her country music career as an American Idol graduate.  Besides being one of country music’s most technically gifted female vocalists, she’s gone on to become one of its strongest commercial forces, with a seven-year-long string of Top-2 hit singles, not to mention albums that consistently sell like hotcakes.  But a noteworthy gap has often been seen between the impressiveness of Underwood’s talent and success and the quality of her material. In terms of lyrics and production, at least, Underwood’s new album Blown Away finds her taking steps forward that are small, but steps forward nonetheless.

As hinted at by the gloomy cover image, Underwood’s fourth album finds her taking on some notably darker, more serious song material than on her previous albums.  After leading off with the wildly catchy Shania Twain-esque debut single “Good Girl,” the album quickly takes a turn for deadly serious territory.  The title track tells of a young woman taking revenge on her abusive alcoholic father by hiding in the cellar when a tornado approaches their home, letting the house collapse on top of her father while he lies passed out on the floor.  Though it doesn’t quite reach the spine-tingling heights of Martina McBride’s similarly themed ”Independence Day,” “Blown Away” is one of the most interesting and complex songs here, and though it could do without the gaudy vocal reverb effects, the arrangement lends the track an appropriately eerie feel.  As “Two Black Cadillacs” begins with a funeral scene, the listener is quickly pulled into the tale of two black veil-wearing women who share a dark secret.  The omission of some narrative details toward the end lessens the ultimate listener payoff, but “Two Black Cadillacs” likewise remains one of the album’s more striking and memorable cuts.  Indeed, Underwood is to be applauded for putting for the attempt to tackle more challenging lyrical material, as opposed to the predictable fare that tended to weigh down her previous releases.

Similarly, though the album often settles for the same pop-country sound that Underwood and producer Mark Bright have long favored, here there are several tweaks to the usual formula.  The prominent mandolin line on “Leave Love Alone” sounds different that anything Underwood has previously recorded, while the signature Brad Paisley guitar-shredding on “Cupid’s Got a Shotgun” turns an already fun song into a regular jam session.  The surprisingly sparse, primarily acoustic number “Do You Think About Me” benefits from added restraint both in production and vocal, which is effective in delivering the wistful-lyric.  These production choices don’t necessarily reinvent the wheel, while some – such as the reggae flavorings of “One Way Ticket,” for example – may prove polarizing, but they are unexpected coming from Underwood.  Such willingness on the parts of Underwood and Bright to go for the occasional risk is refreshing.

Weighing in at a generous fourteen tracks, the album could have benefited from leaving off a few of its more forgettable cuts, and perhaps being condensed into a more consistently solid ten- or twelve-track collection instead.  Blown Away suffers most when it veers off into a shallow, feel-good thematic direction, which is particularly evident on the trite self-esteem booster “Nobody Ever Told You,” as well as the beachy Chesney-esque reggae of  “One Way Ticket” – the latter an obvious candidate for a summertime single release, with a music video that practically creates itself.  That’s not to say that such lyrical concepts are necessarily taboo, but these particular efforts lack the personality and strong hooks that are needed to make such efforts memorable.  The fact that power ballad “See You Again” was originally intended for The Chronicles of Narnia soundtrack is telling, as the vague, platitudinous lyric savors strongly of disposable soundtrack fare.  Cliché-laden album closer “Who Are You,” a surprising misfire of a composition from Shania Twain’s ex-husband/ ex-producer/ ex-songwriting-collaborator Robert John “Mutt” Lange,” is just a total bore.

That said, Underwood can be remarkably successful when she puts forth the earnest attempt to connect with her listeners on a relatable emotional level.  Though the title of “Thank God for Hometowns” raises a red flag, we are treated to a fully three-dimensional portrayal of the very best aspects of small-town living (“Small Town U.S.A.” it isn’t, thankfully), including the small-town camaraderie of close neighbors and friends, while the conversational tone lends both a personal feel and a welcome sense of structure to the lyric.  The two finest tracks are “Good In Goodbye” and “Wine After Whiskey,” both ranking among Underwood’s strongest co-writes to date.  The former displays a level of maturity and clear-eyed insight as Underwood reflects on a difficult breakup that has turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  The latter utilizes an effective metaphor of drinking wine after whiskey to illustrate how the narrator’s current lover pales in comparison to the one she lost.  Better still, Underwood displays notable growth as a lyrical interpreter on both of these songs, wisely sparing us the power notes, while adding to the emotional impact through her nuance and subtlety.

Though it’s not quite a wholly consistent project, and it does have its share of weak spots, Blown Away is an album that is brilliant at best, and bland at worst.  But what makes Blown Away a fascinating and ultimately satisfying collection is that it displays an artist willing to continually grow and challenge herself by experimenting with different sounds, musical styles, and lyrical themes.  In today’s music industry, it’s all too easy for an established superstar to settle for predictable, wheels-spinning material that furthers his or her primary marketing persona without moving forward artistically in any meaningful way.  Granted, Underwood’s attempts at branching out still result in occasional missteps, several of which are documented on this album.  Still, to see such a demonstration of a “What’s next?” artistic muse, particularly from a woman who can already out-sing most of her peers from the corner of her mouth, is an absolute joy to hear.  Here’s hoping her future efforts achieve greater consistency along to go along with her ambition.

“(Who Says) You Can’t Have It All” is not just an average song of lost love. Rather, the loss translates into a certain resolution from a man who is the lord and master of his proverbial castle that has turned into nothing more than a lonely room with “a ceiling, a floor and four walls”, full of pictures and memories of the broken past.

From the first strains of the mournful fiddle, we can almost be sure that we will be treated to a pure country song. What’s more, Alan Jackson’s equally forlorn voice singing the opening lyrics, “A stark naked light bulb hangs over my head/ There’s one lonely pillow on my double bed”, serves as confirmation that we’re in for 3 minutes and 30 seconds of a deliciously straight-up country weeper that turns out to be one of Jackson’s most satisfying singles yet.

Written by Alan Jackson and Jim McBride

Grade: A

Next: Summertime Blues

Previous: Mercury Blues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFEnHoex6oo

The song, though. If you’re going to write about an experience as (relatively) esoteric as pontoon-partying, gotta find something in it to appeal to the rest of us. Craig Morgan’s “Redneck Yacht Club” had its playful melody and alliterations; “Pontoon”‘s lyrics are so dull that, when paired with the weird reverb on Karen Fairchild’s vocal, they start to sound like a diary of seasickness. No thanks!

I do kinda like “Mmmm, motorboatin’,” though. Ha.

Grade: C+

Listen: Pontoon

The eleventh single from Shania Twain’s Come On Over was one of the least successful in the U.S., barely scraping the bottom of the Top 30.  This was due in part to a lack of promotion for the single, though it did go Top 5 in Twain’s native Canada.  In some ways, “Rock This Country!” comes across as a standard Twain up-tempo – peppy, with a fun Mutt Lange-style pop-country production, but the lyrics are surprisingly flavorless.

Time and time again, the Twain-Lange writing team had displayed a strong knack for crafting lyrics that were infectious and hook-heavy, yet doing so without entirely sacrificing substance.  Behind all the singalong choruses, crossover-friendly productions, and flashy music videos, each Twain single had a simple message and a universal feeling at its core, be it an “Any Man of Mine” or an “(If You’re Not In It for Love) I’m Outta Here!,” a “That Don’t Impress Me Much” or a “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”

“Rock This Country!” is essentially about nothing.  Though its title was enough for it to be used as a theme song for two different presedential campaigns, the lyrics hardly warrant discussion – just a song about some “buzz” going around, and a bridge consisting of a list of random U.S. states.  It’s as if the song can’t get around its own title, and remainder of the lyric sheet is a blank slate.

That’s not to say that Twain and Lange don’t try their darndest hard to sell it.  Lange surrounds his wife’s voice with an arrangement that goes from rock guitars one moment to a searing fiddle solo the next.  Similarly, Twain’s performance exudes the usual energy, right down to the yell of “Let’s go!” before the instrumental breakdown.

But for all its positive additions, there’s no getting around the fact that “Rock This Country!” lacks the defining characteristic of a great Twain ditty:  Her best songs stick.  This doesn’t.

Written by Shania Twain and Robert Johnn “Mutt” Lange

Grade:  B-

Next:  I’m Holdin’ On to Love (To Save My Life)

Previous:  Come On Over

Listen:  Rock This Country!

“For You” does well enough for what it is, even though the production is a bit overblown, in a Bryan Adams kinda way. Urban is typically sincere, and there are some good attempts at pathos.

But the vast majority of the inner monologue takes place after the soldier has already fallen, and the intriguing beginning lines where he doubts the worth of his sacrifice delve too quickly into the predictable glorification (justification?) of love, duty, and honor.

It makes the opening reference to his wife and unborn child feel tacked on. The song would have been more effective if the depth of his sacrifice was granted more weight in the lyric. By moving so quickly into what makes all soldiers heroic, the song loses sight of what made this specific one a hero.

Written by Monty Powell and Keith Urban

Grade: B-

Listen: For You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWK1sG3spiE

The casual listener may remember Marty Stuart for the string of country radio hits he enjoyed in the late eighties and early nineties.  However, Stuart’s legacy was cemented by groundbreaking projects released after his commercial heyday had drawn to a close, particularly 1999′s landmark The Pilgrim as well as 2010′s career-best effort Ghost Train:  The Studio B Sessions.  Through such critically lauded work Stuart has built up a reputation as an elder statesman of country music, acting to preserve country music’s heritage and traditions, while simultaneously working to move the genre forward.

One important reason why Stuart has been such a fine advocate of traditional country music is that he does not treat it as a musical museum piece, but rather treats it as it is – as real and relevant now as it has ever been.  This is continually evident on Stuart’s new Sugar Hill release Nashville, Vol. 1:  Tear the Woodpile Down.  The project finds Stuart graciously and sincerely paying tribute to country music’s storied past, at times through well-chosen cover songs.  He offers his own rendition of the Jerry Chestnutt composition “Holding On to Nothin,” which was a Top 10 hit for Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton in 1968.  The song’s brilliantly constructed lyric finds a couple’s desire to rekindle their romance colliding with the sad realization that there is little left to save.  “I feel guilty when they envy me and you” is arguably one of the best lines a country song has ever come up with.

But while the album respectfully nods to the past, the loose infectious energy of up-tempo tracks like “Tear the Woodpile Down” and “Truck Driver Blues” is hardly derivative, adding to the project’s contemporary edge.  The latter finds Stuart both shredding the mandolin, and name-dropping wife Connie Smith.  The album also offers a more restrained reinterpretation of one song that previously appeared on Stuart’s 2003 effort Country Music, and “Sundown In Nashville” is a song that is most definitely worthy of a repeat release.  The lyric highlights the sad truth that for every performer who achieves the dream of becoming a country music star, countless others see their dreams “shattered and swept to the outskirts of town” – a sentiment that has remained of continued relevance on down through country music history.

On Tear the Woodpile Down, Stuart continues to indulge his penchant for collaborating with his like-minded friends.  Sadly, the list of collaborators does not include Connie Smith this time around, but the harmony vocals of The Carter Family descendant Lorrie Carter Bennett add a bittersweet touch to the beautiful steel weeper “A Song of Sadness,” while veteran guitarist and Jerry Lee Lewis-collaborator Kenny Lovelace appears on “A Matter of Time.”  The album closes on a high note with the Hank Williams III duet “Picture from Life’s Other Side” – a song originally written and recorded by Hank Williams, Sr., and one that Stuart and Hank III have performed together live.  Stuart’s smooth vocal delivery contrasts nicely with Hank III’s gritty drawl.  The two are backed by a bare-boned acoustic arrangement, allowing the song itself to pull the full weight with its brilliantly dark take on human mortality.  While backed by his seasoned cohorts The Fabulous Superlatives – who get to twang it out on the rousing instrumental track “Hollywood Boogie” – the project also includes appearances by veteran steel player Robbie Turner, as well as multi-instrumentalist Buck Trent, who lends his banjo work to the comedic title track and to “Holding On to Nothin’.”  Such contributions aid in making Tear the Woodpile Down an endlessly cool-sounding record.

In classic Marty Stuart fashion, Nashville, Vol. 1:  Tear the Woodpile Down shines with stellar, classic-worthy songwriting, bolstered by top-notch musicianship and restlessly creative arrangements.  It ranks as one of 2012’s best album’s yet – a thoughtful homage to country music’s past that remains fully connected to the present, and one that will thoroughly satisfy any passionate devotee of pure, simple, non-hyphenated country music.