Brooks & Dunn

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Single Review: Chris Young, "Neon"

May 19, 2012 Tara Seetharam 16

Chris Young’s third single off of Neon continues to position him as an artist with a skill so few of his contemporaries possess: the ability to gracefully tread the line between vintage and current.

It’s easy to compare this title track to Brooks & Dunn’s dance hall classic, for example, but Young’s ode to a bar has legs all its own. “Neon” puts a different spin on melancholy – less aching and more content in defeat. If there’s a broken heart in the mix, Young’s too deep into his sweet escape (on the rocks) to care.

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Single Review: Kix Brooks featuring Joe Walsh, “New to This Town”

April 5, 2012 Dan Milliken 2

I’ve always liked Kix as a singer, so I was happy to see that this single exists. He’s got one of those modest-but-charming Everyman voices, the kind that makes every song feel like a conversation with your ol’ pal.

He also sounds positively thrilled to flex it for us again, which is just infectious. Listen to how he relishes every note of “New to This Town,” like he doesn’t want waste a moment of this reintroduction. Love that! I love that.

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Single Review: Randy Houser, “In God’s Time”

May 14, 2011 Leeann Ward 8

I think I can officially call myself a Randy Houser fan now. After feeling lukewarm to apathetic about his glossy debut album, I was much more enthusiastic about his more organic, but vibrant, sophomore project, They Call Me Cadillac.

Even though that album was only released in October, it produced no hits for Houser. As a result, the album seems to have been abandoned in order to release the inspirational “In God’s Time”, the lead single for an undetermined third album.

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Crunching the Numbers: January 2011

January 27, 2011 Kevin John Coyne 55

Feel that chill in the air? It’s not just climate change, friends. The music industry is suffering through historic lows in record sales, the worst since SoundScan started tallying them in 1991.

How are country artists faring? Let’s take a look at cumulative sales for current albums. Sales are rounded to the nearest hundred.

Top Selling Current Country Albums

  1. Taylor Swift, Fearless: 6,233,900
  2. Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift: 4,955,000
  3. Lady Antebellum, Need You Now: 3,138,700
  4. Taylor Swift, Speak Now: 3,078,600
  5. Zac Brown Band, The Foundation: 2,489,200

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2010 CMA Awards: Staff Picks and Predictions

November 8, 2010 Tara Seetharam 30

When the nominees were announced in August for the 44th annual CMA Awards, they sparked a firestorm of headlines —and thoughtful commentary by critics and fans alike— thanks to the CMA voters’ surprisingly bold moves. It’s all about change this year, as the voters revamped the ballot with a slew of fresh faces in almost all of the big categories.

How will it all play out? We’ll know for sure on Wednesday at 8pm Eastern, but before Gwenyth Paltrow throws on her cowboy boots, check out our staff picks and predictions and join the discussion in the comments below. And be sure to drop by Wednesday night for all of the CU live blog madness!

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Album Review: Randy Houser, They Call Me Cadillac

October 5, 2010 Leeann Ward 12

Randy Houser
They Call Me Cadillac

In a male dominated industry, it’s often difficult to hear distinction in the plethora of male voices on mainstream country radio. We do not have such a challenge with Randy Houser, however. Instead, Houser has a voice that rivals the soul and strength of Brooks and Dunn’s Ronnie Dunn. Regrettably, his debut album mainly suffered from production that detracted from his distinctive voice by placing heavy emphasis on the trending bombast of the times.

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CMA 2010: Female Trouble

September 3, 2010 Kevin John Coyne 85

It’s pretty rare that the CMA nominations garner much attention outside of the country music press, but the always excellent Whitney Pastorek at Entertainment Weekly has a lengthy article trying to rationalize the exclusion of Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift from the Entertainer category.

It’s amazing that in a year where a record was set for the most nominations by a female artist, there can still be a valid accusation of gender bias among the nominations. Women have been poorly represented in the Entertainer category for pretty much the entire history of the CMA Awards. Even when you include duos or groups with female members, there have never been more than two out of five nominees that are women.

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