2017 ACM Awards: Predictions and Personal Picks
Brothers Osborne, Lori McKenna, Maren Morris, and Jon Pardi are already winners. Here are our predictions and picks for the rest of this year’s ACM ballot.
Sunny Sweeney
Sunday Selections: January 29, 2017
Could it be we’re finally hearing what we’ve been hoping for?
Favorite Females’ Covers of Females’ Songs
We can thank the shortsighted radio consultant Keith Hill for one thing: drawing attention to the women of country music in a year where so many of them are making outstanding music. As their mainstream counterparts cycle through a series of one-note styles and themes, female country artists are putting out diverse and decidedly more progressive music, even as they draw influence from previous generations. That they do so while supporting each other makes it all the more impressive.
Daily Top Five: Twitter Country
We’ve been beefing up our activity on Twitter of late– for those of you not following us yet, you’ll never in a million years believe […]
Single Review: Sunny Sweeney with Will Hoge, “My Bed”
“My Bed” Sunny Sweeney with Will Hoge Written By Ashley Monroe, Angaleena Presley, and Sunny Sweeney Both Sunny Sweeney and Will Hoge have flirted briefly […]
The Best Singles of 2014, Part 1: #40-#21
Does failure to reach a consensus indicate a year that lacked quality, or a year that had enough interesting singles that subjective taste is enough […]
Top 40 Singles of 2011, Part Three: #20-#11
The countdown continues to continue. Scroll down to the bottom to hear samples of each song and to share your comments!
Top 40 Singles of 2011, Part Three: #20-#11
#20
Headache
Joey + Rory
Individual Rankings: #6 – Sam; #15 – Leeann; #17 – Ben
Joey Feek is not a woman to be trifled with. Blow off a day with her to go fishing with your buddies, and be prepared for a holdout that would make the recent NBA lockout look like a bathroom break. Along with a steel guitar-centric, pure country sound, the song’s humor doesn’t wear thin after repeated listenings. (Are you paying attention, Brad “Camouflage” Paisley?) – Sam Gazdziak
Top Twenty Albums of 2011, Part One: #20-#11
The country music umbrella stretched wider than ever this year, regardless of the fact that radio playlists seem shorter than ever.
Of course, it’s not just the Americana acts that can’t get radio play these days. Even top-selling albums by Scotty McCreery and Alison Krauss & Union Station weren’t embraced.
Country Universe editors and contributors each submitted a list of their ten favorite albums of 2011. 31 different albums were included on our lists, and over the next two days, we’ll share with you our collective top twenty.
Top Twenty Albums of 2011, Part One: #20-#11
#20
Beat the Devil and Carry a Rail
Noam Pikelny
His tenure with the Punch Brothers and his winning of the first annual “Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass” in 2010 both earned Noam Pikelny the clout to release Beat the Devil and Carry a Rail, his second solo album and first since 2004. Joined by an all-star roster of fellow pickers, Pikelny’s mostly instrumental set is a showcase both for its lead artist’s extraordinary technical skills and for the banjo’s wide-ranging potential. – Jonathan Keefe
Album Review: Sunny Sweeney, Concrete
Sunny Sweeney
Concrete
Sunny Sweeney’s 2007 debut album was fantastic, but too raw and twangy for country radio to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Thus, Heartbreaker’s Hall of Fame produced no charting singles. Sweeney re-emerged in 2010 with “From a Table Away,” a single that took on a glossier finish so as to be more radio-friendly. Still, the core country elements were uncompromised. The strategy worked, netting Sunny Sweeney the first Top 10 hit of her career. Likewise, the remainder of her sophomore album has enough polish to be palatable to country radio, but Sweeney’s traditionalist bent remains intact, as the album retains an identifiably country sound throughout (such that the “pop-country” label would be a misnomer). Concrete sounds poised to build on Sunny Sweeney’s newfound career momentum, yet it also finds an artist able to make reasonable commercial concessions without sacrificing her own identity in the process.
Single Review: Sunny Sweeney, “Staying’s Worse Than Leaving”
This is going to be an unfair criticism, but here it goes.
“Staying’s Worse Than Leaving” is an awesome song. As good as anything I’ve heard lately in terms of lyrics. Mature, realistic, insightful. It’s good stuff.
The production is effective in that “stay out of the way of the song” kind of way, as it is on so many great country records.