Year: 2011

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Single Review: Lee Brice, “Woman Like You”

September 25, 2011 Ben Foster 11

Lee Brice’s new release is a song that sets a casual conversation to music. Woman asks husband, “Honey, what would you do if you’d never met me?”

Answer: “I’d do a lot more offshore fishin’ / I’d probably eat more drive-thru chicken / Take a few strokes off my golf game / If I’d have never known your name / I’d still be driving that old green ‘Nova / I probably never would have heard of yoga / Be a better football fan / But if I was a single man / Alone and out there on the loose / I’d be looking for a woman like you.”

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100 Greatest Men: #83. Freddie Hart

September 21, 2011 Kevin John Coyne 2

100 Greatest Men: The Complete List

Back in country music’s golden age, an artist could maintain a solid career for two decades before suddenly reaching a massive height of popularity.

Freddie Hart was a great example of this. As one of fifteen children born to an Alabama sharecropper, Hart’s only chance at success was striking out on his own. Though he played guitar since the age of five, Hart’s first tour of the world was as a soldier at the age of fifteen. He lied about his age to join the service during World War II.

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100 Greatest Men: #84. Uncle Dave Macon

September 20, 2011 Kevin John Coyne 0

100 Greatest Men: The Complete List

Every country star with their salt longs to play the Opry stags. That’s thanks in large part to Uncle Dave Macon, who helped put the Opry on the map.

Macon began performing at a young age, learning skills from the wide variety of guests who passed through his family’s hotel. But he chose a career in freight trains instead, and settled for being an amateur performer until he was in his fifties.

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Retro Single Review: Alan Jackson, “Dallas”

September 19, 2011 Sam Gazdziak 3

1991 | #1

No, this isn’t Alan Jackson covering The Flatlanders, although that would have been phenomenal. Rather, this is Jackson performing right in his sweet spot: a simple enough song, yet with some clever lyrics, a generous dose of pedal steel and Jackson’s typical smooth, agreeable vocals. “Dallas” may not be Jackson at his most experimental (see “I’ll Go On Loving You”) or mainstream (“Chattahoochee”), but it’s a pleasant little gem in a very rich catalog of music.

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Album Review: Lady Antebellum, Own the Night

September 13, 2011 Ben Foster 39

Lady Antebellum

Own the Night

Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now” is a once in a career kind of hit. That drunk-dialer ballad became a such a huge cross-genre smash hit that is was virtually inescapable no matter which radio format you tuned into. The Grammy-winning hit pushed Lady Antebellum to instant add status on country radio, which is where they stayed even as their single releases gradually slid downhill in quality.

The downward slide continues on the trio’s third album Own the Night – an uninspired effort that savors strongly of an act coasting along on their superstar status, while resting on their laurels artistically. One could present the easy-out criticism that the album is not country, and indeed it makes little effort to sonically resemble country, but the real issue is not simply that these are pop songs. The issue is that, pop or country, they’re just flat-out not good songs.

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