After just enough time to catch our breath after the Grammys, this year’s ACM Awards are right around the corner. The 2013 nominees were announced today, and are presented here with brief commentary from yours truly. Eric Church leads the pack with seven nominations, followed by Hunter Hayes with six, and Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift with five each. Please share your thoughts on this year’s nominees in the comments section.
The telecast starts at 8 PM Eastern/7 Central, and we’ll be launching our coverage about a half-hour prior. We’re trying out the newfangled live blog client again, hopefully with better prep and results this time! Please let us know if you have any issues accessing the client/the site in general in the comments section, or at our Facebook or Twitter. -DM
Grammy Pre-Telecast Winners
Here are the winners in country and country-related categories, including all-genre categories that include a country-related nominee:
Best Long Form Music Video: Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros & Old Crow Medicine Show, Big Easy Express
Song Written for Visual Media: T Bone Burnett, Taylor Swift, John Paul White & Joy Williams, “Safe and Sound”
Americana Album: Bonnie Raitt, Slipstream
Bluegrass Album: Steep Canyon Rangers, Nobody Knows You
Folk Album: Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile, The Goat Rodeo Sessions
Country Duo/Group Vocal Performance: Little Big Town, “Pontoon”
Country Song: Josh Kear & Chris Tompkins, “Blown Away”
Credit where credit is due: After a run of two full albums’ worth of singles that were each exponentially more tepid than the last, Lady Antebellum realized the urgent need for a course correction. “Downtown,” the lead single for the trio’s fourth album, may not be a return to the roots-rock sound of their promising debut, but it’s a definite, deliberate shift in style from the somnolent lite-AC pap that had become their signature. Lady A needed to do something different, and “Downtown” certainly is.
We’re only two days away from the annual event billed as Music’s Biggest Night – the 55th Grammy Awards. Among the live performances scheduled for the night, the country music genre will be represented by the likes of Dierks Bentley, Miranda Lambert, and Carrie Underwood. In addition, genre favorite Zac Brown is scheduled to participate in a star-studded tribute to the late Levon Helm along with Elton John, Mumford & Sons, Mavis Staples, and Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, while T. Bone Burnett will as musical director for the tribute performance.
We at Country Universe have busily pored over the list of this year’s nominees, and now we’re pleased to share our picks and predictions for the all-genre, country, and country-adjacent award categories. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Share your thoughts in the comments section, and tell us who you think will emerge victorious. Tune in for the live broadcast on Sunday, February 10 at 8:00 pm Eastern on CBS. We will be live blogging the show here at Country Universe, and we hope you will drop by and join in the fun.
1989 | #1
Written by veteran songwriter Sanger D. “Whitey” Shafer (who had previously supplied Strait with hits such as “Does Forth Worth Ever Cross Your Mind” and “All My Ex’s Live In Texas”), “Overnight Success” was released in the fall of 1989 as fourth and final single from George Strait’s album Beyond the Blue Neon. It peaked at a respectable #8, breaking a streak of eleven number-one hits, but continuing Strait’s run of Top Ten hits that stretched back seven years.
Randy Houser
How Country Feels
Randy Houser impressed the critics with 2010’s They Call Me Cadillac, but country radio yawned, and neither of the album’s two singles cracked the Top 30. Houser’s Stoney Creek Records debut thus comes across as a mea culpa of sorts, as Houser shrugs his shoulders in defeat, and gets ready to do some good old-fashioned pandering.
Sara Evans
Playlist: The Very Best of Sara Evans
While Sara Evans is reportedly in the studio hard at work on her forthcoming seventh studio album, Sony Legacy has released a new fourteen track retrospective of her sixteen-year career – the latest installment in the label’s Playlist series. Coming nearly five and a half years after Evans’ 2007 Greatest Hits package, Playlist: The Very Best of Sara Evans intersperses several of her biggest hits with a few less expected inclusions. While there is some great material to be heard, there are a few missed opportunities as well.
Independent country artist Amber Hayes released her first EP C’mon in the summer of 2010, and has since been covering all media ground, building up a solid fan following without the support of a major label. She had already added “theater performer” to her resume back in 2008, when she was cast as Kathy in the Conway Twitty musical. The year 2012 brought about the release of her second EP Any Day Is a Good Day, as well as her screen debut in the film Cowgirls ‘n Angels. Amber Hayes recently spoke with Country Universe to discuss her accomplishments over the past year.
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If a song has nothing to say beyond what’s said in its title phrase, what’s the point of writing the song in the first place?