Look, Nashville’s got its issues. And a song that delves into its yin-yang core of image and art could be interesting, if not entirely original. It could be any combination of honest, clever, biting and entertaining. It could make sense.
ACM Flashback: Single Record of the Year
As with the similar CMA category of Single of the Year, looking over the history of this category is the quickest way to get a snapshot of country music in a given year. There is a quite a bt of consensus among the two organizations here, and it is very rare for the winner at one show to not at least be nominated at the other. The winners list here would make a great 2-disc set of country classics, at least for those who don’t mind a little pop in their country. The ACM definitely has more of a taste for crossover than its CMA counterpart, and the organizations have only agreed on 17 singles in the past four decades and change.
As always, we start with a look at this year’s nominees and work our way back to 1968.
2010
- Zac Brown Band, “Toes”
- Billy Currington, “People Are Crazy”
- Lady Antebellum, “Need You Now”
- Miranda Lambert, “White Liar”
- David Nail, “Red Light”
There’s usually a “Huh?” nominee among the ACM list in recent years. This year, it’s David Nail. Good for him! Currington hasn’t won yet for this hit, even though he got himself a Grammy nomination for it. With Lady Antebellum reaching the upper ranks of the country and pop charts with “Need You Now”, my guess is that they’re the presumptive favorites. Then again, Miranda Lambert is a nominee for the third straight year, and she’s up for her biggest radio hit.
2009
- Trace Adkins, “You’re Gonna Miss This”
- Jamey Johnson, “In Color”
- Miranda Lambert, “Gunpowder & Lead”
- Heidi Newfield, “Johnny and June”
- Brad Paisley, “Waitin’ On a Woman”
Adkins has been a fairly regular fixture on country radio since 1996, but this was his first major industry award. He also won the ACM for Top New Male Vocalist in 1997.
Single Review/Shameless Rant: Miranda Lambert, “The House That Built Me”
Let’s be real: to most core readers of this blog, it’s probably old news that Miranda Lambert is releasing this unusually good song to radio. And it’s probably old opinion for me to proclaim that she’s playing a more sophisticated game than just about any mainstream artist out there. You know: “she’s real, everyone else is a phony!”. Is there some amount of truth in that? Sure. But you don’t need another country music Caulfield to tell you. You just have to listen to the song. The difference between this record and most of the others at radio can be felt within seconds.
ACM Flashback: Album of the Year
The ACM Awards has traditionally been overshadowed by the CMA Awards, despite its longer existence. This is for several reasons. First, the ACM originally existed to emphasize the West Coast country music scene, whereas the CMA Awards represented Nashville from the start. The ACM has also been more commercially-oriented from the beginning, as the history of this category proves. Eighteen of the last twenty winners in this ACM category are multi-platinum sellers, and the organization allowed greatest hits albums to compete for more than a decade.
Still, the ACM category has bragging rights of its own. Critically-acclaimed albums like Storms of Life, Trio, Killin’ Time and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend won at the ACMs but were overlooked by the CMAs. Additionally, women have also been far more successful at this ceremony. Only five women have ever won the CMA Album trophy, and one of them was Sissy Spacek! At the ACMs, women have dominated the category for the past three years, and the category has honored everyone from Loretta Lynn and Donna Fargo to K.T. Oslin and Shania Twain.
A special note about ACM flashbacks. Like the Grammys, the ACMs issue their award for a given year the following year, so the awards for 2009, for example, are given out in 2010. For the purposes of the flashbacks, Country Universe notes the year the award is presented. While the ACM first presented awards in 1966, the Album category wasn’t introduced until 1968.
As with other flashbacks, we begin with a look at this year’s nominees:
2010
- Lady Antebellum, Lady Antebellum
- Miranda Lambert, Revolution
- Brad Paisley, American Saturday Night
- Carrie Underwood, Play On
- Zac Brown Band, The Foundation
Three previous winners – Miranda Lambert, Brad Paisley, and Carrie Underwood – compete against the debut albums of two hot bands. Lady Antebellum and Zac Brown Band each picked up a Grammy this year and are well represented on the rest of the ACM ballot. This is a very competitive race. Even the sales-friendly nature of the ACMs doesn’t help much here, as four of these albums are platinum and Lambert’s just went gold.
2009
- Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song
- Montgomery Gentry, Back When I Knew It All
- George Strait, Troubadour
- Taylor Swift, Fearless
- Carrie Underwood, Carnival Ride
Taylor Swift became the third consecutive female artist to win in this category, a feat that would’ve seemed unthinkable earlier in the middle part of the decade, when country radio all but exiled women from radio.
Meet Exciting Singles Now Courtesy of CU Favorite Paul Burch
Acclaimed Nashville artist Paul Burch, whose recent Still Your Man landed at #13 on our Best Country Albums of 2009 list, is taking an innovative approach to distributing new music this year. The Asides/Besides project he launched earlier this month will hook fans (or hip, curious newbies) up with twenty singles released steadily throughout the year, with varying affordable price packages to accommodate varying levels of Paul Burch appreciation.
Single Review: Bucky Covington, “A Father’s Love (The Only Way He Knew How)”
As someone who enjoys a relationship with a warm father who’s always been quick with support and affirmation, it’s a testament to a good song that I can feel an emotional connection to Bucky Covington’s latest single, “A Father’s Love (the Only Way He Knew How)”, which depicts a father with less demonstrative sensibilities than mine.
Single Review: Blaine Larsen, “Chillin'”
What to make of a single that does Kenny Chesney better than Kenny Chesney does these days? Sure, it’s derivative and completely unnecessary, but I’d rather here this than “Ain’t Back Yet.”
I like a lot of the lines, too, particularly the imagery of “got my thinkin’ cap hangin’ on a scarecrow.” But hearing the song as a whole makes me wish I was listening to “Beer in Mexico” instead.
Actually, that’s a lie. Hearing this sent me in a completely different musical direction, one that goes a little something like this:
Single Review: Kellie Pickler, “Makin’ Me Fall in Love Again”
Kellie Pickler has quietly become one of the most played female artists on country radio, the unthinking man’s alternative to fellow top twenty regular Miranda Lambert. She’s done it largely with fluff, but there’s no real shame in that. Sylvia made a whole career out of it an won a Female Vocalist trophy along the way. Granted, it was from the ACM, but a mantle decoration is a mantle decoration.
So the question is, how good is this fluff? As the man who trashed both “Red High Heels” and “Best Days of Your Life” but eventually added them on to my favorites playlist, I say with caution that it’s mediocre. I can’t see this one growing one me. Just not enough of a hook. It’s like they got the color and the texture right but forgot to put the sugar in the cotton candy.
Forgotten Hits: Sammy Kershaw, "Yard Sale"
Yard Sale
Sammy Kershaw
#17
1992
Written by Larry Bastian and Dewayne Blackwell
Great country songs can find heartache in the most mundane places. For George Jones, it was “a lip print on a half-filled cup of coffee that you poured but didn’t drink.” For Sammy Kershaw, a nineties star heavily influenced by the Possum, it was a family picnic table of discounted items.
“They’re sorting through what’s left of you and me,” he sings, and like in the Jones classic “A Good Year For the Roses,” it’s the steady observation of sights and sounds that tell the story. As he notes that there must be half the town on the grass and on the sidewalk, he muses, “Ain’t it funny how a broken home can bring the prices down?”