Joey + Rory, “To Say Goodbye”
In lesser hands, “To Say Goodbye” could have been hopelessly maudlin. But Joey + Rory deliver a heavy message with a light touch, without any bells and whistles in the production or the vocal. The end result is that the stories of a woman who loses her husband in a plane crash and of a man who tends to his elderly wife who has lost her memory don’t focus on the tragedy. Rather, there’s an emphasis on the quiet emptiness left in the wake of these events.
Both characters have already accepted their difficult circumstances and are beyond the wild pangs of grief. They’ve moved on to simple regret, and are now mourning that they don’t have one more chance to express their love and ongoing devotion to their partner who can no longer receive it. By going the route of understatement, the record leaves us with a far more potent impact that lingers after the last note has played.
Somewhere underneath “Everywhere I Go” is a great song, but to find it, you have to dig a little too deep. The song’s pleasing melody and bittersweet lyrics –Vassar sings of haunting, lingering memories of a lost love– are coated with layers of dramatic, distracting production. Even the conviction Vassar brings to the song starts to feel slightly artificial when he pushes his vocals over the top in the chorus, the most off-putting aspect of the song. 
Yesterday marked the end of the eligibility period for the 2010 Grammy Awards, which will be presented in January. To accommodate the earlier award ceremony, this year’s period lasted one month shy of a year: October 1, 2008 – August 31, 2009.
There were two solo artists who changed the course of country music history in the nineties. The first was Garth Brooks, who ushered in the boom years with his mega-selling albums No Fences and Ropin’ the Wind. The second was Shania Twain, who permanently altered the female point of view in country music with her mega-selling albums The Woman in Me and Come On Over.
She’s one of the most successful female country artists of the past two decades, and though it was the 2000s that brought her most of her accolades, Martina McBride became a star in the nineties. She also released her strongest music during that decade, and her first three albums remain her strongest efforts to date.
When you’re a teenager, parents can give you all the advice in the world, based on their wealth of experience, because, after all, they were once teenagers too. But will you listen? Is it really possible to separate parents’ advice from parents’ perceived restrictions? It’s a rare teen who can.
Sugarland
Clint Black burst onto the country music landscape with the famed Class of ’89, as one of the group’s leading members. With his neo-traditionalist sound, he caught people off guard with his uncanny channeling of his hero, Merle Haggard.