Music. According to Kim.

"Where words fail, music speaks."      - Hans Christian Andersen "Part of getting over it is knowing that you will never get over it."       - Ann Finger "He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man."     - Antoine de Saint-Exupery "One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. The word is love."    - Sophocles Okay, so this is a pretty different kind of opening for me, I admit. I was listening to "Over You" on repeat as I do and was thinking about what the song is about and what it is and that gave me the idea to look up some quotes about love and loss and pain and music. There are so many great quotes out there that it was hard to narrow it down, but I'm pretty happy with what I chose. All of the above seem to apply to this song. Before you continue to my thoughts on the song, I'd like you to take a second or two and read them again. I i...

All right, so as you may have guessed from the title, in this post I'm going to be talking about all the ways we help our artist(s). Like I said in the introduction post, I really don't believe that fans understand just how powerful they are. There are so many ways that we can help and support our artist and some of those ways are going to be extremely obvious, like those I've always mentioned. Namely the first way that we help our artist(s) is to buy their music. Go to their concerts and buy their merchandise whenever possible. I'm going to take a second to add that I know that sometimes we aren't able to support our artist(s) financially and that's okay. If anyone ever feels guilty over that fact, they shouldn't. The truth is that while those are the most obvious, they are just the beginning of how we help.

What's your favorite color? It's a pretty straightforward question, isn't it? You don't have to answer, though I certainly won't mind if you do. For me, my favorite color has always been purple - more on the darker end of the spectrum. I don't know what your favorite colors are, but I would expect you to answer with, well, a color. Maybe, like me, you have a soft spot for purple. Or maybe you're more of a green sort of person or maybe you're a fan of red. Or maybe, just maybe, your favorite color is neon like the person in this song. It's an interesting song concept and one I like. There's been a bunch of songs about the love people have for bars and "Neon" is among that group. But instead of focusing on the beer like most of these songs do, it focuses on the neon. Kind of a different take and if there's ever a way to make a subject feel new again, this is the way to do it. Let's break this down...

It seems like most successful artists have a certain kind of tempo or groove or feel that is so incredibly them . It's when the band and artist are just cooking and where it seems like they are the most at home. That's what it's like; a home base. If you listen to any artist enough and start paying attention, you'll start to pick up on it. For an artist like Josh Turner, his sweet spot as I'll call it, is when he does songs like "Your Man". For Keith Urban, take something like "Put You In a Song". If it's Alan Jackson, it'll be something like "Chattahoochee" and if it's Kenny Chesney it'll be in songs like "Livin' In Fast Forward". I'm not sure I'm explaining this well or not, what I'm basically saying is that there's certain songs that you just know belong to the artist in question. What does all of this have to do with Rascal Flatts? Easy. "Banjo" is like that; my very first ...

So, this next single comes to us from a guy who I have a feeling is going to end up being a subject in my ongoing artists to watch series. The first song I ever heard of his was "Real" and it was a solid, great, pure country song that could've easily been released by someone like George Strait or Alan Jackson. Totally in that vein. Then there was "Didn't I" which was another great choice for a single. It had a nice feel to it and while there's been a lot of songs about guys looking back on a past relationship that didn't work out, this one managed to sound fresh to me. Now James Wesley has released another single from his upcoming album and surprise, surprise: this guy can rock! Out of all the songs of his I've heard - these two plus two others - this is my favorite by far. And that's saying something given how strong the other songs are. The first thing I like about this song is the title. The first time I saw it, it made me curious about ...

Has their ever been an artist that you were aware of, but for whatever reason you never paid much attention to them? Maybe you liked the single they had out and bought it, maybe you even got the CD it was on, but you just never got around to really listening to it? Maybe you listened to it once, but not closely. I'm not convinced that I'm explaining this well; this kind of thing happens to me more often than I'd like to admit. I'll like an artist on a basic level, but for some reason they'll be more or less under the radar for me. I don't know why this happens and I'll be honest and say this was the case with me and David Nail. I remember seeing someone tweeting about his song "Red Light" and was interested enough to go check it out. And I really liked it. It's a great song and it was enough to make me buy the album. I got to see him open for Jason Aldean, I guess a couple of years ago by now, and liked him. He put on a good show, had a solid...

A few days from now they are going to open up the polls for ACM Entertainer and New Artist of the Year. No doubt fans will be doing whatever they can do to help their choices win; I've already seen posts and tweets from people urging their friends and followers to vote. More so from people campaigning for New Artist - not seeing too many people talking about Entertainer yet, but I'm sure that'll pick up. I have a bad feeling, however, that the race for New Artist is going to be a rough one. It's bums me out to see people trashing another artist as a way to promote their own. Saying that, I believe that the majority of fans will be perfectly respectful. It's just a small percentage that won't, but they'll probably be the most vocal. Or at least those kinds of posts always have a way of getting my attention. So what does this have to do with my topic, you may or may not be asking yourself? Well it has me thinking about fan behavior and the amount of power ...

I know I've been doing a string of song reviews and this is going to be yet another one, but there's just so many new songs out there that I want to get to. 36 to be exact and it seems like every day I find out about another one. It's crazy; you know a lot of songs get put out around the same time, but until you start keeping track you have no idea. It brings home just how competitive the music business is - especially when you consider that the new songs make up a small fraction of the songs that get played on radio. I imagine some of the songs I review won't get much airplay at all and that's a sad thing in a way. That said, I have a feeling that this one I'm talking about here won't be one of those. Why? Well, it's by Kellie Pickler who is obviously a pretty known artist and that never hurts. But aside from that, this is a pretty great song. Which means that my streak of reviewing songs I like is going to continue for the time being. Not a bad pro...

I've gotten lucky so far in that I've happened to like every song I've reviewed so far and I'm happy to say that that trend is continuing with this next one. Luke Bryan's Tailgates & Tanlines CD is the best CD he's put out in my opinion, so good that I feel like just about any song on it could be a single. That said, it was just a matter of time before he released "Drunk On You". I saw him perform this song in concert last summer and based on the fantastic response it got figured it'd be the follow up single to "Country Girl (Shake It For Me)" and was surprised when "I Don't Want This Night to End" came out instead. Of course, seeing as that song went all the way to #1 on the country charts, that was obviously a smart move. Now it is finally "Drunk On You"'s time in the spotlight. You already know I like the song, so what else is there for me to say? Guess you'll just have to keep on reading to find ...

Ah, a love song that seems geared towards all the insecure girls out there. Actually I'm not sure if that was Hunter's intention or not, but that's the feel I get when I listen to this. This is a song about a guy who wants to make his girl feel wanted and rates fairly high on my newly invented aww-o-meter. As in my reaction to this song the first time I heard it was to "aww". I was curious to see what song would follow "Storm Warning" and this is an interesting choice. And a wise one in that it shows us another side of him, a more mature side perhaps. Hunter co-wrote this with Troy Verges and while I wouldn't call it best love song ever written, it's a solid one. There's a lot of good lines in here. The second verse, for example, "Anyone can tell you you're pretty (yeah)/You get that all the time, I know you do/but your beauty's deeper than the makeup/And I wanna show you what I see tonight" . That and the verse/bridge after...

I've dubbed Jason Aldean's My Kinda Party album the energizer bunny of albums because it's the album that just keeps going and going and going. It's not just that they've released a fifth single when most of the time they release four, though that's a part of it. It's more the fact that this album has been in the top five country album since it came out over a year ago. And as much as the people who don't like him would hate to admit it, that means something. Namely that this is a fantastic album that is well worth the money spent buying it. Yup, I am a fan, something that I've not exactly kept under wraps here. A fan of this album, yes, but also Jason himself. I remember seeing the "Hicktown" video and thinking the he was different in an interesting day and hoping that he'd do well. Think it's safe to say he ended up doing pretty well, eh? I actually have a Jason story that I debated sharing, but chose not to for space purposes,...

Nine categories down and three more to go! This time I'm going to take a look at New Artist of the Year, Video of the Year and Vocal Event of the Year to wrap up my ACM thoughts and predictions. But first I want to address my comments about Entertainer where I didn't really take into account the fact that it's fan-voted, even after posting the link where everyone will be able to vote come Noon on March 19th, right before talking about it. I was looking at it more like the non fan-voted categories. But I'm sticking with my prediction of Jason Aldean winning for all of the reasons I mentioned and the fact that I believe that his fans are as hungry for him to win as he is. I probably didn't need to clarify that point, but wanted to. So that's that. Now it's time for me to focus on the final three categories. Here we go.

Up until this point, it's been about the artists themselves and now the focus shifts more to the songs and the people who write them. In country music it's all about the lyrics. Period. So let's take a look at the nominees for Single, Song and Songwriter of the Year:

All right, so I've talked about Entertainer and Male and Female Vocalist of the year and now it's time to focus on the Duos, the Groups, the Albums and Singles & Songs of the Year. Lots of ground to cover this time, so I'm going to jump right in: