Music. According to Kim.

Last post! I enjoyed the ACMs this year, but to be totally honest, I'm going to be happy to be done with them. I said I was going to write about every performance and that I have - took a little longer than I wanted it to, but  that's all right. I'm going to get to the remaining five performances shortly, but just a heads up for what's coming. In two words: album reviews. I have a bunch in my list to do and am hoping to get at least four done this week, if not more. I'll be starting off with Craig Morgan's This Ole Boy , Amy Dalley's Coming Out of the Pain , Casey James  by Casey James and Chase Rice's Dirt Road Communion . That's more than likely going to be the order I do them in. Also on the lineup: Changed  by Rascal Flatts, Hard 2 Love  by Lee Brice, Up All Night  by Kip Moore and Josh Abbott Band's Small Town Family Dreams . I might do one where I review a handful of EP's since there's been some new ones put out lately as well. Al...

"Shotgun Rider" in a word? Infectious. I bought this song on iTunes a week or so ago and for whatever reason hadn't listened to it until now and I kind of love it. Neal McCoy is another of those artists seem to be just outside of that radar I keep talking about. I wonder why that happens; I'm sure it happens to everyone. I think there's a lesson to be learned here about not being so into your favorite artists that you don't listen to other people. Obviously, your favorites are your favorites for a reason and of course you're going to listen to them, but I encourage everyone to not develop musical tunnel vision as I'll call it. Don't be afraid to branch out some, listen to someone different whether they're new to the music scene or whether they've been around for a while. You might just come across someone else to like or if nothing else, discover some great songs you didn't know existed. I'm going to pose a challenge to everyone rea...

It seems like there's a lot of people out there who believe that an artist needs to be living out the songs that they sing about. "New to This Town" has been criticized because it's about a guy who is trying to get over a broken heart and Kix has been married for over 30 years. Apparently that makes the song strange to listen to. It's a criticism I don't understand. Being a great artist isn't about only singing songs about whatever you may be going through at a given moment; being a great artist doesn't mean you have to be living your songs down to the letter. A truly great artist finds something to relate to in the songs they sing and is able to put themselves in the moment to make it feel real. Their job is the sell the song in a way that's believable, regardless of what their personal experiences may be. As it is, Kix may have been married for over 30 years, but I'd be willing to bet that at some point in his life he's had his heart ...

11 performances left. Talking about six performances this time and then will do the remaining five in the next one. Jumping right in.

All right, so I'm so behind in my reviews and want to start getting caught up. This song has been out for a little while, but I still wanted to talk about it so that's what I'm doing. And you can obviously see. Getting right to it. "Even If It Breaks Your Heart" was written by Will Hoge and Eric Paslay and is performed by the Eli Young Band. This is basically a song about holding onto your dreams even if it hurts. The idea is another well used one, but it's well used because people will always be able to relate to it. In this case, it's specifically about trying to make it in the music business, but can easily apply to just about any dream. I'll be honest and admit that I had to warm up to this one a little bit. For me, the first couple of times I heard it I didn't get pulled into the lyric and the song just didn't really resonate with me. This is one where you need to focus on the words, I feel like. I liked it more when I did that.  I...

So. I had this all written and scheduled to post and when it posted, the only thing that posted was the title. Everything else: gone. I started a second post and had to save it to come back later and when I came back, everything was gone. I have no idea what's going on with blogger lately. If you follow me via email you may have gotten an alert about a review for "There She Goes" by the Dirt Drifters that I did a month or more ago - I can't explain it. Hopefully things get back to normal around this. Now I'm doing this one again and hoping that the third time will be the charm. Jumping in.

All right, so I'm finally getting to the performances from the 2012 ACMs. I've made up a list of everyone who performed and am pretty sure I have everyone. If you're reading this and think of anyone I missed, please let me know. By my count, there were twenty four performances which I consider to be a lot. Especially when you consider that there were only eight awards given out during the broadcast. Eight awards compared to twenty four performances. That's ridiculous. It is an awards show. But I've ranted about that already. Moving on. These aren't going to be in any kind of order. I wasn't able to record the awards and have been relying on good ole youtube to watch everything again. So it's going to be in whatever order I think of them in and has nothing to do with what I may have thought of them. I'm going to be breaking these up into multiple posts because there's so many. I'm not going to be posting any of the videos for space purposes...

I always like when artists expand their horizons a bit and put out songs about a subject they've never sung about before. Or maybe they have done songs about said subject before, but have never released any as a single before. Or maybe they've put out songs about the same subject, but from a different perspective. Whatever the case may be I like when artists branch out some. Better to be diverse than to keep releasing songs that are essentially the same in sound and especially subject and mood. Which is why I was happy to find out that Justin Moore would be releasing "Till My Last Day" as a single. He's had a handful of singles, some of which have done very well - "If Heaven Wasn't So Far Away" anyone - but he hadn't put out a love song. Until now. I like when artists do this because it gives them an opportunity to showcase another side of themselves, add another dimension to who they are as both a person and an artist. So automatically I have ...

It's been a couple of weeks since the awards, but I still wanted to talk about all the performances on the show. This'll probably end up being multiple posts just because there were so many performances. Overall, I thought the show was pretty strong. Some great moments mixed with some not so great moments to things that flat out didn't work for me. Which is pretty much the case with every awards show. But first I want to share some general thoughts and observations. I'm guessing that at one point award shows were first and foremost about the awards themselves, but in the time I've been watching them it feels like the focus has shifted from being about them to being about the performances. This is true for just about every awards show these days. I understand it to an extent; a lot of times they'll be a ton of categories and there just wouldn't be enough time to air them all. I get why some awards would be done off air. Leaving some off the show is one th...

It seems like it's been forever since Carrie Underwood put out a new single. She sang with Brad Paisley on "Remind Me" last year and if I'm not mistaken, she didn't have any releases of her own. Well, no longer. "Good Girl" came out a couple of months or so ago and this review is perhaps a little late. I have read a couple of reviews and remember them as positive. The country fan reaction seems to be split. Based on comments I've seen, a lot of people love this song and a fair amount of people don't. This one seems to be slightly polarizing. I've actually put off reviewing this partially because of that fact. But not for any longer as you can clearly see. Before I get into my thoughts about this song, I want to say that I like Carrie and think she's good for the genre. She has a lot of songs that I love and I wish I could say the same for this one. It's at this point that I'm going to remind everyone that reviews are meant to be...

I have an odd relationship, or whatever you want to call it, with American Idol. I was interested when I heard about it and watched the first three seasons, got annoyed with the third season and didn't watch the next only to start watching again during the fifth season. I loved the show during its sixth and seventh season, but started getting annoyed with it in the eighth. Sometime between then and now I've gone from being annoyed with it to now hating it as I see it for what it really is. I could go into more detail about that, but I won't. At least not here; maybe at another time. I'm sure many of you are wondering why I'm bothering to bring it up in the first place. Well, it's because I decided to do a review of "Water Tower Town" by the current American Idol for my next song review. Now, if you're a fan of American Idol, you might not like what I'm going to say next, but I ask that you stay with me because it'll end up being importa...

Before I begin my review, I want to acknowledge that this one has been a long time coming as it came out a few months ago. I debated just not doing it since it's been out for a while, but that idea didn't settle right with me because this album is too good to ignore. And it's not like my opinions on the songs has changed since I heard it the first time right after it came out. So, here is my long overdue review of Kellie Pickler's 100 Proof . First, I'm going to give my general thoughts about it before the cut if you want a quicker read. Feel like a long read? Well, then after the cut I'm looking at each song individually and going into a little more detail like I do in my song reviews. It does get kind of long in there, just to warn you. So really, I got ya covered whatever your reading preference may be at this time. - In a nutshell, I feel like this is the strongest CD Kellie Pickler has done so far by a lot. I enjoyed her first two, especially her first ...

Random fact #1: I've been fortunate enough to get to meet a bunch of country artists and the first ones I ever met were Ira Dean, Heidi Newfield and Keith Burns - formerly known as Trick Pony. Random fact #2: Ira was the first in line so he's actually the very first country artist I'd ever met. This was roughly nine year ago, give or take. Random fact #3: Remembering the latter part of the last fact is now making me feel old. Even though I'm not really. It's been a while since Trick Pony broke up and it still bums me out that didn't get any bigger than they were. They had some great songs that I still love today and if you've never listened to them before, look 'em up. I feel very confident in saying that they'll have at least a handful of songs that you'd like. Some suggestions for ya: "Pour Me", "Just What I Do", "On a Night Like This", "On a Mission", "Love Be Still", "Sad City"...

So the ACMs have come and gone and I said I'd do a post about what I thought of the show and here's the first part of that. The first of two parts since I decided to do two posts about it, one focusing on how I did with my predictions and another about what I thought of all the performances. I've gotten so behind in my posting lately and am hoping to get a lot of new stuff out there over the next week and beyond. There's forever song reviews to be done and I have some album reviews to do as well, as long as that trivia contest I first brought up several posts ago. That's all coming and hopefully in a timely fashion. But for now: The 2012 Academy of Country Music Awards winners. http://www.acmcountry.com/winners.html So how'd I do? Well, let's take a look.