Music. According to Kim.

This album came out back in January, but I found myself listening to it the other day and wondered why I didn't review it. Better a few months late than never, right? Lauren Alaina is quickly becoming one of my favorites. She's one that I can't help but root for; I want to see her do well. Her first album came out over five years ago - really, probably closer to six years by now. She was still a teenager then. It's been interesting watching her mature and develop as an artist in the space between these two albums. There's so many situations where someone will experience some level of fame as a teenager - in Lauren's case, she was on the tenth season of American Idol - and they'll get to a point where they start become almost obsessed with proving that they aren't a kid anymore. Often in ways that involve them turning their backs on the young fans who made them famous in the first place. Ironically, in these cases, all they really end up showcasing is...

It's been way too long since I've gotten up a new post in my Music Therapy series and I thought it might be a good idea to go with a theme this time. Namely, beauty and self-image. In this society, it's so easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that we have to look a certain way. To think that if we don't fit in, if we don't look that way, that there's something wrong with us. We might feel insecure. We may feel ugly and unwanted and unlovable. This can lead us down some dangerous paths if we aren't careful. The way I see it, even the most secure of us need some reassurancesometimes. Maybe we don't fit into what Hollywood considers beautiful. That's okay. Maybe we've been picked on and made to feel worthless because of the way we look. That's not okay, but you know what the good news is? Our worth does not come from other people. As a Christian, I believe that our worth is given to us by God. We are beautiful because we're His creat...

Ah, the Christmas standards. You really can't have Christmas without any of these. It wouldn't be the same. So what are my favorites? Keep reading and find out.

Welcome to the third installment of this series! If you missed them, you can check out parts 1 and 2  here  and  here , respectively. Again, this is an ongoing thing I'm doing and I'm enjoying it so far. It's fun trying to think of songs that never, or rarely, get covered and then deciding which current artist could do it best. Each installment will feature 10 songs and then if anyone would like to suggest any, let me know and I'll add it in as a bonus song in a future installment. It can be any song, from any artist in any genre from any time period. Before I get started, I want to first to tell everyone about a movement going on in country music right now. Some of you may have heard about this already. I'm taking about the "Sixty for Sixty" movement. What is it, you ask? Well, George Strait will be turning 61 on May 18th. So far in his career he has had a total of 59 #1s. Now we're not talking about the same song being released on multiple charts o...

I'm going to start off this review by saying something that could very well make Lauren Alaina fans want to throw virtual tomatoes at me, so I'm going to ask that you all stay with me and keep on reading until the end. Because in order to fully appreciate this review, you should know where I'm coming from. I've always said I want to be honest and so I'm going to admit that they jury has been out on Lauren Alaina for me. I can't quite pinpoint what it is, but I just haven't known what to make of her. It's not her voice. I've always thought she had a very good voice and it seems to get better all the time. I've watched various clips of her from the My Kinda Party tour, particularly of her singing "Don't You Want To Stay" with Jason Aldean and was impressed by how much she's grown as a singer. It seems like there's notes she's hitting a lot more easily and she seems more confident in her vocal ability. I love seeing growt...