Music. According to Kim.

Last week I got to see Parmalee at the Grand Ole Opry for the first time in well over a year. That's way too long, in my opinion. I didn't realize just how much I'd been missing those boys. Suffice to say, it was great seeing them perform again and this was the first time I got to see them perform three songs at the Opry. The other times I've seen them at the Opry, they only got to do two. It was a good set, with their new single "Roots" in the middle. I'd heard the song and really liked it, but it occurred to me that I somehow hadn't gotten around to watching the video which came out last month. And I call myself a fan. Tsk tsk. So I watched it, finally, and the fact that it's getting a video spotlight should be some indication of how much I like it. Honestly, I've been meaning to do a video spotlight for one of their videos for a while and couldn't decide which one. After watching "Roots", it became evident that this was the...

Here we are in the middle of August. It's been crazy hot in some places and there's been days where the humidity has been practically suffocating. There's people longing for fall to arrive and I'm one of them. Bring on the cooler temperatures and beautiful foliage. You know what else happens in the fall? The return of hockey. Yep, I recognize that people are generally a lot more excited about football, but I'm much more of a hockey girl. In any event, summer isn't going anywhere just yet. So with that in mind, I'd like to tell y'all which songs I'm currently loving. Songs that were made for these summer months. You know the kind I mean. Songs that make you want to crank the volume up and roll the windows down. The songs that make you want to dance, possibly like an idiot. Maybe especially like an idiot. It's okay. You do you. No judgment here. These songs are more about fun than anything else. Most of them are country; a few are not. Some are c...

I don't think I can properly express how excited I am to be reviewing this. I'm been wanting this album for a while now and it's finally here. I'll be getting to the review shortly, but I wanted to take a second to announce that I'll be doing a giveaway over the next few weeks. I haven't done one in a while and it's safe to say that this'll be the biggest one I've ever done. I bring it up here because Feels Like Carolina  is going to be one of the albums included. More details to come sometime over the next few days. So. Feels Like Carolina . Right off the bat I give Parmalee credit for doing the bulk of the writing on the album and for cutting and/or writing songs with lesser known songwriters. I have absolutely nothing against all the popular songwriters out there, but it's great to see acts who are willing to give other people a shot. There's so many fantastic songwriters out there so I love seeing writers I've never heard of get cut...

All right, so we covered day 4 and what I dubbed as JakeCarrieStormGate 2013. Now we move backwards to Saturday, day 3, which gives us yet another controversy. This time involving the surprise guest. A guest which has me wondering just what on Earth the CMA was thinking. Actually, scratch that, I can guess what they were thinking: having this artist showing up on the TV special airing August 12th will make for good TV. Or rather, what they believe will be good TV. I may be way off base here, but lately it feels like there's people out there who seem determined to prove that country music is cool. And do so by trying to cater to fans of other genres. It's the only explanation that makes sense. The problem? Well, first it implies that country music isn't cool already and that's nonsense. Country may in fact be at the height of its coolness. Look at how just about every singing competition has a country judge now. People say that having Keith Urban on Idol or Blake Shelt...

Welcome to the second installment of my covers series. Check out the first part if you haven't already. Since picking songs using shuffle worked so well for me the last time, that's exactly how I'm going to do it every time. As far as I know none of these songs have ever been done by any of these artists. I forgot to mention it last time, but wanted to urge everyone to check out any songs that they don't know. You should be able to preview all of them on Amazon or iTunes. Or even YouTube. Once again, if any of the artists featured in this installment happen to come across this than they can take it as a challenge. I imagine that some of the choices might throw a few of them for a loop if they did see it. Especially one of them. Remember: I'm trying to think out of the box and not always go with what seems obvious. Some choices are more creative than others. If you came to this post via a direct link and missed part 1, you can find it  here . So that said, let...

As I've said before, I think it's interesting to read reviews of songs before I review them myself. Not because anything I read influences what I write, but because I like to see what other people think of a song. And in reading some reviews for "Carolina" I've concluded that some people just don't know what to think of Parmalee. So what usually ends up happening: they say it's not country and the review becomes more about that than the song itself. Sometimes the accusation is valid; most of the time it's an excuse to give a bad review. Now don't get me wrong - these people are free to write what they want about it and free to feel how they feel about it. I just think that a lot of times people are too quick to say a song or artist isn't country. My thoughts on whether or not Parmalee is country? Well, the past few days I've been on what I'm going to call a Parmalee binge: watching performance videos and interviews, in an attempt to g...

The opening line: the single most important line of a song. Why? Because it sets the mood and feeling of the song. That first line should be so strong that it grabs the listener and gets them invested in the song. It can make the difference between actively listening or not. Every great song that's been written has had a great opening line.  Some examples: "He said 'I'll love you 'til I die" "She put him out like the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette" "A farmer and a teacher, a hooker and a preacher" "It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty, Delta day" "Hello darlin', nice to see you, it's been a long time" "Cowboys ain't easy to love and they're harder to hold" "Sara Beth is scared to death to hear what the doctor will say" "It was all I could to keep from crying" I could keep going, but I think you get the point. So let...