Music. According to Kim.

This year I decided against picking my favorite albums from 2016. The truth is that I have way too many albums left to listen to and didn't feel like trying to do a mass listening of them all like I did last year. Instead, I've decided to pick some of my favorite music related things - starting with this. My top 10 favorite live music experiences from 2016. Some of these are regular concerts and some aren't. I will say that while there were a few other great shows I went to this year, it was actually very easy to narrow it down to my ten favorite experiences. These were all shows that just stood out to me. I went through and made some photo collages of some of the pictures I took at most of these events. Six, to be exact. Out of the remaining four, two of them were musicals I saw. One was a show where I only got a few pictures that were, frankly, terrible. The last was a show where I could have taken pictures, but was too caught up in the show. Although looking back, I wis...

Preparing for this blog has renewed my commitment to listen to each album I get right when I get it. I don't know about y'all, but I'm actually pretty bad about that. Unless it's an album I've been really looking forward to, there's a very good chance that I'll hold off on listening to it. I don't know why I do it, but I do. Which is okay, so far as it goes - until you decide to make a best of 2015 list, but can't until you go through and listen to all of them. That's right. These past couple of weeks, I've been going through and listening to every album and EP that I got in 2015. I don't recommend doing this. Especially when it involves roughly 80 full-length albums and over 40 EPs. 1,360 songs total, according to the iTunes playlist I created. Yep. I repeat: I do not recommend doing this. Now, I've been reading a bunch of these kinds of lists and just about all of them focus on one kind of country music only. Like mainstream pop...

So we've covered Christmas carols and Christmas standards and now it's time to focus on originals. And by that I'm really talking about Christmas songs that you may have heard, but that aren't anywhere near as well-known as the carols and standards. Starting with...

Hello everyone. Long time, no post. I'm not going to waste time with excuses that don't mean much anyway. The important thing is that I'm getting back into writing and what better place to start than with this year's CMA Fest? I hadn't been for a few years and this is the first year I've attended as a Nashville resident. I was pretty surprised by how different living here seemed to make things. I'm not even sure I can describe it, but it was an interesting experience. I really didn't get to do as much as I'd originally hoped, but I figured that I'd talk about the things I did and the shows I went to. I'll be breaking it up by day and event and also talk about a few others things. Like what could be improved upon and believe me, there's a lot. Now I'm sure some of you looked at the post title and maybe got a little confused. No, you did not miss any posts. I've decided to do something a little strange and work my way backwards. S...

I'm a big fan of the shuffle feature. Sometimes there'll be a specific album I want to listen to and in those cases I usually end up listening to the songs in order. But most of the time I'll listen to music on shuffle. Whether it's a certain artist I'm listening to or one of my many playlists. I like the randomness of it. Of course, as anyone who listens to their music on shuffle knows, it can make for some pretty interesting transitions. Downright strange ones at times. Especially if you're like me and have some playlists that have a little bit of everything on them. It is said shuffle feature that inspired this post, which is going to be the first of who knows how many. I see this being an ongoing thing. See, the other day I was doing something on my computer and listening to music and it went from Carrie Underwood to Janet Jackson. As I was listening to the Janet Jackson song, it occurred to me that Carrie Underwood could probably do an interesting cover...

I was just thinking about this list and thinking about all the great artists who didn't make the cut. And there's a lot! I keep saying it: 2012 was a very good year for country music. It seemed to be a year of artists discovering exactly who they're supposed to be, musically speaking. I get so excited when that happens. It just makes everything that much better. Finding and creating the music one is supposed to make increases their confidence. You can see it. They start seeming a lot more comfortable and in that, having more fun. 2012 was a great year for that. In saying that, it is my hope that those who found their sound keep it. And that the ones who are still looking, still trying to figure it out, find it. That's my hope for 2013. One of them anyhow. Of course, now it's time to look back. But first it's time to make a change. See, I really wanted to keep this at 12 artists. 12 for 2012. I deliberated over my choices and had to make some tough cuts. Ther...

The nominees: Kelly Clarkson Miranda Lambert Martina McBride Taylor Swift Carrie Underwood My pick: Carrie Underwood. This was a pretty easy choice for me, for a number of reasons. But before I go into those, let me talk about the other nominees. Kelly Clarkson. She's a great singer, but I don't understand why she got nominated in this category. Yes, her duet with Jason Aldean was a huge song for both of them. Sure, she released a country version of a song that had already been a single on pop radio. And yeah, she's good friends with Reba McEntire. But none of that makes her a country singer. Her inclusion in this category makes absolutely no sense. If she ever does a fully country album and starts releasing country songs to radio - and country remixes don't count - than I would have no problems with her being nominated for country awards. She could do well in country music, but she needs to fully commit to a project instead of just flirting with the ...

Well, I’m going to start this off by thanking everyone who has been reading anything I write, but especially those of you who read the last album review I did for Josh Abbott Band’s new CD, Small Town Family Dream . Up until that point, my review of Scotty McCreery’s latest single was my most looked at post, by a lot. The Josh Abbott Band review shot past that one and set a new all-time high for me in terms of hits. Both for an individual post and for the amount of hits I’ve gotten in one day. Right now it sits at 549 page views, which I find kind of amazing. So thank you for that. As you may have seen me mention in other posts, I’ve started a Facebook page for this blog which can be found here - https://www.facebook.com/CountryMusicAccordingToKim . I’ve been starting to upload some of the pictures I’ve taken over the years and will be adding new ones all the time. As of right now, I have albums for the following artists: Toby Keith, Eric Church, Kix Brooks, country music songwrit...

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...