Music. According to Kim.

Earlier this year we lost one of country music most beloved artists. Little Jimmy Dickens was truly one of a kind. A great artist, he had a special talent for delivering both a lyric and a story. He was so funny that you could hear him say the same joke more than once and it would be just as funny as the first time. Even when you knew what was coming, he would still make you laugh. Every single time. What made Little Jimmy so special, however, was not his musicality or his sense of humor. What made him special was the way he cared about and loved other people. People don't say nice things about Little Jimmy Dickens; they say wonderful and beautiful things about him. People light up when they talk about him. You didn't simply like Little Jimmy Dickens, you adored him. I never had the privilege of meeting him in person, but I was fortunate enough to see him perform on the Grand Ole Opry several times. It didn't matter who else was on the line up. Little Jimmy Dickens was al...

So day 4 was JakeCarrieStormGate 2013. Day 3 was the Lenny Kravitz fiasco. Day 2? Well, there was  some sort of technical difficulty and a huge failure to communicate just what was going on. A situation that they chose to handle by not handling it. The artist involved? Little Big Town. But like the other couple of days, I'll get to that later. Let's start with the beginning of the night show at LP Field.

This one was a tough one for me. Another one where I've changed my mind multiple time. But as evidenced by the existence of this post, I've finally made my decision. First the nominees: Lee Brice Brantley Gilbert Hunter Hayes Love and Theft Thompson Square And my pick for CMA New Artist of the Year? Lee Brice. If you've been reading this series, you know the drill by now. I'm going to talk a little bit about each of the other nominees before I explain why I went with Lee. Starting with Brantley Gilbert, who has had a pretty solid few years. First, scoring two cuts on Jason Aldean's My Kinda Party  album. Two cuts that of course became very big singles for everyone involved   and came with the added benefit of getting Brantley's name out there. He'd had a very loyal following before that, but those cuts made him known among the general country fans who hadn't heard of him previously. As an artist, he has two #1's under if his belt. Namel...

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...

Well, it looks like the men of country music are going to continue their dominance over this countdown by the look of the next five videos. There's only one woman in this group and that would be LeAnn Rimes. I'm not sure what's going with that, but who knows? There's still a lot of videos left so maybe the girls will regain control. Ultimately good music is good music and a good video is a good video no matter who sings it. And who sings the songs in this part of the countdown? Well I'm happy you asked. You know one of them, but we're not talking about her just yet.