Rewriting life: my country critics ballot, 2009

My country critics ballot for the Nashville Scene. Down in my comments I'm responding to what Geoff wrote in last year's poll writeup, "Suburban teenagers need their own bards who can work the established themes and techniques of pop-rock into something new. But small-town, divorced, blue-collar wastrels also deserve their own bards who can draw from a hillbilly history of song-making. All music grows out of the past, and if we refuse to distinguish one lineage from another, the discussion of new music becomes hopelessly muddied. Swift is a great artist, but it's not clear that she's a great country artist." And at the end I'm responding to his assertion two years ago that we critics were voting Miranda Lambert over Carrie Underwood because, unlike the majority of record buyers, we shun reassurance and instead want our assumptions challenged and want to hear something we don't already know.

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