Frank Kogan

I'm not sure how much I do like "Cleaning My Gun," but it definitely makes me feel something - of course, the lyrics are a cliché about what dads are like and boys are like, and I'm pretty fed up with the way that country music lies and keeps telling you that these clichés are unquestionable fact, when actually country is consistently defensive about these very same clichés, trying to assert continuity (this is what dads were like then, this is what dads are like now; this is what boys were like then, this is what boys are like now). But I like several things about the lyrics, the fact that the choice of "continuity" is dads threatening daughters' boyfriends, and of course modern country is full of songs about teenage loves where the sex is actually happening (Taylor Swift's "Tim McGraw" sure implies that something more than holding hands went on in that pickup truck that kept getting stuck) and full of songs about sexual loving (Currington's "Tangled Up," in which the bods are getting all "Tangled Up"), neither of which were rampant in the country music of forty years ago. So "continuity" is that, well, everyone still has William Demerest for a dad.

But also, the guitar lines are wicked and Atkins has a great delivery (not the most amazing throat, but the man is very good at warming you to his storytelling). But it's a borderline pick; last year it wouldn't have had a chance at my top twenty.

I'm still on the fence (rather than ranging wild and free like the song advocates) about the lyrics to "Last Dollar," the way it ducks the issue of poverty, and it ain't no "King Of The Road," but I like the pop melody and real pretty harmonies. Real good fun poppy novelty number, I'd say, though I don't think it was taken as a novelty.

Address is still the same, if you want to send Corb Lund.

I don't necessarily think that Miley is country, since most of her stuff isn't country (or isn't what people are currently calling country), but the song itself - this specific song - practically jumps up and screams WE ARE PLAYING ROCKABILLY GUITAR, USING ROCKABILLY REVERB; and as I said, listen to the chords and melody: as an example, go listen to the line "I wanna do bad things with you" last year in Jace Everett's "Bad Things" and Miley Cyrus singing "I just can't wait to see you again." That's as country - or a lot more country for those who define country as what country was doing in the past - than most of what's on the country charts. Of course, the song makers (Armato & James are Miley's co-writers and producers on it) obviously have heard their Moroder too.

(And while you're visiting her MySpace, listen to "G.N.O. (Girls Night Out)," which if she'd only given the song something as a vocalist would have been my number one overall single of the year of any kind.)

I'm actually pretty disappointed with the Rissi Palmer album, but I like "Country Girl" a lot, low-key blues (and interestingly, it's the most stereotypically "black" stuff on her album that seems to work best). Also, when I first heard it I didn't know she was black.

Yes, "Sinners Like Me" is very very good, but not as good as his "How 'Bout You" (number 4 on this list last year) or "Pink Lines" (number 13) or several more tracks on Eric's album.