Frank Kogan

Might as well get these going, though I guess as a prediction this is pretty safe and obvious:

Taylor Swift joins Pistol Annies, who incorporate dance steps, harmonies, and raps using Bell Biv DeVoe/Backstreet Boys as template, w/ Big Bang and Danity Kane as modern analogues but Big-&-Rich tight country harmonies mixing with the R&B. Most parts are sung but brief raps are interjected and there's always a rap break prior to or as the middle eight. Rap styles are developed from each individual Annie's speaking style, as Taylor did on "Lose Yourself" — Teena Marie the model for keeping raps in the singer-songwriter ethos. Chapman-Shanks-Liddell-pop-rock-style production abandoned; Teddy Park and Shinsadong Tiger called in to produce and co-write.

Here's my ballot for the Nashville Scene's Country Critics Poll.

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2010:

1. Little Big Town "Little White Church"
2. Sunny Sweeney "From A Table Away"
3. Martina McBride "Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong"
4. Taylor Swift "Mean"
5. Laura Bell Bundy "Giddy On Up"
6. Kenny Chesney "Somewhere With You"
7. Trace Adkins "Ala-Freakin-Bama"
8. Sarah Darling "Whenever It Rains"
9. Stealing Angels "He Better Be Dead"
10. Sarah Darling "With Or Without You"

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2010:

1. Taylor Swift Speak Now
2. Jamey Johnson The Guitar Song
3. Kenny Chesney Hemingway's Whiskey
4. Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling, Dharohar Project Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling, Dharohar Project [EP]
5. Reba McEntire All The Women I Am
6. Chely Wright Lifted Off The Ground
7. Jerrod Niemann Judge Jerrod & The Hung Jury
8. Flynnville Train Redemption
9. Laura Marling I Speak Because I Can
10. Laura Bell Bundy Achin' And Shakin'

( A bunch of other categories )

( Some wonky shit )

( My comments )

( Sloshbucket )

Tom asks on Blue Lines Revisited: "If you could have reviewed any record in history at the time it first came out, which would you choose and why?" This is my response, which will shock no one:

Ashlee Simpson's Autobiography. Who knows if I'd have reviewed it with insight, arriving cold; Mikael Wood's review in the Voice was excellent; the point is, if I'd been assigned to review it I wouldn't have known what was coming, I'd have been surprised down to my socks. Just what would it have been like to be hit right at the start with this young woman declaring, "I walked a thousand miles while everyone was asleep," a mystery and a pheenom in her first fanfare, and then two songs later clawing and ripping at herself and her family and trying to resurrect it simultaneously? Maybe I'd have been up to the job, or maybe I wouldn't have grasped what I was hearing. But it would have been nice to to be the one who shows up with a fresh face, the first writer to feel the wind.

(Of course millions of girls had seen her reality show on MTV already, but, interesting as the show was, I'm glad I caught her first through the music, the reflectiveness and the struggle deeper there.)

I did put on a promo copy of Miranda Lambert's Kerosene with no idea who she was or what to expect, and went "Holy amazing shit!" as the title song started it off. Someone else did the review, though.

On Rolling Teenpop I was the first person in my universe to write about Marit Larsen as a solo artist, catching her "Don't Save Me" shortly out of the gate; and I had fun observing other people independently showing up on Rolling Teenpop with the news, a phenomenon in our little world. And I did get the review in the Voice, one of the last ones they let me do, though I was allowed little more than a blurb.

I was also the first person in my universe to post about Taylor Swift, on my MySpace and on Rolling Teenpop, though I'd heard the single months earlier and Jimmy Draper had talked her up in an email to me, which is what got me interested. I was the first one on Rolling Teenpop to hear and post about the "Greatest Time Of Year"/"Not This Year" dialectic from Aly & AJ. Think of what utter fucking dipshits the Voice people were for not having me and Dave and Mike and Tim and Erika and Chuck etc. blogging all this music on launch.

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.

( ballot )

( comments )

Not sure yet what I think of the new Miranda Lambert album, Revolution* (in other words, so far I'm disappointed), but the following stanza cracks me up:

Time to get a gun
That's what I been thinking
I could afford one...

OK, I won't spoilerate it for you. Here it is on MySpace.

(Chord pattern reminds me a bit of "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," but I'm too full of lassitude to verify this on guitar.)

EDIT: Song is by Fred Eaglesmith, whose own version is streamed on this Eaglesmith tribute site.

*I like the fast songs better than the slow ones, which isn't strange given my taste for rock, but she'd done slow ones beautifully on Kerosene. I do especially like the opening two tracks on Revolution - "White Liar" and "Only Prettier" - though I wonder if there's a pandering subtext to the lyrics of the latter that's done skillfully enough so that no matter who you are you can be the one being pandered to, depending on your self-image, that is.

He's the obsessive sort of traditional country fanatic who'll "spend $300 a week at Ernest Tubb Record Shop" when he's in Nashville. And where [Miranda] Lambert swears by Ashlee Simpson, Shelton would usually rather listen to John Conlee.
--From Chuck Eddy's piece on Blake Shelton.

By the way, as an Ashlee Simpson fan myself, I endorse John Conlee. (I also endorse Conlee's use of the subjunctive mood.)

I talk about Willie Nelson and once again about Miranda Lambert:

The Rules Of The Game #30: Life Ain't Hard But It's Too Long

( Hot Babe )

( Links to my other Rules Of The Game columns )