You can usually count on country music blog The 9513 to be a solid source for news within the genre, so it’s not surprising that their top 50 songs of ‘08 list is full of solid picks from No. 1 on down. Plus, there’s music by the adorable Joey + Rory scattered throughout, which should appeal to all three Can You Duet fans out there. 9513’s top three, via the magic of YouTube, below the cut.
No. 3: Lee Ann Womack, “Last Call”
No. 2: Sugarland, “Very Last Country Song”
No. 1: Joey + Rory, “Sweet Emmylou”
The Best Country Songs Of 2008 [The 9513]
Word on that Sugarland track.
Whoa. That’s a real act?(Joey and Rory) I always liked the commercials I saw them in, but thought they were just a cute, made-up couple or something. That’s cool, although I guess I could’ve figured out they’re a real group by spending a minute on Google.
That site is also pretty good…I’d never heard of it until voting for the “music blog of the year” thing.
Wait, are you sure these aren’t supposed to be 50 *Dullest* Country Songs of 2008? (Probably not; there are actually a few lively tracks on there. But it’s close.)
I mean, honestly, if they really want to prove that country music “still has a pulse,” they could do worse than ACTUALLY TURNING ON A COUNTRY STATION AND LISTENING TO ALL THE CATCHY SONGS instead of just settling for the most bland and reverent folk tributes from bluegrass teacher’s pets available. Believe me, topping the list with that fawning Emmylou tribute (as if Emmylou was all the great in the first place), then following it up with your usual by-the-book baloney about how “real” country music is on its last legs (one of the low points of an otherwise often entertaining album by a group who are best when they dare to sound more like the Bangles or Scandal) is *not* a good omen.
Big thanks to Idolator for the blurb. We appreciate it, and we love y’all.
@ Chuck Eddy: Real country music isn’t on its last legs, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find a point in time when any member of our staff has indicated or gestured as much. In fact, one of the main things we do is alert people to the fact that there’s a wealth of real country music still being made. It’s just not getting played on country radio–there’s no room for it with all of those “catchy songs” that dominate the airwaves.
Listen, we give a lot of praise to new forms of country. We’ve applauded Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift (among others), and we even gave a glowing review to Jewel’s crossover single “Stronger Woman.” So implying that we have a bias against pop country doesn’t make a lot of sense.
What we don’t do–and what we will never do–is limit our coverage to that music which “country” radio deems acceptable. Our staff is comprised of people who genuinely enjoy country music–even in forms that you would probably consider antiquated. I, for example, love the twang and pluck of hillbilly music as much as I love the pop-driven power of Garth’s power ballads. I’m as likely to play a Loretta Lynn disc while driving around as I am a Carrie Underwood disc.
OK, I’m a lot more likely to play the Lynn. But you get my point. Maybe.
Because despite my clarity on this issue, I think it’s going to be really difficult for you to grasp where we’re coming from and what we do when you imply that a country duo should try to sound more like the Bangles or Scandal. If you want to be a pop fan, be a pop fan–but it’s ridiculous to assume that country music doesn’t hold relevance within our society just because a section of the corporate media has determined that it doesn’t sufficiently appeal to soccer moms.
>I, for example, love the twang and pluck of hillbilly music as much as I love the pop-driven power of Garth’s power ballads. I’m as likely to play a Loretta Lynn disc while driving around as I am a Carrie Underwood disc. OK, I’m a lot more likely to play the Lynn.<
Me too, believe it or not. On both counts. But one of the things I’ve always loved about old hillbilly music (dating back *long* before Loretta — back to Bob Wills and Jimmie Rodgers and Uncle Dave Macon and Charlie Poole, and probably earlier than that), is that it *wasn’t* a static, respectable, nutritous, sexless, purist folk form unwilling to incorporate current styles of rhythm and melody emerging from places other than its own back yard. Country music has *always* changed its sound, ever since it came into being; what’s ridiculous is to pretend that it shouldn’t do so now, in the name of some tired middlebrow conception of good taste. When you do that — when you don’t allow country to acknowledge that it lives in the same world as the Bangles and Scandal and John Cougar and Whitney Houston and Ne-Yo and Miley — you drain it of power, and freeze it into a museum piece, even while smugly patting yourself on the back for knowing more about what counts as genuine country than actual country fans who don’t mind hearing a few hooks in their songs — including all those mythical soccer moms.
>Real country music isn’t on its last legs, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find a point in time when any member of our staff has indicated or gestured as much<
By the way, as cranky as my posts have probably come off, I wasn’t implying that the critics at 9513 (a site which I find really useful, by the way — it’s just polls like these that frustrate me) think country music is on its last legs. My reference upthread was to the Sugarland song that placed second in the site’s poll (as I said, one of the dullest and most cliched songs on their fine 2008 album.)
>What we don’t do–and what we will never do–is limit our coverage to that music which “country” radio deems acceptable.<
Me neither. But just because I don’t let country radio limit my definition of country music doesn’t mean I have to limit myself *against* it. For what it’s worth, here are some country albums I liked last year that commercial country radio ignored (as did 9513, in several cases, though a few did land songs in your Top 50):
Ross Johnson - Make It Stop! The Most Of Ross Johnson (Goner)
Woodbox Gang - Drunk As Dragons (Alternative Tentacles)
The Road Hammers - Blood Sweat & Steel (Montage Music Group)
James McMurtry - Just Us Kids (Lightning Rod)
Waylon Jennings & the 357’s - Waylon Forever (Vagrant)
Chris Knight - Heart Of Stone (Drifter’s Choice)
The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band - The Whole Fam Damnily (Sideonedummy)
The Mother Truckers - Let’s All Go To Bed (Funzalo)
Reckless Kelly - Bulletproof (Yep Roc)
Old Crow Medicine Show - Tennessee Pusher (Nettwerk)
Kathleen Edwards — Asking For Flowers (Zoe)
Hayes Carll - Trouble In Mind (Lost Highway)
Rebecca Lynn Howard - No Rules (Saguaro Road)
The Boxmasters - The Boxmasters (Vanguard)
Too Slim And The Tail Draggers - The Fortune Teller (Underworld)
Mechanical Bull - A Million Yesterdays (Woodstock Musicworks)
Left Lane Cruiser - Bring Yo’ Ass To The Table (Alive)
“Me too, believe it or not. On both counts. But one of the things I’ve always loved about old hillbilly music (dating back *long* before Loretta”
My citation of Loretta Lynn was not, obviously, meant to directly relate to my love of hilbilly music. It was a separate example.
“It *wasn’t* a static, respectable, nutritous, sexless, purist folk form”
Yet you’re promoting country radio? Country radio is by nature all of those things–static, respectable, nutritious, sexless. That’s the problem with it.
“Unwilling to incorporate current styles of rhythm and melody emerging from places other than its own back yard. Country music has *always* changed its sound, ever since it came into being.”
This is true, but I would argue that change for the sake of change leads to music so far removed from its origins that it lacks the qualities which originally made that music attractive in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with blending pop and country, but when the pop side of the equation rejects the country side, the music ceases to really be country at all.
“What’s ridiculous is to pretend that it shouldn’t do so now, in the name of some tired middlebrow conception of good taste.”
Who is pretending that it shouldn’t change? The three songs which are noted in this article certainly don’t sound like carbon copies of country music from any other period in time, although they could be said to embrace certain traditional hallmarks. What I get from your response to all of this is that you simply don’t think country music is changing in the ways you think it should change.
As far as the Sugarland song, I think you’re seriously misreading that lyric, based on your reference to “last legs.” That song isn’t implying that it IS the last country song. It’s talking about the subjects that are traditionally at the emotional core of the style.
I’m kind of shocked at how few of these songs are on YouTube. I wanted to build a nice playlist to get me through the day, but…no dice.