Showing posts with label Dwight Yoakam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dwight Yoakam. Show all posts

Monday, May 19, 2014

Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, and Genre Bending

If you read this blog at all, you know I don't really deal in negativity. Especially when it comes to my music posts. I like to feature good stuff that I've found. But what happened at the Billboard Music Awards Sunday night bears comment.

I'm talking about the Carrie Underwood/Miranda Lambert 70's Aerosmith/bad anthem mashup. It was, quite frankly, poor execution of a less-than-mediocre song. "Something Bad", it was. Don't believe me? Here's some video proof. Judge for yourself.



Don't get me wrong. I like both Carrie and Miranda. I'm just disappointed that this is what they came up with in collaboration. It's beneath both of them.

But that brings me to a bigger subject. This is a rock song. At least what I grew up knowing as rock. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that. In fact 70's, 80's and 90's style rock and pop has been co-opted by country music. For me that's a good thing. I like that kind of music.

But on the flip side, there seems to be no room for what is considered traditional country. And that's a shame. I was watching the top 20 on GAC or CMT (can't remember which) this past weekend, and there was not one song that even resembled traditional country. Most of the songs would be in heavy rotation on MTV or VH1 a few years ago.

Right now, there's no room for rock in pop, and no room for traditional country in country. I don't know where it goes from here, but some think that there may be a split in country music, which makes sense to me.

Eric Church is taking hard rock Grammy winners Halestorm out on tour with him for a few dates. That pairing makes more sense to me the than Dwight Yoakam, who will be on the whole tour. Since we're talking about Halestorm and Carrie Underwood, a couple of songs they recorded are practically interchangeable.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Eric Church, Dwight Yoakam and......Halestorm?

I'm not a huge Eric Church fan. However, I don't dislike his music. In fact, some of it I quite like.

Eric Church has released tour dates, along with opening acts/special guests. It is interesting enough that the entire tour will be with Dwight Yoakam. Props to the Eric Church camp on this pairing. But what is even more curious is the opening special guests.

Part of the tour will feature Brandy Clark. She deserves it. Very talented. Traditional-like country. Female artist. (And we could discuss the dearth of female artists on country music radio all day, but not here, not now).

Part of the tour will include the Brothers Osborne. I'm not familiar with them, but from what I've read, they are good.

The last leg of the tour intrigues me the most. The special guest/opening act is Halestorm. If you're not familiar with Halestorm, they won the most recent Grammy for Hard Rock/Heavy Metal (although cool for them, the Grammy's are clueless). Here's a sample of their music.





Before the total wasteland that country music became in 2013 and early 2014 with all the auto-tuned, vapid, hick-hop bro-country, devoid of anything of substance or female voices, country was much closer to classic rock and 80's hair metal than anything else.

I actually think this is a good pairing and would love to attend a show, if for nothing else than to judge the reaction.