Tag Archives: Music

Don’t let Chris Stapleton be country radio’s flavor of the month

I will admit that before last Wednesday’s CMA Awards, I had not listened to a whole lot of Chris Stapleton. I heard the track ‘Traveller’ a handful of times and maybe a couple other tracks, but never the Traveller album as a whole. I made myself change that the very next day.

I immediately regret not doing so earlier.

The rumblings have made it here to the upper Midwest that the industry loved Chris Stapleton and he was compelling to me, but I just simply never got around to listening. Even with the word that the industry loved him, I doubted he’d win a single CMA Award nonetheless sweep the three awards (new artist, album and male vocalist) he was up for.

Now it’s history that it was Stapleton’s night. Between the three big wins and the amazing performance of ‘Tennessee Whiskey’ and ‘Drink You Away’ with Justin Timberlake, Stapleton is the main thing the music world has been talking about for the past week.

His sudden national stardom is showing, too. Stapleton got to number one on the Billboard 200 this past week, selling over 153,000 copies of Traveller. Plus, Stapleton’s new single, ‘Nobody to Blame’, was the second most added song on country radio according to Country Aircheck, only behind Eric Church’s ‘Mr. Misunderstood’.

This is all great, but it’s only great if this stardom lasts.

Stapleton’s wins have spurred up the conversation that he might save country music, but to that I have multiple rebuttals.

Jamey Johnson had the same phenomenon happen to a lesser extent when ‘In Color’ won Single of the Year at the CMAs and ACMs in 2009. That has rolled into five singles from Johnson since ‘Color’ with the highest charting at number 34.

It happened with Kacey Musgraves in 2013 after she won the Grammy for Best Country Song for ‘Merry Go ‘Round’ and the Grammy for Best Country Album for ‘Same Trailer Different Park’. Musgraves’ success there has resulted in only one more top ten single despite producing some of the best country music in the last handful of years.

Stapleton is really good and he’s made a fan of me, but I don’t want this to all equal out to nothing again. The music that Stapleton is making is what country music should be and a lot of people agree with that, but yet people don’t demand that and that’s what has been putting a limit to radio success of him and Kacey Musgraves before him.

If you truly think that Stapleton’s beautiful country music should be what is actually heard on country radio, make sure the radio station you listen to knows. Request the heck out of Stapleton, and Musgraves while you’re at it, and let the music directors know that changes need to be made.

Country radio is paying attention to Chris Stapleton, but they’ll only pay attention for so long. Listeners need to make sure that Stapleton doesn’t turn into the flavor of the month… or the flavor for only the next two weeks.

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Welcome Back, My Favorite, Garth Brooks

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Growing up I had two songs that I vividly remember loving and blasting out of our stereo. Naturally, one came from my dad’s favorite musical act and the other came from my mom’s. One was ‘If You’re Gonna Play In Texas (You Gotta Have A Fiddle In The Band)’ by Alabama, the other one was ‘Friends In Low Places’ by a man named Garth Brooks. I chose one of these two to be my favorite musical act and that artist fully came out of a halftime retirement today.

Garth Brooks is the reason that I love country music and more than likely the reason I love music as a whole. Everyone has, or at least I hope they do, an artist that they can connect to on some weird high level. I feel I’ve had that with multiple artists, but never for so long and as profound as Garth Brooks.

Music always connects itself with a memory. When you hear a certain song you are instantly zapped right back to the date and time when something major went down while that song was in the background. I have those same feelings with Garth Brooks albums. Not just singles, but when I think about a whole damn collection I am brought back in time.

Double Live? Dear Lord, I remember my mom picking me up from daycare and presenting to me a two-CD set of Garth Brooks music. I remember being fascinated by the multiple covers Garth had and that the one that mom picked up had the flags of all the nations Garth had visited on his world tour. I thought that was so cool.

Scarecrow?  New albums usually drop on a Tuesday and back then Mom still bowled on Tuesday nights, I was in bed already by the time she got home so I woke up early the next morning to listen to Garth’s latest endeavor while eating breakfast. The first line in the album is ‘I can hear the highway calling…’ which sure sounds a lot like ‘I can hear the highway, Collin…’ which was pretty awesome to a 13-year-old.

Skipping ahead to his latest release of Blame It All On My Roots: Five Decades of Influences, I went to work early that day so I could swing through Wal-Mart so I could play songs from it on the radio that afternoon. I kept the receipt in my wallet for months because I was still shocked how cheap the thing was.

I could go on and on about Garth, because I’m really just happy to have him back. I loved Garth ever since I can remember, but I’ll admit that I didn’t always claim him as my favorite artist. It was weird too. It’s hard to explain to people that your favorite artist is going to come back, but not for ten years or so. I had love affairs with The Beatles and Eric Church and Bruce Springsteen and I love them all still very much, but the man, my man, is back.

It’s expected In November that Garth will release his first new material that ships to every store since 2001’s Scarecrow and I’ll be there to get it. I counted down the days until Eric Church’s The Outsiders, I got Springsteen’s High Hopes the day it came out, but I hope I can get some sleep between now and November. Garth can’t come fast enough.

Welcome back, Garth Brooks AKA my favorite artist.