Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real Play Major Role in “A Star Is Born” Remake
A new version of the feature film A Star Is Born is on the way starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, and a host of notable names from the the cool side of country music are included in the movie and...
View ArticleMovie Review –“A Star Is Born” 4.0
How many times can you remake the same movie and it still be good? If it's a classic story told with passion, is well-acted and directed, and expertly updated for the modern context, the answer would...
View ArticlePop Albums More Country Than Many Mainstream “Country” Albums
When you hear certain albums from some of country music's mainstream performers, it's patently clear to large portions of the audience that these albums aren't pop country, they're just pop, period....
View ArticleObservations From 2011 Grammy Awards
I feel the need to iterate to you some observations for last night's 2011 Grammy Awards, if only to get them off my chest. This is not entirely going to be a bitch fest. Every year they air the...
View ArticleThis Lady Gaga “Gone Country” Thing
Ah ha. So everyone wants to tell you that pop megastar Lada Gaga has "gone country". And everyone wants to know what I think about it. Well to be honest with you, I think it is a brilliant stroke of...
View ArticleHank III in Billboard Top 10 For All The Wrong Reasons
This week the music world was agog that Lady Gaga topped the charts with her latest album Born This Way selling over 1 million copies. But I was neither shocked nor appalled that Lady Gaga made #1....
View Article“No Music Skills Required” Compounds Music Glut (ujam)
We sit at the crossroads of the great technology paradigm. For all the music problems technology solved for artists and fans, it is now creating new ones, principally an astronomical glut in the sheer...
View ArticleVinyl & Women Increase Sales, Solve What SOPA Can’t
Something remarkable happened in music in 2011: sales stabilized. What the music industry is ignoring, as well as virtually everyone else in the SOPA argument, is this dramatic and unexpected...
View ArticleIs Pop Music Now Trumping Pop Country in Substance?
I don't have any data to back my assertions up. But I'll be damned that if in 2014, your average pop star isn't more likely to outpace your average country star when it comes to substance and depth in...
View ArticleLuke Bryan & Taylor Swift Lead Stars with Worst Vocal Ranges
Yes, yes, it's the age-old complaint that music doesn't sound as good as it used to, and that the singers of today aren't nearly as good as the ones we grew up with. Though there is certainly a bit of...
View ArticleThe Band Perry’s Big Fat Yellow Mistake
The color yellow was picked to be the primary backdrop for the relaunch. The image of a diamond shaped like a heart was selected as a logo (even though that's not the way a true heart-shaped diamond is...
View ArticleThis Kesha vs. Dr. Luke vs. Sony Business
Yes, it's very easy, and very popular and seductive to rally behind Kesha in this matter. The press and popular culture love to hate stories about women being kept down or even abused by overbearing...
View ArticleLady Gaga’s “A-YO” Is NOT a Country Song
Saying that a massive pop star has just released a "country" song has become the Rickroll of 2016. Enterprising entertainers looking to troll popular media and the gullible Millenial journalists who...
View ArticleQuit Trying To Politicize Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl Performance
Dammit, can't we do anything in American without someone wanting to inject their political vitriol into it and make a moment of unification into a vehicle for polarization? God blessed, we're inundated...
View ArticleAlbum Review – Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real
In simple musical skills, the talent of Lukas might even surpass that of his famous sire. Of course songwriting and style are a bit harder to tabulate, but Lukas is no slouch in these departments...
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