Janice Brooks
From:
Pleasant Gap Pa
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Posted 1 Jan 2004 9:12 am |
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Take Country Back
http://www.takecountryback.com/best2003.htm
USA Today Best and Worst from Brian Mansfield
From the USA Today website:
How (and how not) to create a country album
By Brian Mansfield, USA TODAY
Best
1. Patty Loveless, On Your Way Home. Loveless takes the bluegrass
lessons learned from Mountain Soul and applies them to contemporary
country with breathtaking results.
2. Vince Gill, Next Big Thing. Gill tops things off with Next Big
Thing and Young Man's Town, two of the best songs ever written about
Nashville's star-making machinery.
3. George Strait, Honkytonkville. At 51, Strait continues to turn out
great country albums as if it were easy.
4. T. Graham Brown, The Next Right Thing. Country's great white soul
man sings about recovery, forgiveness and redemption with the
conviction of a man who's been through it all.
5. Brooks & Dunn, Red Dirt Road. Roots run deep on this duo's return
to form, starting with a glorious Stones knock-off and continuing
through great coming-of-age songs.
6. Livin', Lovin', Losin': Songs of the Louvin Brothers. Executive
producer Carl Jackson keeps this salute to these masters of sibling
harmony focused and pulls outstanding performances from many
intriguing pairings.
7. Brad Paisley, Mud on the Tires. If such cleverly realized songs as
Celebrity and Little Moments aren't your cup of tea, check out his
guitar work, some of the most adventurous picking you'll hear in
mainstream country.
8. Dierks Bentley. Bentley has one of the best grasps of country
history of any young artist, earning him the respect of bluegrassers
and honky-tonkers alike.
9. Reba McEntire, Room to Breathe. A solidly country turn, with some
of her best story songs, including Moving Oleta, about a man watching
Alzheimer's slowly, too slowly, take his wife from him.
10. Marty Stuart and the Fabulous Superlatives, Country Music.
Country's musical conscience frames this album with Porter Wagoner and
Johnny Cash covers, then sings with Merle Haggard about America's farmers.
Worst
1. Tywanna Jo Baskette, Fancy Blue. Baskette writes songs like Phoebe
Buffay on Friends, but ever so much more precious. And she really,
really means it.
2. The American Song-Poem Anthology. Fascinatingly bad, in a way that
only albums with song titles such as Blind Man's Penis can be.
3. Marcel, You, Me and the Windshield. It's never a good sign when a
would-be country singer admits his aspirations to MTV stardom in the
very first verse of his very first song. Especially when he follows it
with a verse about singing Air Supply in a karaoke bar.
4. Chuck Barris & the Hollywood Cowboys, Confessions of a Dangerous
Singer. If Barris hadn't already created The Gong Show, someone else
would have needed to, just for this collection of standards and oldies.
5. The Planets, Classical Graffiti. This pseudo-classical octet is
best known, at least on this side of the Atlantic, for sparking a
copyright-infringement action from the John Cage estate over a piece
of silence. But their vandalizings of Ravel, Bizet and Rodrigo ought
to get them arrested.
6. Hayseed Dixie, Kiss My Grass. A Hillbilly tribute to Kiss. Hayseed
Dixie gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, "We'll drive you crazy."
7. Kids Country Hits. A bunch of 9-year-olds sing Who's Your Daddy.
What's next, Beer for My Horsies?
8. Rodney Atkins, Honesty. Atkins has a top 10 hit and writes, but he
still sounds as if he's been digging through Tim McGraw's trash cans
for material.
9. Rushlow, Right Now. Few mainstream country albums are truly
horrendous. Most, like this one from ex-Little Texas frontman Tim
Rushlow's new band, rise at least to a certain level of mediocrity.
10. Ray Benson, Beyond Time. The Asleep at the Wheel leader should
have listened to Duke Ellington and Irving Mills: It don't mean a
thing if it ain't got that swing.
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Janice "Busgal" Brooks
ICQ 44729047
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