The redundant “love song about a relationship feeling like a love song” concept has received recent creative treatments from Jason Michael Carroll, whose likable “Livin’ Our Love Song” owed much of its charm to its attention to detail, and Taylor Swift, who used a similar sonic-based metaphor in “Our Song.”

After a long radio drought, Sara Evans’ “Feels Just Like a Love Song” joins that list with the requisite love song imagery: The sun is shining, the laughter is flowing and the stars are twinkling, along with some other feel-good images I wouldn’t normally associate with a fairytale romance. (Sun-lit hardwood floors? Feathered beds? Perhaps Martha Stewart is an anonymous fifth songwriter.)

To Evans’ credit, after the personal drama she publicly battled over the past three years, she pulls off the premise with an authentic performance that finds the singer shouting her relationship bliss from the rooftops. Unfortunately, Evans has to shout pretty loud to be heard over the overwrought production choices made in the song, the first single off her sixth studio album due later this year.

Despite starting with a catchy Swift–like beat (the teen queen’s producer Nathan Chapman lends his services here), the tune quickly delves into a mishmash of beats fit for a Top 40 dance floor number. Whereas the more restrained verses showcase the 2006 CMA Female Vocalist of the Year’s singing chops, the cacophonous and confusing chorus drowns her in a sea of backup singers and instruments. For a voice best complimented by fiddle, steel and acoustic guitars, the noise only highlights the uncomfortable symptoms of auto-tuning evident on some of Evans’ notes.

At one point in the bridge, the production and backup singers drown her out to the point the lyrics are nearly inaudible, although the generic, disjointed lyrics that are distinguishable don’t offer much of a reward: “The way we talk, the way you smile/You kiss my lips it drives me wild/I never knew until I felt your touch/That I could need someone so much.”

“Feels Just Like a Love Song” is a long way from the Evans’ traditional roots, and undermines her penchant for choosing interesting, twangy songs that regularly capture rural coming-of-age young women and the struggles they face. In the hands of a borderline talented pop tartlet, Evans’ latest effort would be remixed to include the rapper du jour and pumped through dance club speakers across the country. Evans is too good for a song meant to drown out a singer’s weaknesses.

Listen: Sara Evans – “Feels Just Like a Love Song”

As a songwriter, Anthony Smith has a catalog that ranges from weighty (“John J. Blanchard”) to catchy (“If That Ain’t Country”) to middling (“What Do You Think About That”). His first single for Stroudavarious (the label founded and run by Nashville behemoth James Stroud) however, amounts to less than any, or all, of those. “Bringin’ Back The Sunshine” is a radio-chasing piece of fluff so far removed from the rest of Smith’s legacy that it sounds like the work of someone else–someone far less talented.

It is not the fact that it’s fluff that makes it bad, it’s the fact that it’s both fluffy and insignificant. Great fluff is great because it provides easily digestible hooks that stick in our heads, but which also have some amount of correlation to our lives. Here, Smith is “Riding in on a stampede of lighting,” presumably to “bring back the sunshine” to an ailing relationship. But his declarations of intent are abstract and unmemorable, and lyrics like, “Guess we got a little off track/But love knows a way back through the pouring rain,” are indicative of the unforgivable lack of description and story built into this song.

Especially disturbing is the fact that all of this comes from an artist who recently proclaimed in a mySpace blog: “Be Creative and Original and they’ll call you an outlaw, Be safe and down the middle and they’ll hand you awards. It is impossible to be safe and create a masterpiece.”

It seems Smith has chosen the latter.

There is no reason to remember this. It may be touching and it may be emotionally true, but it is neither unique nor interesting. And that makes it beyond disposable.

Frankly, it’s disappointing that a writer of Smith’s caliber would produce something this irrelevant. Disappointing, but not surprising—in a format that aims to appeal to everyone (and offend no one) this is just another song that lacks any hint of character which would make it worthy of appeal in the first place.

Listen: Anthony Smith – “Bringin’ Back The Sunshine”

Armstrong sang a handful of songs on The Johnny Cash Show, but by far the highlight was when he teamed up with the show’s host to perform “Blue Yodel #9,” this time with Cash filling the role of Rodgers. The result is quite simply spellbinding: two iconic figures of American music singing and yodeling one of the finest works in the canon.

About this collaboration, Mazor concludes:

Armstrong and Cash had, together, summoned up the innovator who had injected his own wit, rhythm, sexuality, ego, aggression, and love of performing itself into the bloodstream of most every sort of popular American music that might be called ‘rooted.’ Whether that music would, over time, come to be labeled country, rock and roll, bluegrass, blues, western, jazz, or American pop, wherever there was space for music of the body and heart, not just of the spirit and head, Jimmie Rodgers would be there.

This is the focus of Meeting Jimmie Rodgers; it’s not a biography—though there is quite a bit of biographical information given throughout the work, some of it rather surprising: did you know The Singing Brakeman once owned an Orange Julius stand?—but rather the role Rodgers played in shaping the landscape of American music. From Ernest Tubb to The Cramps, it seems nearly every musical act since the Depression owes a little something to him, and author Barry Mazor analyzes most of them, unraveling the DNA of American music in an attempt to get at the essence of who he calls America’s “original roots music hero.” By doing so, Mazor reconstructs Rodgers not as a figure on a pedestal, but as a living presence, “whole and ready simply to be heard.”

Each chapter focuses on a different facet of Rodgers’ influence (Western music, rock and roll, the “Blue Yodelmania” craze, etc.) and ends with a playlist of songs by Rodgers and those he influenced. Those who aren’t big readers are encouraged to at least check out these playlists in order to get the gist of Mazor’s argument. Divided into categories such as “Key Rodgers or Rodgers-like blues verses and reference on record before Jimmie Rodgers recorded them” and “Jimmie Rodgers in Africa,” these lists aren’t only informative, they’re bursting at the seams with excellent music, a fair amount of which is in the public domain and thus available for your listening pleasure on the Internet.

Exhaustively researched, Meeting Jimmie Rodgers draws upon a number of sources, including never-before-published letters written by Jimmie to his wife Carrie shortly before his death. There are also a handful of interviews with now-deceased musicians Don Helms, Hank Thompson, Eddy Arnold, Odetta, and Charlie Walker, making their contributions to this text perhaps some of their final statements on the man who so strongly influenced their music.

Mazor’s writing style—straightforward yet informal, with the semifrequent sarcastic aside—has the potential to turn some off, depending on how serious and dry you like your nonfiction. Nevertheless, reading Meeting Jimmie Rodgers is a bit like talking to the smartest, wittiest person at the record store…if your local record store was frequented by one of country music’s most prolific journalists and historians.

Those new to Rodgers may want to begin with Nolan Porterfield’s biography Jimme Rodgers: The Life and Times of America’s Blue Yodeler. But perhaps more important than Rodgers’ “life and times” is the incredible influence he’s had on American music for the past 80 years. And for that, there’s two invaluable sources: your record player, and Barry Mazor.

The musical change coincided with the witty West Virginian’s rise to headliner status: The aptly titled Time Well Wasted Tour saw him booking arenas for the first time. Since then, even with the surprisingly spotty 5th Gear and indulgent Play intervening, a Paisley single has not once missed the top of the charts. His 10 consecutive number one hits are more than Chesney, McGraw, or Jackson have ever experienced. Even George Strait hasn’t had that sort of a run since the second half of the ’80s. Brad Paisley is on a roll.

American Saturday Night is a timely reminder of what the country audience has come to like about him. Even when the subject matter is typical, his keen eye for detail and famous sense of humor make his treatments fresh and interesting. Even his guitar playing seems to come complete with a knowing smirk.

Although the theme here is purportedly Saturday night, this feels more like Paisley’s fatherhood album. There are lots of grandpa mentions, lots of boyhood memories, lots of generational musings. Love songs like the bluesy “She’s Her Own Woman” and “I Hope That’s Me” exhibit a maturity lacking in some of the singer’s past ballads, sounding rather adult-like by comparison. The boyish charm of “Me Neither” reappears in “Catch All the Fish” and “The Pants,” but now feels more like a good-natured wink to Paisley’s past than an artistic direction in itself. The heart of the album is in songs like “Welcome to the Future” and the title track, which see Paisley easing into an armchair and commenting on the world around him from a smart historical perspective.

It’s a very good album, and a very rare one (for 2009, at least) in that it seems to have been crafted by an artist rather than recorded by a singer. But one could say the same about most of Paisley’s previous albums; he’s known as an album artist for good reason. So what is it about this latest effort that has many people calling it his best to date?

Until now, Paisley’s albums have been structured like variety shows: funny songs, love songs, a weeper or two, an instrumental, a talking song, a gospel number. That structure very clearly marked Paisley as a different sort of artist. What other contemporary stars were giving George Jones, Bill Anderson, and Little Jimmy Dickens time to joke around on their albums? Or taking the time to feature standards like “Farther Along” and “When We All Get to Heaven”? For Paisley’s traditional base, those gestures meant something.

Aside from the reprises of “Welcome to the Future,” American Saturday Night finds Paisley adopting a more typical contemporary album structure. Coupled with the thematic consistency of the material, the abandonment of the variety show format makes this album feel unified and whole in a way that previous albums haven’t. Paisley has said that the difference is that this time he means it. Indeed, this may be the best and most earnest encapsulation of the character of Brad Paisley. But that’s different than calling it his best album.

What the album has in a strong sense of character and personal connection, it lacks in diversity and differentiation between songs. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the two songs that have been singled out as highlights by reviewers and fans alike–the title track and “Welcome to the Future”–both show up in the first 15 minutes. After that, it’s easy to get lulled into a semiconscious state by a series of enjoyable songs that you might have trouble remembering several minutes from now. It doesn’t help that two of the album’s weakest songs, the paint-by-numbers “Then” and lightweight “Water,” show up right after the first 15 minutes to kill some of the early momentum. The album features bits of Paisley’s sharpest songwriting so far, but the setting is such that they’re often washed away in the persistent tide of competent sameness.

Once a wry traditionalist upstart, Brad Paisley has turned into a major mainstream headliner. With American Saturday Night, he’s sanding away some of the rough edges and sounding more comfortable than ever in the role of contemporary superstar. Goodbye, Little Jimmy Dickens telling jokes that are only sort of funny. Goodbye, requisite gospel standard. Welcome to the future. Welcome to a Brad Paisley primed to compete on the level of Chesney and McGraw. The change has been underway for several years now, but American Saturday Night is the most convincing evidence yet that Paisley has mastered his new direction and will remain on top for a long time to come.

Forgive me if I take a moment to mourn the guy we lost along the way.

Charlie Faye – Wilson St.
Release: July 14, 2009
Discover: MySpace | Website

From the press release:
Austin singer-songwriter Charlie Faye releases her debut Wilson St. on July 14th. Showcasing her sultry voice, the release also demonstrates Charlie Faye’s extraordinary ability to capture the American experience as a songwriter. Aptly named, Wilson St., is much more than an album title or even a street name to Charlie Faye; it is a beautiful tapestry of her experiences across this country, from New York to texas, sewn together through lyric and melody over state lines.

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Brandon Rickman – Young Man, Old Soul
Release: June 30, 2009
Discover: MySpace
Purchase: Amazon | iTunes

From the press release:
Brandon Rickman has created a definite buzz over the past several years in the Bluegrass and Country community with his distinctive vocals and songwriting talents. Young Man, Old Soul is his first solo album and comes right on the heels of the 1 Bluegrass Unlimited album “No Turning Back” from the Lonesome River Band of which Brandon is their lead singer and guitarist.

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John Mellencamp – Life, Death, Live And Freedom
Release: June 23, 2009
Discover: MySpace | Website
Purchase: Amazon | iTunes

From the press release:
John Mellencamp’s new LIVE album, Life Death LIVE and Freedom, is in stores now! The album features live versions of tracks from John’s 2008 album Life Death Love and Freedom recorded during John’s 2008 tour.

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Brad Cotter – Right On Time
Release: June 9, 2009
Discover: MySpace | Website
Purchase: Amazon | iTunes

From the press release:
After spending nearly two years on a promising new project which was sadly scrapped due to creative differences, Brad is back, working with one of the writer / producers of his Sony “Patient Man” collection.

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