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One day, Underwood will stop hemming and hawing and have adorable babies with her husband Mike Fisher. ●
- – Alison Bonaguro reports on her pet non-news story.

I have faith I’m going to get where I’m going to get. ●
- – Um, okay. Kip Moore.

It makes me laugh when I hear this Def Leppard-sounding record with a guy singing to me about how country he is. I appreciate them wanting to rock as hard as they want, but it’s humorous to me that, lyrically, they’re screaming about how hot your chick is in your truck. ●
- – Vince Gill on modern country’s hard-rock obsession.

Some people get really offended by the things I say, so it’s a nice disclaimer. I’ve only been hit once. It was in Milwaukee, not that long ago. He never said why he hit me. It could have been my shirt. ●
- – Todd Snider on his famous “18 minutes” speech.

Flatts’ latest single, “Banjo,” is a great redneck song if I’ve ever heard one. The late Earl Scruggs would have smiled at that song and patted his foot. ●
- – Now that Earl Scruggs is gone, pretty much the only person I’d trust to speak and endorse songs on his behalf is Hazel Smith, the woman who calls “Banjo” great.

When you get one of those songs that’s absolutely amazing, then you should sing about love. But 95 percent of love songs to me, I’m like, ‘It’s a chick flick in song form.’ ●
- – Carrie Underwood isn’t a big fan of love songs.

It’s hard to look at somebody who’s selling a million records a minute and say, ‘Hey, this isn’t really valid.’ I think it goes back to the individual. You have to follow your heart. But as an art form, when I hear most modern country music, I hear a craft and a product. I don’t feel the same soul that I felt from Hank Williams’ music or Bill Monroe’s music. ●
- – Marty Stuart, making the case for traditional country as eloquently as ever.

I think he’s the Clive Davis of his time. ●
- – Paul Deakin, drummer for The Mavericks, on Scott Borchetta.

Q: You’ve released in the neighborhood of 200 albums. What do you think of your latest, “A Mother’s Prayer”?
A: It’s just like all the rest of them. It’s taken off good. I like it and I’m proud of it. Hope to sell a million. ●
- – Let’s say you’re offered the once-in-a-lifetime chance to interview Ralph Stanley. Is “What do you think of your latest album?” really the sort of question to ask?

Well, I just think it’s horrible and a waste of time. Don’t even listen to it. ●
- – Lauren Alaina offers a simple solution to the complex issue of cyber-bullying.

We’re competing not necessarily based on dollars, but based on time available and creativity and flexibility, and I think that’s something that as companies consolidate and get bigger… it actually creates opportunity for us. ●
- – David Robkin, chief executive at the Bigger Picture Group, thinks a Universal-EMI merger would help independent labels by making the majors more inept than ever.

I’ve always wanted to make a tribute album, with songs from my favorites. I’d go deep and find songs that maybe nobody’s ever heard of, from Merle (Haggard) and Dolly (Parton) and Loretta (Lynn) and Kitty Wells. I also love Jamey Johnson’s music; he’s one of the best country singers we have today. He’s so real, like Waylon (Jennings) and Merle and George Jones. There’s nothing manufactured about him and his music. His life is a country song. ●
- – Kellie Pickler.

I think she has a chance to change the course of country music in a really neat way. I think we’ve lost our way, in a traditional sense, in country music. ●
- – Vince Gill on Ashley Monroe, whose next album he’s producing(!!!)

Also: Darrell Scott live on Mountain Stage.

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If you’re like me, I’m sure you will be watching Southern Nights on CMT. How could you dare miss it? I want to see who kisses who and why. ●
- – Hazel Smith is the opposite of me.

I’d love to hear a Johnny Cash come to town, somebody who absolutely defies what’s going on and takes you in another direction. I think that’s what we need to see. I’m hoping for it. Nobody’s been playing different. That hasn’t happened. That’s what I look for. ●
- – Merle Haggard. Who does Hag need to hear?

I’d gotten to the point where I was keeping people on their feet all night [at arena shows], and that wasn’t really what it was all about for me anymore. I wanted to be able to play more ballads. I want people to listen and not worry about partying all night. [...] I’m over the 17 song set list and singing the same thing every night. I want it to be a conversation. The thing about touring, for me, is that it’s so immediate. It’s about creating a memory and sharing this moment. It’s something you can’t download or recreate. It’s something you can tell someone about, but they can’t really experience it unless they were there. It’s really this intimate experience that you share with an audience. I want us all to walk out of there and feel like we’ve shared something. ●
- – Martina McBride on touring smaller theaters.

With Taylor, it’s not hard country, but her stuff to me is not nearly as pop sounding as some of the other acts that are on country radio. Now they’re sounding more like big pop bands that I heard in the ’70s and ’80s, that kind of sound. [...] She’s a great writer. I’ve heard some people sometimes pick at her about her writing, writing about teenage type things, but even that is written well. ●
- – Alan Jackson comes to the defense of Taylor Swift.

She finished third [on 'Nashville Star'] and she said, ‘I’m bigger than the person that won.’ And not saying that in a rude way, but she goes, ‘You don’t have to finish first to win ultimately. You just do your best and that’s what’s going to help you win.’ I take that to heart and I finished third on Blake’s team and that means a lot to me. ●
- – Ousted “The Voice” contestant RaeLynn on motivational words from Miranda Lambert.

We wrote it in a way where I think most girls when hear it will go, ‘That’s me! That’s me! That’s totally me! I’m messy and I like to go out and party.’ Most girls will say, ‘This song is about me.’ ●
- – Rhett Akins on “Hot Mess.” Yep, those Peach Pickers sure do know women.

I’ll speak directly to one [thing Dick Clark said], although I’m paraphrasing him: ‘I know what I work in is fluff. It is feel-good stuff that may not be the most deep or cutting-edge.’ He did use the word ‘fluff’ in talking about some of the shows like ‘American Bandstand,’ the New Year’s specials, just a myriad of productions he was responsible for. I love that he knew himself in that way. ●
- – Jennifer Nettles appreciates Dick Clark for appreciating good fluff.

I’m better one on one than I am in a group. I’m not the most socially at ease person that I know, [but] I’m better than I used to be. To be honest, if I’ve got nothing to say, I won’t say anything. I’m not a good BSer. I’m terrible at that, and people that know me respect that.
- – Carrie Underwood (via Billboard).

He loved it. I was so curious as to what he was gonna think, and I wasn’t sure how he was gonna take it. I wanted him to take it exactly the way he took it. … I was in New York on the album tour when he heard it. We cried over the phone. But it was really sweet. It was a good moment for us to share. That song helped bring us even closer, and that was my goal. ●
- – Kellie Pickler on “The Letter,” the 100 Proof song addressed to her father.

I went back to what Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family sang about when they were coming up with what we call country music today. It was the working man, the jailhouse, hard times, good times, it was love, and all those things that people make fun of country music for these days. At the same time, they are very real. If you don’t believe it, turn on the news or pick up the paper or go out on the road and you’ll see the trucks on the highway. Those people in the trucks live real lives, and they’re my fellow road dogs. ●
- – Marty Stuart on getting back to the heart of country.

I try not to get frustrated because it just is what it is. This business is a (expletive) obstacle course. It truly is. If you get frustrated, you’re sort of just being a (wuss). Things are tough all over. It’s my job to figure it out and to try and stay optimistic and inspired through it all. Because that’s what my heroes did. ●
- – Jack Ingram on life in the music business.

I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t do this. I’m a good house painter and things like that, and there’s nothing wrong with that work, but I don’t want to do it full-time. I’m just grateful to be here today, for a lot of reasons, but especially because it’s not a good time in the business, and you’re guaranteed nothing unless you’re willing to go out and just grate your ass over it. ●
- – Life in the music business? Worth grating your ass over, says Justin Townes Earle. Now there’s an image.

You get frustrated still when they won’t play your new material. They’ll play all of your older stuff, but you can’t get exposure for your newer songs. ●
- – Maybe it’d make Howard Bellamy feel better to know that they’re not really playing much of his old material either? Just trying to help.

I think about this every time I do an interview, and we don’ t seem to ask other people this kind of a question. They do a different job, but they have the same amount of time commitment. It’s just because we’re in the entertainment industry that we’re asked that. This is what I do for a living. I go to work and when I go home, I get to be dad and a husband. ●
- – How does Craig Morgan balance work and family? Just like anyone else, really.

No matter how much I try to write a song about characters and the interactions they’re having, no matter what I do, I can never make it not come from my own experiences. As an artist, you’re a victim to your environment. I’d like to make up a scenario, but my writing ends up having a lot to [do] with things I’ve felt and observed. ●
- – Jack White has a new solo album coming out tomorrow.

Speaking of "distasteful," how about using a Twitter feud as a marketing ploy? Image via Nashville.com.

Click the bullet after each quote to visit the source.

Remember now, you all call it country. I call it pop music. It’s American pop music. That’s why when you go to the Grammys now, it’s not [only] the country category. Country artists are winning song of the year now, record of the year. … That never happened before, to the point now where it’s become dead center of what America’s about. ●
- – Lionel Richie on the pervasiveness of country.

I haven’t met her. I don’t know if I am supposed to. I have her on this pedestal. I grew up singing her songs, and me and my mom used to do dishes to her records. We had a record player in the kitchen. I used to skip school and go to Butcher Hollow [pronounced ‘Holler’] and write in my journal, ‘Oh Loretta, I wanna be just like you.’ ●
- – Angaleena Presley on Loretta Lynn.

In so many ways, it’s like crawling into my dad’s stereo speakers. That’s what it was like for me. ●
- – Keith Urban on performing with Don Williams.

I had written that song and it was one of the biggest fights that Porter (Wagoner) and I had ever had. He had produced that on me… and he thought we should put it out as a single. Emmylou [was] a friend and she was down at the studio. We were playing the stuff and she turned to me and she said, ‘Dolly I HAVE to have that song,’ and Porter said, ‘Well you can’t have that song because we’re going to put that out on Dolly.’ I said, ‘She can have that song’ and he said, ‘She can’t have that song!’ ●
- – Dolly Parton prevailed, and now “To Daddy” is best known as an Emmylou classic.

He’s recorded some amazing songs over the years like ‘The Good Stuff’ and some slower ballads. But you won’t really hear him play those at a show, ‘cause he’s always about keeping it up tempo and gettin’ people rockin’ and rollin’. ●
- – Jake Owen on why Kenny Chesney only performs non-amazing songs at his concerts.

There’s a lot of the songs that I have that people really love to hear and sing along to and relate to. And there’s a lot of the songs that are meant for pure live purposes that people have a good time at a live show, but they don’t necessarily take anything away from it spiritually. So there’s always kind of a catch-22. ●
- – You know, I’m not sure that Jake Owen has a firm grasp of what actually qualifies as a catch-22.

No one knows as much as I do about country music. ●
- – Dierks Bentley gets a little carried away.

But we’re already under judgment, just like yesterday or two days ago, a school in Boston tried to take God out of “God Bless the USA.” [...] The joke’s on them; God is love, and they can’t get God out of it anyway. It just shows you how politically correct and how spiritually bankrupt America is. ●
- – Ricky Skaggs. And here I thought the commercial milking of “God Bless the USA” in all our times of national instability was the height of spiritual bankruptness…

My process doesn’t always start with music or words; it’s a mixture of both. Sometimes I may have an idea and match it up with music and sometimes I may have a cool riff on the guitar and the words come in. ●
- – “But usually, I don’t have any good ideas or cool riffs and I just write anyway,” continued Brantley Gilbert.

I have a real affinity for them — whether it be Blake Shelton’s ‘Ol’ Red’ or Reba’s ‘The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia.’ They are really so well crafted that they really attracted themselves to me. ●
- – Country songs were really drawn to HLN host Robin Meade. You’d think it’d be the other way around, but no.

What he was singing about that night made me feel less like a freeloader and more like a free spirit. All of a sudden, it felt like the life I was leading had some value. I realized from watching him that taking a life like mine and adding three chords is probably where a song like ‘Mr. Bojangles’ came from. I felt like I had the qualifications to be a songwriter. ●
- – Todd Snider on his first encounter with Jerry Jeff Walker, to whom he pays tribute on Time As We Know It: The Songs Of Jerry Jeff Walker, due out April 24. Song samples at the linked title, while the bullet link leads to a great New York Times article on the project.

If [Lyle Lovett's] disinclination toward mainstream country-star status wasn’t evident from his urbane, tailored suits and tousled, upside-down-cake hairdo… ●
- – Tousled, upside-down-cake hairdo? Kudos to you, Steve Morley at Country Weekly.

Also: An interesting infographic on ACM Awards social media engagement.