If you walk into a writing room in Nashville on Music Row, you’ll hear the same song written every single day. We never get out of Nashville. We never get off of Music Row. When there’s 1000 songs written per day on Music Row, how many different songs can there be? They’re not. It’s the same beat, it’s the same melody, it’s the same words, it’s the same rhyme. It’s “truck” and “duck” and “muck.” It’s the same thing over and over. ●
- – Jimmy Wayne thinks songwriters should get out there and live some new experiences worth writing about.

I know this won’t be popular, but I hate the Lady A line ‘I’m a little drunk and I need you now’ from [the five week country No. 1 and pop crossover hit] ‘Need You Now.’ I think the word ‘drunk’ is so… vulgar. How about the words ‘gone’ or ‘lost?’ It would still convey the same sentiment. ●
- – Dawn Behnken, morning co-host at WFGE (Froggy 101) in State College, PA, finds the mention of drunkenness in a country song to be vulgar. In other words, Lady Antebellum is a little too outlaw for her.

CONTINUING BLUEGRASS GRAMMY ATTACK ADS: Thile and Daves, simply put, are pansies. ●
- – In preparation for the Grammys, Steve Martin has been tweeting attack ads aimed at some of his competitors in the Best Bluegrass Album category. Like Chris Thile and Michael Daves.

LAST BLUEGRASS GRAMMY ATTACK AD: Jim Lauderdale couldn’t play his way out of a paper bag. Especially one made of reinforced steel. ●
- – And Jim Lauderdale.

Wait until you see the album cover for new artist Casey James. Whee! He’s purty! ●
- – CMT’s Hazel Smith with some typically insightful commentary.

I wasn’t that good at socializing. I’m still not. ●
- – Ronnie Dunn.

I was 19 when I got in line for “American Idol.” Nobody knows who they are at 19; you’re not supposed to. I did this whole thing backwards. You come off a show like “Idol” and you’re a celebrity, but for what? You don’t have a song on the radio, you don’t have an album out. You’ve been singing cover songs and you haven’t done anything really. You have to develop backwards as an artist. Become a celebrity first and figure out “what kind of artist am I and where do I belong?” ●
- – Kellie Pickler on entering the music business via “Idol.”

So each guy has a different area of responsibility. I am not a very technical guy, I even struggle sometimes to answer emails. And I’m not on Twitter … so my role, and I think it originally happened because of my voice, but my role in the group is the kind of old-fashioned thing, it’s to do most of the interviews. ●
- – Oak Ridge Boy Richard Sterban explains why he’s almost always the one you hear from in interviews. As for the rest of the chore wheel: Joe Bonsall and Duane Allen handle tweeting and Facebooking, respectively, while William Lee Golden focuses mostly on beard maintenance.

People keep asking me, ‘What is country music?’ And so I tell them, ‘This is.’ ●
- – Emmylou Harris introducing “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” in concert.

Would I like to have airplay? Well, I’d be a fool and a liar to say no. But I am having fun. I’m creative, and I don’t have to watch my words or watch what I say. I don’t feel that pressure to go suck up to somebody, whether it’s radio or the record company. ●
- – Lorrie Morgan on having her major label days (most likely) behind her.

There were some on-sales through the fan club that I would say half to 60% of the tickets we were offering were being picked up by brokerage companies. They were joining en masse. If [brokers] didn’t go to the fan club and waited on the [general] on-sale, I can handle aspects of that. But they infiltrate the fan club and get pit tickets or front row tickets that we want our fans to have first shot at for being members of the Church Choir, they come in and scoop them up and mark them up thousands of percentage points and come back and try to sell them to the same fan, that’s the part that bothers me the most. If we wanted our tickets to be high we would have made ‘em high. ●
- – Ticket resellers have been joining Eric Church’s fan club to get access to heaps of tickets at discounted fan rates. Church’s camp isn’t too happy about it.

Basically, it’s a collection of very country songs. ●
- – Darrell Scott on his new album, Long Ride Home.

When I came to Nashville, there were not that many of us writing songs for a living. Most of us wrote by ourselves. Back in those days, we were so restricted to who we could write with because they wouldn’t split copyrights. Lord knows ASCAP wouldn’t split things with BMI and vice versa, so you had to write with people in your own camp. Those walls have come down. Now we can write with anybody and everybody will split copyrights. It has opened up a whole world of freedom for songwriting. ●
- – Bill Anderson puts a positive spin on Nashville’s turn toward co-writing.

This is a comeback, period. I’ve been gone for three or four years and I wanted this record to come out of the box and be as big or as good as Not A Moment Too Soon by McGraw. That was my goal. ●
- – For his next album, Chris Cagle is setting his sights as high as “Refried Dreams.” Elsewhere in the interview, he expresses his love of “southern rock and slammin’ country” of the type recorded by Jason Aldean and Brantley Gilbert. Getting excited for his return yet?

The threesome, comprised of Rhett Akins, Ben Hayslip, and Dallas Davidson, had sent their song “Beer on a Truckbed” to Shelton for his next album, sure that it would follow past hits such as “All About Tonight” and “Honey Bee” up the charts. They were stunned when word came back, in the form of a handwritten note from the singer himself, that Shelton would not be recording the song:

“Fun song, guys, but it’s basically just a bunch of country cliches wrapped around repetitions of the title phrase,” wrote Shelton. “In fact, it sounds like almost everything else you’ve written for the past 5 years. I think maybe you should start giving the listening public a little more credit for not being a bunch of dumb hicks that want a bunch of country stereotypes parroted back to them all the time.”

“I can’t stand this sh*t,” he concluded.

Shelton’s management team has gone into damage control mode, sending camo hunting gear gift baskets to the publishing companies of all three Peach Pickers and explaining that the singer is going through a difficult time following the recent passing of his father.

“Blake will be back to his usual self by the time we head into the studio again, and I’m sure we’ll put at least 6 or 7 other Peach Pickers songs on his next album,” promises regular Shelton producer Scott Hendricks. “I have a great one in hand right now called ‘Beer in a Bass Boat,’ so things are looking good.”

Find more satirical articles in the Fake News archive.

I know I don’t look like the type that would know all that old-school country stuff. … One night I bet a man $10 a song for every Haggard song I could play. He’d put $300 in that tip jar before he finally just gave up and left. ●
- – Thompson Square’s Keifer Thompson knows his Haggard. I wouldn’t have guessed.

People want to know what they’re going to be listening to before they hear it. And that’s so funny because it’s so easy to listen to music, and you’d think that people would just be more willing to listen to things without having to hear about it first. But, comparisons are funny, because like you said, all they really do is either burden you or make you feel like you have to work towards something that you never really thought you’d have to. You can’t really progress towards that comparison. You have to progress as your own artist. If you start to feel pressure about becoming that artist, it starts to affect the original vision of what you set out to do. ●
- – Caitlin Rose feels ill-served by comparisons to other singer-songwriters.

I mean, there are so many songwriters in this town. I don’t mind if I come to the car and you put a CD in my windshield wiper. I’m like, “Great!” I love to hear new stuff. I don’t want to hear the same stuff all the time. I love hearing music that people have sat down and poured their soul into. It’s fresh, it’s different and I’ve never heard it before. You never know, there could be a hit on there. ●
- – How much stuff do you think Kellie Pickler will start getting under her wiper blades NOW?

So during dinner I’m nodding a lot and making the proper facial expressions during conversations, really trying to contribute. Then I’d think, I should say something about this particular topic, so I’d write it down. And just about the time I got it written down and was about to hold it up to share it, the conversation would move on to another topic. So I’d write faster and people would say, ‘I can’t read that.’ ●
- – Keith Urban on vocal rest.

I’m a dainty musician. ●
- – Lady Antebellum’s Charles Kelley on fracturing his pinky. By bumping it against the edge of a table.

Is Richie Law the Next Scotty McCreery? ●
- – Taste of Country headline about some guy on the new season of American Idol. Can we please not start talking about the ‘next’ Scotty McCreery until we’ve managed to rid ourselves of the current one? Thanks.

Maybe some people who have a more commercial sound and know the business, that’s OK, but if you have something to say, you have to find a way to say it. I want to be as successful as possible, but I don’t want to change what I want to say, and how to say it to be there. Dwight Yoakam and The Dixie Chicks made great records with great integrity, so that’s a big role model for me. ●
- – Miranda Lambert on trusting her instincts.

Faith is an amazing thing. When you’re in a town with all these people who could change your life and they’re not doing anything about it, that’s where faith comes in. And yes, it’s frustrating, but I felt in my heart my whole life [that I was] drawn to Nashville, even as a kid. I figured I’d kick around until they kicked me out or gave me a chance. You get your hopes up at different times, and it kind of just drags you along. In misery. ●
- – Jerrod Niemann on lean years in Nashville.

They’re just kind of a nasty bunch of hillbillies, and I just got sick of it. So I wrote them a song, which is the most time-honored way of answering stuff, you know, particularly in country music. ●
- – Robert Earl Keen on “The Road Goes On and On,” his love letter to Toby Keith’s posse.

The “Nashville Sound” is not today’s country music, but great producers remain, among them Tony Brown, Frank Rogers, Keith Stegall and Frank Liddell. Others, like Don Cook, Buddy Cannon, Dann Huff and James Stroud, choose to hack it out factory style, focusing solely on giving radio what it wants, not showing what a singer can do (it’s possible to do both). ●
- – Rich Kienzle in a posting titled “How Nashville Producers Got the Power.”

I find there are so many people, they’re so bound to the idea of that tradition that you grow up to get married and have babies. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s wonderful, that’s the dream. It doesn’t work out for everyone. Some people are in their 40s, 50s and 60s and they haven’t found the one, and they’re not going to settle. There’s no expiration date to find true love. ●
- – Terri Clark on her song “The One.”

Radio is a beast that has to be fed, and he’s a guy who’s at a point in his career where every lick matters. This is an important album in his career because he needs to continue to have hit singles. ●
- – Wade Jessen, Billboard’s senior chart manager, on Dierks Bentley’s return to mainstream country following the grassy detour of “Up on the Ridge.” Bentley’s new album hits stores February 7.

West acknowledged he’s a big fan of Nelson and wanted to capitalize on a golden chance to perform for such a noted “captive audience.”
“Willie loved the song, he is a real outgoing individual” he added. ●
- – Hudspeth County, Texas, county commissioner Wayne West used the opportunity of prosecuting Willie Nelson on marijuana charges to… play him a self-written song. A captive audience, indeed.

Taylor will probably win, just because she’s in here. Let’s give her an award for filling up stadiums. I know Jason [Aldean] wants to win this, but he likely won’t. He picks great songs, but it’s getting old; you can’t tell them apart anymore. Eric [Church]‘s too hotheaded. But Lady A has done a great job of being right down the middle – they’re like the Black Eyed Peas of country music.
- – In the latest (Feb 3-10) issue of Entertainment Weekly, an unnamed country star who’s a “Nashville crossover with several Grammys already in his trophy case” thinks a Best Country Album win for Lady Antebellum is in order. Thanks to Carolyn for the tip.

In case you missed it, a bunch of smart folks (plus yours truly) commented on 2011 in country music for the Nashville Scene’s 12th Annual Country Music Critics’ Poll. It makes for pretty good reading.

It’s a direction hinted at by several of the songs Swift debuted on her Australian tour dates late last year. Among them, a new number titled “Summer 2003″ full of head-turning passages such as:

Like that night at the bum fight
When you kissed me out behind the cars
We ran laughing, jabbing strangers
With needles full of SARS, oh yeah

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, says our source.

“Based on what I’ve heard, there are some seriously troubling revelations on this new album,” says music journalist Ted Wyzneckowski, one of a select number of tastemakers invited to sit in on two of Swift’s recording sessions last week. “Drug-addled crime sprees with Martina McBride and Lee Ann Womack? Fixing the 2008 World Series? Multiple attempted kidnappings of Bob Lefsetz? We thought Taylor was the nice, sweet girl portrayed in most of her past songs, but she’s finally getting real with us. It makes for exciting, disconcerting listening.”

Swift reportedly also dips into family history for the first time, revealing her father’s mob ties and implicating various family members in most of the major conspiracies and unsolved crimes of the past 150 years.

Take another of her recent recordings, “Just Another Saturday.”

Calling bomb threats into all of the local schools
My uncle Pete, he was the gunman on the grassy knoll

Representatives at Swift’s record label refused to comment, citing fear for their lives.

“Beneath that poised, well-spoken exterior, the woman is clearly insane, dangerous, and exceedingly well-connected in the global crime underworld. I think she’s going to surprise a lot of people with this next album,” concluded our source in his final dispatch last week.

Wyzneckowski has not been seen or heard from since Saturday.

Find more satirical articles in the Fake News archive.

Three unique families will step into the spotlight as Bayou Billionaires, My Big Redneck Vacation and Swanderosa premiere on CMT this weekend. ●
- – CMT continues its focus on non-music programming…

1,071 views, 100% thumbs down ●
- – … not a popular move, judging from the stats reported at the bottom of the posting.

Stephanie Renae had just turned 15, but she did a grown-up version of Underwood’s “Inside Your Heaven,” and she did it well. I think I loved her for her song choice more than anything because it makes me think her country side may go pretty deep. ●
- – Alison Bonaguro on American Idol. Familiarity with “Inside Your Heaven,” the finale song of Carrie Underwood, suggests a deep knowledge of country music? If you say so.

I didn’t go in the studio thinking, ‘What will country radio play?’ I really dove into this record and I didn’t hold back and I fought. I didn’t pick and choose my battles. I fought all of them. And I got most of them. ●
- – Kellie Pickler on 100 Proof, out on Tuesday.

He is so versatile and so appreciated for all of the things that he has done. The fact that he shines in songwriting, shines in his solo career, shines in movies and does it all so tastefully. I got to meet him last year, and he’s just one of those people who has been in this business for years but you can tell it hasn’t chewed him up and spit him out. He just seemed like the human embodiment of gratitude. Sometimes you see these people who are just so—God—so affected by all of it, where ambition has taken precedence over happiness. But when I meet people who really embody this serenity of knowing that they have had an amazing life. . . . They just seem to be effervescent. ●
- – Taylor Swift on Kris Kristofferson.

EVANS, NY– Evans Police and New York State Park Police are warning people about a Craigslist scam advertising a concert this summer.
Investigators say the posting is dated 1-15-12 and advertises a country music concert to be held at Evangola State Park between July 13, 2012-July 15, 2012. The poster asked vendors for $1,000 to reserve their spot.
Officials say there is no concert. ●
- – So, uh, you might want to do some research before sending large amounts of money to random people on Craigslist. Go figure.

On Monday, a trial gets under way in Davidson County Probate Court to decide the proper division of the income from Reeves’ royalties — which earn as much as $400,000 annually for the estate of the late singer best known for the lyric “Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone.” ●
- – Jim Reeves still brings in up to $400,000 per year. Not bad for a guy who has been dead since 1964.

This is little more than a stylistic (albeit crude) way of saying that should you require something more substantial than a plastic cup, you are not a man.
ORLY?
Well, you know who disagrees with that statement. Jean Claude Motherf*ckin’ Van-Damme, that’s who. ●
- – Shea Serrano at LA Weekly’s West Coast Sound blog, in a posting titled “Toby Keith’s ‘Red Solo Cup’: Why This Song Sucks.”

Someone said to me one time, ‘You know, you can drive from Maine to San Diego, and you can get there in a car with headlights that only shine 30 feet in front of you.’ That’s how it feels: It feels like I’m going, but I can’t really see the specifics. Mostly what I think I’ve learned after decades of doing this, is if I have the courage to stay in touch with what really moves me, that is my best chance for moving other people and staying connected with an audience. ●
- – Kathy Mattea on making her way in the music business.

C-o-u-n-t-r-y, that’s kind of like part of the hook, and that became the name of the song — spelling out the word country. It’s one of the most fun songs we’ve ever written. It’s one of those songs we didn’t think about it a lot. It’s not really deep lyrics, but it’s got country roots, and it talks about our country and how much we love country music and how much we love the country lifestyle. That’s what it’s all about for us. ●
- – LoCash Cowboy Preston Brust on the duo’s new single. Sounds pretty enticing, right?

Once a decision was made to go forward, that record probably came together easier than any Dierks Bentley record had before because that’s where he lives creatively. ●
- – Mike Dungan says “Up on the Ridge” came naturally.

[Lee] Brice says he and a few other people were asleep at the time. He says they left the bus “and within of minutes it was in flames.” ●
- – Good news for Lee Brice: You and your bandmates escaped a bus fire yesterday in Arizona. Bad news for Lee Brice: You were quoted, or misquoted, by the AP sounding like a goober. Within of minutes?

Throughout the documentary, Chely, a devout Christian, showed great concern for young gay kids who face the difficult reality that they are perceived as “an abomination” and not even worthy of being alive. These kids are the motivating factor of why she may have committed career suicide. Her last CD sold less than any previous album she had ever released. ●
- – Look, I’m sure the Chely Wright documentary is indeed wonderful, but can we stop pretending that Lifted Off the Ground wouldn’t have been her worst-selling album if she had stayed in the closet? That’s sort of what happens when you go a decade without any big hits: successive albums are less successful. If anything, the publicity around her coming out probably helped cushion the drop by boosting her sales numbers a bit.

He said, ‘Oh, I’m not really sure I like that one.’ ●
- – Miranda Lambert recounts Blake Shelton’s reaction to “Dear Diamond” being the first song she wrote after they got engaged.