Try as they might to play only bad, marginally country songs, country radio programmers sometimes accidentally let a smart, likable, non-pop recording sneak onto their playlists. While the error is usually caught early enough to swap the offending tune out for something by Lady Antebellum or Rodney Atkins, a few good songs inevitably stick around long enough to scale the charts and become bona fide hits. Here are the ten current country singles most deserving of that fate. Most are from major … [Read more...]

If the best revenge is living well, the best response to the bacchanalia of misguided musical choices and unrepentant celebrity worship that was last night's CMT Music Awards is... well, ignoring it as best we can and focusing instead on the good stuff. You know, the stuff that makes us want to associate ourselves with this genre of music rather than qualify every discussion of musical preference with "I like country, but not X." (The letter X is here meant to stand in for "Jason Aldean … [Read more...]

If you didn't find any new music to love last month, that's entirely your own fault: April will undoubtedly go down as one of the best release months in all of 2011, with fresh tunes from Alison Krauss, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Jason Isbell, Foster & Lloyd, Del McCoury, Diana Jones, and more. Here's your quick-and-dirty guide to some of our favorites. As usual, some of the more obscure tracks date back a bit further. Believe it or not, we're fairly busy people and can't always be online … [Read more...]

This is already a couple weeks late, so I'll keep my comments brief so as not to delay it any further. Here are Country California's favorite tracks (mostly) appearing on new albums released in March. Josh Kelley - "Baby Blue Eyes" from Georgia Clay Not the best song on Kelley's country debut (that's "Naleigh Moon"), but probably the best showcase of his falsetto. Who doesn't enjoy a good falsetto? Charley Pride - "Maybe Love Will Save the Day" from Choices All these decades later, … [Read more...]