litlover12

This is an AWESOME couple of months for us weirdos who are opera, Broadway, and country fans. :-) Midland just released their debut album (and it is GREAT), Anna Netrebko, Patti LuPone, and Shania Twain have new albums out Friday (on my birthday, squee!), and Juan Diego Florez and Chris Young in October. It's like someone designed the season just for me!

--Luke Bryan, who sounds like a Muppet with adenoids, wins CMA Entertainer of the Year, and Chris Young, with the most gorgeous voice in the business, gets no CMA nominations at all. Such is the state of country music.
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(This is cross-posted from the Pulse Country board.)

I think I'm going to have to name "Hold You to It" as my favorite on this one; that melody is INFECTIOUS. I was humming it for hours. :-) Second place, "Goodbye" -- that gorgeous piano part in the first verse nearly made me faint dead away. (You can always get me with a good piano part!) Third place, "Forgiveness," which has a very good, fresh-sounding lyric, and fourth place, "Text Me Texas."

Least favorite: "A.M." It had that "this is going to turn into a riding-with-a-hot-girl-in-my-truck song any second now" vibe, though thankfully, it never quite got there.

This is not my favorite Chris album -- that would still be Neon. But it's a good effort that shows off his voice beautifully. For all the need to put in more party songs -- and I begrudgingly admit that he has to do that right now -- I'm thankful that he still knows how to write and to pick songs that showcase his voice, because that is far and away his strongest asset. And he still manages to hang onto that image of a guy who's just a little bit old-fashioned and charming, which is also one of his assets. It's the thing (besides his voice) that I've liked about him from the beginning. Long may it last!

[Ed. note: I nearly wrote "when 'dimwitted leering redneck' is currently the desirable male image being pushed by the industry, long may Chris's image last!" But they have a rule over there about not insulting singers in threads that aren't even about them. Probably a good thing. ;-) ]

Man, it's like they made that episode of Nashville just for me! Chris Young was on!



And Edens Edge was playing in the background again! It just bowls me over that there's a show where I can actually hear my favorite band. That sort of thing NEVER happens to me -- not until now!

And aside from all that, it was just a very, very good episode. This show has really hit its stride.

For those of you who are new here, I do this every year. (Here are the 2010 and 2009 lists.) These are all songs that were released to radio last year. And for the first time, I have a couple of ties in there. I usually stick to a one-song-per-artist rule, but in this case, there were two bands that each released two singles that I just couldn't choose between! So I put them in as ties.

Where there are official music videos, I put in links to them; where there aren't, I used the best recorded or live performance I could find. Videos 20 and 18 might be considered PG-13 for skimpy clothing, and 9 for language (one unladylike word toward the end of the video).

So here we go!

20. "Barefoot Blue Jean Night," Jake Owen
19. "My Heart Can't Tell You No," Sara Evans
18. "Long Way to Go," Alan Jackson
17. "Hell on Heels," Pistol Annies
16. "Tough," Kellie Pickler
15. "Love Don't Run," Steve Holy
(tie) "You Lie," The Band Perry
13. "All Your Life," The Band Perry
12. "The Reason Why," Little Big Town
11. "Mean," Taylor Swift
10. "Let Me Go," Christian Kane
9. "Look It Up," Ashton Shepherd
8. "Somewhere Else," Toby Keith
7. "Here for a Good Time," George Strait
6. "Storm Warning," Hunter Hayes
5. "Love Done Gone," Billy Currington
4. "You," Chris Young
(tie) "I Won't Let Go," Rascal Flatts
2. "Easy," Rascal Flatts with Natasha Bedingfield
1. "Amen," Edens Edge

I saw Edens Edge perform live for the first time, tonight at a dive in Maryland. I didn't realize quite how dive-y it was; in fact, I'm now reconsidering my decision to go see Chris Young there in November. (If I had someone to go with me I might, but as it is, I think I'll wait for him to come somewhere a little nicer! And closer, as it's quite a trek over there.)

Still, dive or no dive, it was amazing to see them in person. Hannah Blaylock, their lead singer, is a little powerhouse -- can't be much more than four feet tall in her (very) high heels, but when she walks out onto a stage, she owns it. Enough voice and personality and energy to fill a football stadium, never mind a small dive. I don't mean to overdo the hyperbole, but this girl very clearly has "it" -- that thing that makes a star, whatever you want to call it. It hits you the second you see her. As for the instrumentalists, Cherrill Green and Dean Berner, they were wonderful, and obviously having a blast. This group is going places; they know how to have fun, and boy, do they know how to perform. In fact, they've just started a gig opening for Reba -- a concert I'd love to see, but alas, it's not coming here.

mosinging1986, you'll appreciate this -- Hannah was chatting with the crowd about jobs that she and the others had had in Nashville while working towards their big break. And one of her jobs was being a nanny! (With all that energy, I'll bet she wore the kids out.) One day she'd just put the kids down for a nap when Dean called up saying that he was in a songwriting session, and he and the others wanted to write her a new song. So they put her on speakerphone and she told them stories about her childhood, and they wrote a song about those memories. :-) Good times.

Got a few pictures below the cut!

( Right this way . . . )

So, I just randomly discovered that these exist, four days after I got my new(ish) car. A car in which the very first CD I listened to was Chris's new one (which, by the way, is fantastic).



Clearly, the universe wants me to have this key chain.

I have about a zillion things to do . . . so of course I'm doing a meme. (In my own defense, I am overdue on this one; I got it from sonneta nearly two weeks ago!)

( Hope the LJ cut works this time . . . )

Similar criteria to last year: songs that were released (wide release) as singles to radio in 2010, one song per artist, nothing purist about it, etc., etc. This year I'm actually going to link to the videos -- except when I hate the videos -- and provide a little commentary.

It was HARD to pick just 20 this year; I did a lot of chopping and changing right up to the last second. (The one-song-per-artist rule was especially hard, but I stuck to it anyway, as I like to have as many different artists as possible.) So I'm going to provide a few runner-ups too. They may not have made the cut, but they're too good not to mention!

( Here we go . . . )