What Is Country?
Again this year, I opted to vote for music made in Nashville, rather than the broader category we might as well call Americana. I hope plenty of other critics vote for Patterson Hood, but I don't see how to compare songs and albums made within Music Row strictures with music that enjoys the advantage of rock 'n' roll freedoms. And I don't mean "strictures" as an insult — when people who don't like country music say Nashville music is "formulaic," I agree with them; it's a wonderful formula that merits its own considerations, separate from people who work (literally or figuratively) elsewhere. —Rob Tannenbaum
The new albums from Iris DeMent, Lyle Lovett, Ray Wylie Hubbard, John Fullbright and Justin Townes Earle all showed where the genre can go without heading to a strictly Smithsonian reality check of dusty signifiers. Indeed, if you want to make country music, the smartest choice is not to go to Music Row. When A&R people there boast, "I don't listen to that shit in my car," you might guess that getting country right is not a core value. —Holly Gleason
Sentimental candor, regret and nostalgia were the main emotional pivots for both country and soul songwriting until the 1990s, when the harsher sensibility of gangsta rap began to dominate the pop-music market, making confessions of personal vulnerability unfashionable. Where Motown and Stax once filled the hit parade with lyrics extolling respect for parents, belief in God and an almost crippling need for romantic love, those topics were all suddenly too corny for the American R&B market. So it doesn't surprise me that Lionel Richie (who launched his solo career by writing hits for Kenny Rogers), would choose to recast himself as a country singer-songwriter in 2012. Other than reinventing himself as an emo artist, I see no other way the full emotional spectrum of Richie's songwriting would get the commercial respect it deserves. —Carol Cooper
I'm genuinely confused by what Billboard did the week they switched their formula and pushed "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" from almost off the Country Songs chart up to No. 1. Maybe this was just Billboard capitulating to the fact that they don't know where the sales and listeners are coming from or how to define a genre. Personally I'm not going to let a market define for me what country is. But I think Billboard's job is to give the readers an idea of what a market is doing. If Swift and what's generally thought of as the country audience have diverged, that's something I'd like to know. —Frank Kogan
In the course of my career, I have spilled a lot of ink defending Steve Earle's country music credentials. As with Woody Guthrie, the only argument I can find for excluding Steve Earle from the country music fold is the sophistry that country music can't reflect a left-wing perspective. I am equally prepared to come to the defense of his son Justin Townes Earle as a country musician. Part of the typical argument against the younger Earle also stems from content, but because he's far less overtly political than his father, that argument holds even less water here. The other common argument focuses on young Earle's freewheeling incorporation of folk, Americana, rockabilly and even rock elements into his music. But with a cross-section of today's Top 40 country radio reflecting the same influences, it's hard to see how this would disqualify Earle as a country artist. —Jon Black
Radio, Radio
Let's tell the truth: What country radio plays has nothing to do with anything recognized as "country music" in the classic sense. If you call steroidal/Viagra-ingesting arena-rock "country," does that lessen its Bon Jovi/Whitesnake factor? Does anyone think Waylon Jennings would feel good about Lady Antebellum? Or Brantley Gilbert's pseudo-tough-dude posturing? Indeed, the first verse of the latter's No. 1 hit "Country Is Country Wide" contains this truthiness: "In every state there's a station / Playin' Cash, Hank, Willie and Waylon ... " Umm, unless you're talking about some sketchy, broadcast-towered AM or intriguing NPR or college station, I'd like to know which stations those are. Driving across America, I've learned when I scan the radio dial and hit the wimpier brand of hair metal, I know I've found country radio. —Holly Gleason
Say you find yourself in a strange town, and you're flipping through the dial as you're driving around. On one station, you find The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons and The Avett Brothers. On the other, you find Taylor Swift, Florida Georgia Line and Jason Aldean. Based solely on the music, could you honestly guess which one was the Top 40 station and which one was the country station? Country radio has focused so much on catching the latest trend that it has completely lost its balance. I can hear country-rock, country-pop and even country-rap with regularity, but the one thing I can't find is actual, unhyphenated country music. Alan Jackson, George Strait and Reba McEntire are no longer being played with any regularity on country radio. Joe Nichols, Kellie Pickler and Lee Ann Womack are among the modern-day traditionalists who left their major label deals in 2012. —Sam Gazdziak
My great fear is that if country radio plays nothing but Taylor Swift, Rascal Flatts and Hunter Hayes, then there will be no need for country radio — because you can already get it all at adult contemporary stations. —Pam Shane
Chart Champions
While Eric Church's Chief admittedly came out last year, this seems to be the year that everyone finally caught up to this guy. At the moment, Church feels like just what country needs: honest, edgy and fearless, but singing for Everyman. —Jeff Leven
First it was "Johnny Cash," Jason Aldean's name-check that showed no insight into The Man in Black. Then Sugarland got all whimsical, making a joke out of the activist who brought real-life grit back to country with "Steve Earle." Now Eric Church decides to invoke "Springsteen" as the talisman of his youth, but comes across with a song so faux-cheese Velveeta he could've put it in a can with that bendie-dispenser. —Holly Gleason
You could say, without much exaggeration, that Blown Away has been Carrie Underwood's coming-out party as an artist who might matter artistically as well as commercially. The darker tones of the title track and "Two Black Cadillacs" — and the fact that Underwood and the label have chosen to release them as back-to-back singles — points to a renewed spirit of experimentation in her camp. This new gothic turn could slip into self-parody if they're not careful, but Underwood finally has my attention. —C.M. Wilcox
After some growing pains in the songwriting department, Carrie Underwood comes into her own with a mostly smart and sometimes dangerous collection of songs. Two men have been knocked off by the end of the third track, giving Miranda Lambert a run for her money in the body-count department. —Hunter Kelly
I spent the latter half of 2012 stabbing forks into my ears trying to get Little Big Town's "Pontoon" out of my head. Not that it's a bad song, but trying to shake those incessant and repetitive pop-country hooks is the musical equivalent of kicking a heroin habit. —Jon Black
It took me months to warm up to "Pontoon," but it went from being mediocre in late summer to the best chorus I'd heard by early winter. It's mostly the craft — plus the almost-naughty double entendre in how they sing "motor-boatin'." —Anthony Easton
The really encouraging thing about Taylor Swift and Miranda Lambert is that their moment in the sun isn't being treated as a fluke, but a sign that there's room in country for a crop of female singer-songwriters who think for themselves and don't worry over whether or not the emotions they're expressing are presentable. I'm thinking, of course, of: Kacey Musgraves, who packed a clear-eyed punch as a small-town narrator in her debut single (thankfully, there's more where that came from on her upcoming album); of Ashley Monroe, the Annie who's finally getting her second chance at a solo career with a gloriously un-airbrushed, stone-country set produced by Vince Gill; and even of Kimberly Perry, the creative center of The Band Perry, who sounds especially dark and emboldened on their most recent single. —Jewly Hight
My first reaction to Kacey Musgraves' "Merry Go 'Round" was that it was weirdly dour, with lyrics that ranged from merely pessimistic to the decidedly poisonous. And yet the more I listened to it, the more it came to sound like a well-observed and much-needed corrective to all the country songs blindly and blandly celebrating the cloistered small-town life. Singing like someone who only narrowly escaped that existence, Musgraves shames those people who have so little curiosity about the wide world that they settle into numbing routine and call it happiness only because they don't know any better. Has any song revealed the sad existential truths of country music more handily, more evocatively, more acidly? That it became a hit, however minor, gives me hope for the genre. —Stephen Deusner
What To Do With Taylor?
Ordinarily, I wouldn't feel the need to explain why I didn't vote for a particular album in this poll, but Taylor Swift's Red is a special case. I did find it to be a notable contribution to the pop-music pantheon of 2012 — not to mention convincing evidence that she's continuing to elevate her songwriting and singing game — but I just didn't hear it as a country album. With a sonic palette that spanned electronic dance music to immersed-in-the-moment millennial pop and strummy singer-songwriter confessionalism, Swift made it pretty darn clear that, at this point, being a nimble speaker of her generation's polyglot musical language is more important than country-ness to her sense of identity. So this time I saved my Swift vote for the all-genre polls. —Jewly Hight
There's nothing so knee-jerk as reviling whatever teenage girls are digging at any given moment. But even gone pop, Taylor Swift still sounds country to me. Of course, what a record sounds like is only half the story anyway. If you're looking at Taylor, you're looking at country, never more so than when her class anxiety finds her rolling her eyes at an ex who listens to indie records he's sure (and she fears) are way cooler than her own. Country fans know that feeling of being looked down upon pretty damn well, no? That's part of a country tradition that stretches back at least to Merle Haggard declaring he's proud, by God, to be a member of the square white working class, the cool kids on the coasts be damned. —David Cantwell
Surely I'm not the only one who thought Taylor Swift's contributions to that slab of violent hokum called The Hunger Games exceeded everything on Red, right? Whereas her fourth album is country by association (and also, ahem, dubstep by association), "Safe and Sound" is her most assured and mature composition to date, a song that acknowledges the hard world on the other side of the door. It's an entertaining irony that it took a Y.A. novel to show what the adult Swift can actually do. If this is what she's going to sound like in a few years, then can she please make the jump over to Americana and start touring with Emmylou in '13? Or at least start listening to Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit? —Stephen Deusner
Jamey and Dwight
Living for a Song is more than a simple tribute to one of Jamey Johnson's heroes: It's a carefully crafted, masterfully rendered collection that blends the past and present into a single, beautiful package. Johnson uses Hank Cochran's stellar songs as his starting point, but then reworks the material with his own personality and voice. The result is a product that is wholly contemporary yet at the same time organically connected to country music history. Which is a rare treat in today's country music world and further proof that Johnson is among the most vital country artists working today. —Kurt Wolff
Is it wrong to put Hank Cochran at the top of the Best Songwriters list, seeing as how he didn't write any hit songs this year — and he died in 2010? I don't care, because Jamey Johnson's tribute album shone a light on a most deserving legend. Living for a Song didn't even include all of Cochran's best-known hits. And my God, how good was it to hear an actual country shuffle in 2012? —Sam Gazdziak
I do realize that all it takes for everyone to say "Dwight's back in peak form" is for Dwight Yoakam to make a straight-up Dwight Yoakam album, but he did exactly that, and he very much is. —Jeff Leven
Dwight Yoakam's 3 Pears is a slight, spare and solemn record, whose skills at quiet understatement could be read as boredom. Instead we get a mid-career set of small discussions about personal failures and social misconnections — a miniature of perfect songs about terrible emotions. —Anthony Easton
Americana
Pop music has become so focused on electronic dance music that people looking for a different sound are turning to banjos and mandolins, and acts like Mumford & Sons and The Lumineers have had significant mainstream success as a result. I don't know if this is how Americana music gets more mainstream notice or if it's a temporary trend, but it would be nice if country radio would capitalize on it by playing some crossover songs like "Ho Hey" or "I Will Wait." If country stars like Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood can have crossover hits in the pop world, why can't some roots-leaning pop acts cross over into country music too? —Sam Gazdziak
I skipped most mainstream country — which I define as CMA Awards acts — and concentrated on Americana. That isn't to knock country stars; I like many of them. But do I play their albums if I don't need to write about them? Not likely. On the other hand, I'll spin the artists on my list repeatedly and catch them live when I can. The difference, for me, is between music that comes off as "product" and music that's delivered straight from the heart and soul. —Lynne Margolis
The Americana Music Association gave an award to Richard Thompson this year. I've appreciated his music for close to 40 years, but he's British, for God's sake. How is that Americana? And don't get me started on the bands that have followed in the wake of Mumford & Sons, each more flaccid and annoying than the last. —Jim CaligIuri
Geezers
I would take issue that the best country singles of 2012 equal the "best country songs" of 2012. Best songs don't need to be singles or even to be on record. To me, the new country songs that seemed most likely to last and which best show the strengths of country's situational lyric specifics and sounds were "I Just Come Here for the Music" written by John Ramey, Bobby Taylor and Doug Gill for Don Williams, and "So You Don't Have to Love Me Any More," written by Adam Wright and Jay Knowles for Alan Jackson. —Barry Mazor
The biggest country crossover of 2012? Light in the Attic Records' Country Funk 1969-1974, an expertly curated compilation that became such an unlikely favorite among the Grizzly Bear/Tame Impala crowd that Pitchfork gave it an 8.4 and Spin named it Reissue of the Year. Which is certainly fitting for a reissue whose entire purpose is to show how broad and malleable the whole concept of "country music" can be. —Stephen Deusner
Of course Willie Nelson wrote a song called "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die." Of course he recorded it with Snoop Dogg, Kris Kristofferson and Jamey Johnson. Of course it's a hoot and an immediate crowd-pleaser in concert. But what all those happy hillbillies should know is that the chorus is straight out of the Tibetan Book of the Dead: "I didn't come here and I ain't leavin', so don't sit around and cry / Roll me up and smoke me when I die ... " —Rick Mitchell
Trucks, Tractors and Small Towns
Gentlemen, enough songs about trucks. We get it: You're country. Way country. Seriously country. Extremely country. Why not write a song called "OMG I'm So Seriously Country"? At least that would be funny. (And I'd get co-writing credit.) —Rob Tannenbaum
We've seen a proliferation of "chip on my shoulder" country songs that are little more than musical manifestos that exclude, divide and seem to be handcrafted to drive new and potential fans away from country music. In 2012, this type of song was epitomized by Montgomery Gentry's "Where I Come From," which is little more than a barely disguised judgment against lifestyles that don't conform to an idealized stereotype of small-town Middle America. To be fair, this editorial perspective has not gone unchallenged; Brad Paisley's "Southern Comfort Zone," for example, painted small-town life with a more diverse and nuanced palette. Still, given that in 2012 country music sits in a position of unprecedented strength, it is mystifying, frustrating and worrying that these types of "if you're not 'real country' (whatever the hell that means), we don't want you" songs are proliferating at all. —Jon Black
Brad Paisley's polarizing "Southern Comfort Zone" didn't make my final list, but it's worth highlighting. I'm impressed by its deceptively frank sentiment — underneath the love note to Dixie Land is a clear message from Paisley to the genre: "Open your eyes." As an Indian-American urbanite, I've become increasingly frustrated with the hollow, "us versus them" pretentiousness of a genre that was once built on universal truths. I feel strongly that mainstream country music needs a shot of reality if it's to stay relevant — or at least authentic — and I suspect Paisley feels the same. —Tara Seetharam
As much as I think this is a terrific, energetic era for the genre, the tendency I find most irritating about country music at the moment is the way so many hit singles by so many various young and young-ish musicians are written and produced to serve as florid anthems that peak with choruses designed to be yelled along with at liquor-soaked stadium tours. It's one thing to create a catchy chorus and a clever play on words — those are the elements that connect the music to its history. It's another thing to create an anthem for the sake of being anthemic, of inflating the music with big, gaseous, sentimental clichés until the pleasure bursts. —Ken Tucker
Throughout the year — though, tellingly, not in December — I received emails about "NRA Country" events and promotions. To quote: "NRA Country is a celebration of American values. Respect. Honor. Freedom." After the mass murder of children and adults in Connecticut, I hope a few country artists will use their freedom to publicly oppose the NRA and the organization's deadly, insane refusal to endorse even the kind of gun controls that would make semi-automatic weapons harder to obtain. —Rob Tannenbaum
The Results of the 13th Annual Country Music Critics' Poll
