Part II of our look at the top ten country albums of 2006.
Perhaps the most difficult way to make a really superlative
commercial countryalbum is to play by all the rules, and just do it better than everyone else. The lift here comes from smart songwriting and from
Peck's voice, a forceful instrument that gets
the more gently she applies it. If Peck fails to become a
big star, it will be for extramusical reasons:
She's far too sexy—not "pretty" like Faith Hill, but
sweet-merciful-Jesus-I'd-tap-that-without-a-warrant hot—for country's predominantly older female demographic.
Worley was tagged as a
Toby Keith wannabeafter
"Have You Forgotten?"(a bold riposte to the ... uh, approximately
zero Americanswho didn't want
Osama bin Laden obliterated) rode the conflation of
Sept. 11and the Iraq war to the top of the chart in
spring 2003, just as the Dixie Chicks were getting
Dixie Chicked. "Forgotten" aside, Worley is actually a thoughtful singer-songwriter with a flair for
naked emotionand
an eye for detail.
Newly free of both his major-label deal and his marriage, his latest is a
holler of liberated glee, the sound of
a man who can't wait to get into trouble. Sealing the deal is
"I Just Got Back from a War,"about an American soldier's anger and confusion at not being greeted as a liberator. It's bleak and daring, and Keith wouldn't touch it with a
10-foot flag.
Nashville tried, and failed, to get in on the
teen-pop extravaganzaof a few years ago. Now that Britney is a divorcee with two kids, it finally succeeds with this
16-year-old wunderkind. Swift neither plays for cuteness, nor poses as
jailbait; she simply uses her native intelligence to express clearly to anyone who will listen her hopes for the future, her
growing worldlinessand her dawning awareness that
boys may be more trouble than they're worth.
The
big-voiced, calamari-hating Picklerfinished sixth on the latest season of
American Idol, which in Nashville narrowcasting terms is a dream marketing setup. Add the right collaborators (like
songwriter Aimee Mayo and producer Blake Chancey), and you wind up with an
unvarnished pop-country jewelfeaturing a
surprisingly confident headlinerwho's
not as dumb as you think.
brought sexy back to pop in 2006 (or at least announced that intention), but country apparently wasn't ready for the same. Everett's slyly insinuating singles
"That's the Kind of Love I'm In"and
"Bad Things"(as in, things he wants to do to you, sweet thing) barely dented the charts, and
his album was quietly dumped into stores. Everett
lost his deal in a mergerand by July was
ranting about "the dumbing down and homogenization of our culture" on his MySpace page. You know what that means:
A great screw-the-music-business album is brewing somewhere.
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," but I'm sure someone in Music City can swing it. -
CHRIS NEALFor Part I of this article, see yesterday's blog.
What do you think? Are these the top ten country music albums of 2006 or did we miss something? Tell us what you think - just leave a note in the comment section below. Thanks!
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