Bill C. Malone opens his 2010 book Country Music, U.S.A., stating that country music “defies precise definition, and no term (not even ‘country’) has ever successfully encapsulated its essence” (Malone 2010, 1). In the past century, the ‘country music’ genre has […]
There’s a song by country-rock band Alabama with the lyric, “If you’re gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band.” But I find that governing clause a little too narrow. In almost any genre of music, that most cranky […]
For the past month, Cassadee Pope has quietly been slipping her new single, “I Am Invincible,” into the set list of her live show. But when she took the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum stage July 25 to perform the self-empowerment […]
The most striking thing about John Fullbright’s brilliant 2014 album, Songs, isn’t the music; it’s the jacket art. On the cover, Fullbright sits on a wooden stoop, wearing the everyday uniform of an average male Oklahoman: plaid shirt, blue jeans and black […]
