Tim McGraw

Lady Antebellum and Brandy Clark Headline a Night of Country Concerts

Better Than: This divided by two. Let it go into record that for once, on the night of May 7 in the year 2013, Manhattan had too many good country—country referring to popular country, as imported from Nashville—shows to attend, overlapping bookings that could have both been the highlight ... More >>

Five Other Failed Rap/Country Experiments

The hubbub this week regarding Brad Paisley and LL Cool J's controversial duet "Accidental Racist" has, among other things, given a sign that the world might still not be ready yet for a full blown country and hip-hop crossover. While rap has been above an attempted crossover, no matter how poorly c ... More >>

Nashville Songwriter Luke Laird Talks Kacey Musgraves, Eric Church, and Kendrick Lamar

Since contributing to Carrie Underwood's 2007 "Last Name," 2012 BMI Country Songwriter of the Year Luke Laird has netted almost a dozen chart-toppers, penning hits for everyone from Eric Church to Little Big Town and Miranda Lambert. This year, on top of work with Tim McGraw and Little Big Town, he' ... More >>

Lionel Knows Best: 10 Black Pop Stars Who Should Go Country

By Mike Seely [Editor's note: Country Time is a new biweekly column for our sister music blog in Seattle.] With the nation's major-party political conventions drawing to a close recently with a rousing reelection appeal from the nation's first black president, it seems fitting to cast a spotlight ... More >>

Kenny Chesney Is Havin' a Party

The country star throws a summer blowout at MetLife Stadium

This Week In The Voice: Kenny Chesney Throws A Party, ugEXPLODE's Avant-Gardism

In this week's Village Voice, out now: I head to MetLife Stadium for the Brothers of the Sun Tour, starring Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw; and Brad Cohan looks at the boundary-smashing label ugEXPLODE, the brainchild of master basher Weasel Walter.

SMALL-TOWN GIRL

Kellie Pickler brings the country to long Island

Zac Brown Band Stretches Country's Limits (And Its Legs) On Uncaged

Country music has never had a simple relationship with Mexico. While outlaws like Waylon Jennings once warned that there "ain't no God" on the other side of the border, Tim McGraw more recently took the opposing position, suggesting that God in fact created the country, but only as a place for trapp ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Bruce Springsteen And Mick Jagger Stop Making Pop Hits, Start Inspiring Them

It's been a busy year for Bruce Springsteen. In March, he released Wrecking Ball, his seventeenth studio album and tenth release to top the Billboard 200, and after packing in arenas across America throughout the spring, he took the E Street Band to Europe. His name is also in a top-40 entry on the ... More >>

Getting the Drop on the Hammerstein with the Cosmic Opera

Turntables are nice, but aerialists are even nicer

Four Potential Special Guests For Taylor Swift's Two New York Shows

As you might have heard, Taylor Swift has been crossing the country touring behind 2010's Speak Now and performing a new cover song, often with a surprise guest, at each city along the way, leaving in a trail of camera phone YouTube videos and exclamation point-filled tweets in her wake. In Atlanta ... More >>

The Band Perry, Taylor Swift Win Big At Last Night's Country Music Awards

Last night, country music's biggest stars (not to mention welcome outsiders like Lionel Richie and Kenny Loggins, who joined Male Vocalist of the Year Blake Shelton for a performance of "Footloose") convened in Nashville for the CMA's annual awards show. By the time hosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Un ... More >>

FOREVER AND ALWAYS

Taylor Swift wraps the ‘Speak Now’ tour

The Top 5 Moments From Taylor Swift's New Journey To Fearless DVD

​Early this year, Never Say Never took us backstage as teenpop heartthrob Justin Bieber worked his way to a sold-out Madison Square Garden tour finale, juxtaposing current success with clips of baby Bieber playing drums, doing cute things, and wowing crowds at Ontario open mics. Journey to Fea ... More >>

American Idol: It's Finally Over!

Michael Becker/FOX​A deeply frustrating season of American Idol is over now, having discovered exactly zero future stars, and last night we got the massive glitzathon finale, an annual event that reliably has little or nothing to do with the rest of the season. Scotty McCreery barely even look ... More >>

Coming To The Local Sheds This Summer: Lots Of "Heritage Acts" And Country Stars (And Yeasayer)

Yeasayer. Here's hoping things are a bit warmer than this for their shows this summer. ​Today Live Nation announced a slew of shows at Long Island's Nikon at Jones Beach Theater and New Jersey's PNC Bank Arts Center, and in addition to the many classic rock acts (with "classic rock" now being ... More >>

"The Voice" Closes Its Eyes And Takes On "American Idol"

​So: The Voice. The big challenge. American Idol has been the dominant ratings force in American TV for a full decade now, but none of the other networks has really managed to do much with that show's format, which seems like a relatively easy thing to steal. (Or they haven't made a big singin ... More >>

Country Strong a Load of GOOP

Saintly White People Do the Saving in The Blind Side

At Last, The Twilight Saga: New Moon Soundtrack Ends the Long and Terrible Chart Reign of Michael Buble

​Grizzly Bear, major cultural force in this country: the second Twilight soundtrack sold 153,000 copies this week, good for #1 and easily enough to knock international cipher Michael Buble to the three spot, where he plays runner up to Tim McGraw's Southern Voice, debuting at No. 2 with 137,00 ... More >>

Robert Earl Keen+Todd Snider+Bruce Robison

Please Let the Auto-Tune Jokes End: A Brief History of the Pitch-Correcting Software's Legacy

If Auto-Tune hit its peak as a joke delivery device last week amidst the spectacle of a weirdly robotic Katie Couric involuntarily singing an "O Superman"-reminiscent lament for melting polar ice caps, it also hit its nadir at about the same time, when a tape surfaced of an Auto-Tuned Martin Luthe ... More >>

New Orleans Still Struggles—In Song—With Katrina

Country-Rap: A Secret History

Track 18 Wins Again

Major-label hip-hop records in burying-best-track shocker!

Academy of Country Music Awards: A Running Diary

Live: Vince Gill, the Most Unpretentiously Pretentious Guy Ever

'Flicka'

The CMT Music Awards: A Running Diary

Country Music Grapples With Race

The American Music Awards: A Running Diary

Backstage at the Country Music Awards

'The Thing About My Folks'

Dallas Cowboy Gets Big and Rich; Nashville Teddy Bear Trash-Picks

Music

NY Mirror

Music

Hip-Hop Doppelgängers

Iced-out thug and boho griot keep it surreal on complementary CDs ready for iTunes

The New Frontier

Playboys of the Southwestern World Thrive on Certainty

Music

NY Mirror

Listings

Scumbag in the Dark

Brand New Men

Hillbilly Hunks Cope With Changing Gender Roles

D-Dang-A-Dang Me

Backstabs in the Material World

It’s All in the Past Now; Money Changes Everything

Shuffering and Shmiling

Humans, Posthumans, and a Detergent Ad

How Doo Doo Doo Doo Heartbreaker

Consumer Guide

Love and Industry