News Round Up: George Strait Breaks Billboard Charts Records

Listen to a stream of Merle Haggard’s  I Am What I Am, his upcoming release Vanguard Records.

Everyone knows that Music City big label country music is more pop than country, and some takes many pages from classic rock playbook, but PopMatter.com’s Steve Leftridge does a fine job of connecting the dots. (Pour Some Sugarland on Me.)

George Strait has set a Billboard record by charting a top 10 hit on the Country Songs survey in an unprecedented 30th consecutive year! No [...]

News Round Up: Kris Kristofferson Releases Early Demo Compilation

Kris Kristofferson’s latest is actually some of his earliest. Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends: The Publishing Demos 1968-72 is a collection of raw demos made to shop his songs around to singers while sweeping floors at Columbia Studios in Nashville (where he later first met Johnny Cash.) I listened to 16 cuts from the album streaming over at NPR and it’s a beauty. The back and forth with Kristofferson and the [...]