I felt strangely disconnected from last night’s CMA Awards.<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s because I think Brad Paisley is a great guitar player but only a B level songwriter.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’s because I believe in the Beatles, and no matter how great some of those George Strait records are, I can only believe in him so much because he didn’t write them.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’s because all those males wore cowboy hats, even though I don’t think any of them ride the range on a regular basis.<\/p>\n
There was just too much artifice.<\/p>\n
And Shania Twain looked exactly like what she was.\u00c2\u00a0 A woman escaping from marital discord that she didn’t foresee.\u00c2\u00a0 She was lacking some victorious dominant element.\u00c2\u00a0 That superstar quality that Mutt Lange imbued in her.\u00c2\u00a0 With his masterpieces concocted of hooks overlaid with sheen.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, she was lacking the sheen.\u00c2\u00a0 And if she’d written all those hits herself I might be looking forward to new material, but I know Mutt’s the genius.\u00c2\u00a0 Just ask Def Leppard.\u00c2\u00a0 With him they’re the most successful band in the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Without him, they’re journeymen.<\/p>\n
Kid Rock tried, but either the mix was wrong or his voice was blown.<\/p>\n
Miranda Lambert played acoustically, but sans feistiness…there just isn’t the same magic.<\/p>\n
As for Taylor Swift, I loved her once, but those days are through.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody applauding her high school drama performances is delusional.\u00c2\u00a0 Last year with the water, this year with the costume change?\u00c2\u00a0 What’s that got to do with music?<\/p>\n
And that’s what bugged me.\u00c2\u00a0 The music.\u00c2\u00a0 It was just too formulaic.<\/p>\n
And then came the Eagles.<\/p>\n
Talk about a mismatch.\u00c2\u00a0 It would be like Stevie Wonder closing a Jonas Brothers show.\u00c2\u00a0 Illustrating the roots, where it all came from, but the performance being lost upon the assembled multitude.<\/p>\n
And unlike last year, the Eagles were rehearsed, the mix was right, but the song was never a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet the lyrics packed a punch absent from all the other numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 George Strait won because he saw God, what a cheap shot.\u00c2\u00a0 Don Henley was singing about real life.<\/p>\n
That’s what our stars used to do.\u00c2\u00a0 They used to tell us about us.\u00c2\u00a0 By exploring the fringes, the limits, delivering insight that eluded us.<\/p>\n
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I felt strangely disconnected from last night’s CMA Awards. Maybe it’s because I think Brad Paisley is a great guitar player but only a B level songwriter.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’s because I believe in the Beatles, and no matter how great some of those George Strait records are, I can only believe in him so much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows","category-music-business","category-the-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-mX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1424,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions\/1424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}