Country Sweep: December 12, 2015...

Part four of today's "music sweeps" is up with the latest hits on country radio as monitored by Billboard magazine...

On their Country Airplay chart, Chris Young racks up a third week at #1 with "I'm Comin' Over"...

The song that was at #2 last week, "Smoke Break" from Carrie Underwood, misses its chance at the top and drops to #5 this time out (women can't get a break on country radio these days), but her new single, "Heartbeat", leaps in at #41. Sam Hunt sings back in an uncredited cameo, which even makes more plain this attempt to make a Sam Hunt/Jason Aldean-style record. It has more of a pop phrasing but Carrie's voice, tempered by her roller coaster of styles on American Idol she had to cover, is more adaptable than most, making this my "Country Pick of the Week"...

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


Ah, how the mighty have fallen. Once upon a jingoistic time, big bear Toby Keith traded in his cowboy troubadour charm for flagwaving cliche's and attacks on the Dixie Chicks to capitalize on the post-9/11 fervor to sell millions of records. Nowadays, even in an atmosphere of radical right-wing lunatics running the Republican party hijacking the South, his latest album 35 MPH Town saw its first single "Drunk Americans" stall out at #27, while the title track didn't even reach the top 40. It looks to be his third consecutive album to have no top ten hits (the one before, 2011's Clancy's Tavern, sported three including his most remembered song of the decade so far, "Red Solo Cup"). His latest try, "Beautiful Stranger", arrives at #59. This slow-moving minor-key nugget is the kind of "emotional yet masculine" exercise he excels at, and would probably be more successful with if he wasn't so polarizing, especially since Nashville is even more efficient in "soylent greening" its more erm "mature" artists. (Meanwhile the Dixie Chicks are looking to have one of the biggest tours in the country coming up. Karma, baby....)

I'll wrap thing up with the latest dance jams in the clubs and on the radio...