CMAs '08: More old hat

Country music went prime-time for three hours on Wednesday, and the industry used that spotlight to assure everyone that things may be changing slightly around its edges, but everything else is mostly status quo.

Above: She's old enough to drive, but can Taylor Swift steer country music away from the ditch it's fast approaching?

The big winner at this year's Country Music Association Awards show was George Strait, who has now won a record 22 CMA awards. Wednesday night, 23 years after he won his first CMA trophy, Strait, 56, won four more, including single of the year ("I Saw God Today") and album of the year ("Troubadour").

The CMAs are voted on by 6,000 or so people who work within the country music industry. The show honors some of them on the air: It spends prime-time capital announcing who won the various radio-industry awards (best stations/markets, best personalities).

Country music still relies heavily on radio, which is why people like Lucinda Williams and Hays Carll aren't at shows like this. And that seems like an opportunity lost. Why not have an alternative-country  or indie-country or Americana category? Get the Old '97s on prime time. Or Wilco. Or Ryan Bingham. Open the tent.

Like every other genre, country is suffering steep declines in album sales; even worse, it has been slow to adjust to the shift to digital and its off-shoots, like ringtones, etc. So it seems odd that, at a time when you might want to indicate that your world is adapting to the technological changes, the face you put forward foremost is of a guy who's been winning awards since before the CD became popular.

Wednesday night's show included plenty of new faces. Taylor Swift is one of them. She's on Big Machine Records, a small label founded by a former big-label guy, Scott Borchetta, who figured out the old templates and game plans were not pertinent anymore.

Swift, 18, is the rare country starlet who has crossed not only radio formats but tech formats, too. Her first album has gone multi-platinum, but her label also wisely tapped into the worlds of MySpace, Facebook, i-Tunes and ringtones. She performed "Love Story," the single off her brand-new album, and let's say kindly she comes off as a better recording artist than live performer. She sounded like your average lead singer of an indie-pop band -- no heft, slight tone. The song has lots of crossover potential: Top 40 indie-pop, with a banjo. If you listen to commercial radio but haven't heard it yet, you will soon.

A few other "younger" performers got face time on Wednesday: Carrie Underwood (who has done some crossing-over, too), Miranda Lambert, Rodney Atkins, James Otto, Kellie Picker, the duo Sugarland. Brad Paisley, Underwood's co-host, performed, too; so did Keith Urban -- true musicians and guitar-slingers who sing and write songs. And Miley Cyrus showed up (with daddy) to present an award. In this industry, that counts as a nod to the youngsters.

The show also recognized Alison Krauss and Robert Plant for their collaboration; they won the CMA for "musical event of the year," which was awarded before the broadcast started. (Yeah, you wouldn't want to put Robert Plant's face on this show; might confuse some people.) 

But the rest of the broadcast looked like it could have been any CMA show over the past five years. Brooks & Dunn were there with Reba. Martina McBride sang. Trace Adkins sang. Kenny Chesney was there -- with the Wailers, singing his country-pop/reggae party-spiritual hit, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven." Kid Rock was there. Rascal Flatts was/were there. The Eagles performed, too. Before they came out, Paisley said something like: "When you drink from the well, you should honor the men who dug the well. Here are some guys who dug the well.

There's an interesting declaration: a 1970s rock/country-ish band from California is at the foundation of country music in 2008. That jibes oddly with the performance of Darius Rucker, former lead singer of a late-1980s college-rock band, Hootie & the Blowfish. He is also the first black artist to have a No. 1 country hit in a couple decades, but that's another story.

Above: Shania Twain wakes up the Sommet Center in Nashville on Wednesday night.

During the broadcast, the show hyped a special guest appearance. Turns out it was the former country blockbuster and recently scorned and soon-to-be divorced Shania Twain (above), now 43. She, um, dressed for the part  (Watch George Strait pop out of his seat; and listen to Kenny Chesney turn into a bumbling dufus). Her appearance is all part of another comeback campaign, one that ought to generate some near-Garth-like electricity and splash.

I suppose that's all good for the short-term. But  long term it feels like more of the same from a scene that could use a strong infusion of something new and less of the same-old songs and sounds and stars of its not-so-distant past.

|Timothy Finn, The Star 

Comments

[onthemark]

Kid Rock? Darius Rucker? WTF??? So called 'country music' nowadays is nothing more than Top 40 lite, country wannabe's. The term 'all hat and no cattle' leaps to mind...

[Stacey]

Don't see why its a problem. Country fans love George Strait, Alan Jackson, and Trace Adkins. If I'm not forgetting someone, everyone who was up for New Artist performed last night. The fans loved it, If you don't like country, don't watch it.

[Justin]

Taylor's new CD is so Pop, its not funny. Country radio is dead to me. Give me more McMurtry, Carll and Chris Knight and others.

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Country music is not for everyone and singing more POP than country makes her even less important.

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