A Decade In Country: Heat #1

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

"Hello poptimists!

Yes, it's me, 51-year-old yoga fan Madonna! You may remember me from such videos as 'Don't Tell Me', via which I managed to make cowboy hats, spurred boots and treadmills popular in suburban UK towns for five glorious minutes in 2000! Well, at least it took off better than my Morticia cape from 'Frozen' that turned into a flock of crows.

ANYWAY as the only available ambassador between the not-so-foreign lands of POP and COUNTRY (Taylor Swift was busy shopping for dresses or something) I have been asked to introduce the first Poptimists Country Poll! A crack team of experts have been tirelessly working behind the scenes to sort the country wheat from the dance/indie/hiphop/RnB chaff and bring you the finest selection of hoedowns and heartbreak from 2000-2005 (i.e. stuff YOU LOT nominated for the decade polls).

Don't worry if you've not heard the majority of these - this is the perfect opportunity to dive headfirst into the best country tracks of the decade. There's a Spotify playlist here to start you off, and Youtube embeds in the comments are very welcome. Who knows? You might find something that knocks you for six. Happy ticking!"

Thanks for that, Madge. The rules are simple: two heats, tick as many as you like! Poll closes next Tuesday so you've got plenty of time to check out the tracks. The top five from each heat will go through into a final top ten ticky.


[Poll #1545006]


Remember there's loads more orgafun afoot! Angry Women Songs and the Pop World Cup both need your contributions too!

Comments

[koganbot]

The album is an all-over-the-place prestige project with famous songwriters (Dylan, Costello, Dan Penn, Nick Lowe, Waits & Brennan, Brian Wilson, etc.), think it gets to be tangentially country because it did well with an Americana audience (that's a guess, actually, that it did well with that audience, but it's probably a safe one). I argued against including this song, but did point out that if a white singer like T. Graham Brown had sung it and it sounded substantially the same it would have been considered country, and Chuck was in favor of including it, so we've got it. Here's a soulful live version that kicks harder than the studio.

Just saw this on one of his MySpace pages:

I like most music - right now, I am into De Dijk, Ben Harper, Rev. James Cleveland, Alicia Keyes, india.arie, Gavin DeGraw, Kanye West, Adele, and some old Marion Anderson stuff. Anything with a good message and a good beat is going to be something I like.