Brooks & Dunn - Waitin’ on Sundown [1994]
Posted by admin on March 31st, 2008
With the possible exception of Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Achy Breaky Heart,” Brooks & Dunn’s 1992 mega-hit, “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” did more to establish a big country audience for dance numbers than any other song. Today country fans often seem divided between an older crowd that likes to sit in its seats and listen to a heartbreaking ballad and a younger crowd that prefers to jump out of its seats and scoot their boots across the dance floor. Brooks & Dunn may be pioneers of the country-dance movement, but they refuse to take sides in this debate. Waitin’ on Sundown is diplomatically divided between uptempo rabble-rousers, kicked along by a loud snare drum, and slow, sentimental confessions, underscored by a pedal steel guitar. As a result, the popular twosome reflects the balance in contemporary mainstream country as well as anyone. Read the rest of this entry »
Anywhere but Home is a live chronicle of where Evanescence have been since the spring 2003 release and subsequent sextuple-platinum reign of their debut album, Fallen. Recorded at a tour stop in Paris, the set includes all their hits, as well as a previously unreleased studio track (”Missing”). While it’s a fine holdover until the recording of a proper studio follow-up, Home also reasserts Amy Lee’s position at Evanescence’s center. Throughout the band’s rise, there was the drama — co-founder Ben Moody’s contentious departure, the are-they-or-aren’t-they Christian rock debates — but there was always the singular force of Lee, whose powerful vocals, strident public persona, and striking fashion sense broke down the doors of the alternative metal boys club. Appropriately, Lee is the star of Anywhere but Home. Her voice has an impressively raw 
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There’s no reason that Pastor Troy should sound hungry in 2007, since the rapper has released a string of mediocre to pretty good albums without a classic and without losing his fan base or cred. He could sleepwalk through most of Tool Muziq, and as long as there was a decent club track and a decent street track the units would move and profit would be achieved. One listen to his angry words and venomous delivery on “Saddam” — which used to be called “Saddam Hussein” and was the planned title track till someone came to his senses — and you can tell the man is trying harder than ever before. The gutter poignancy, the gruff delivery, and the wicked way Troy cuts down the competition with fast strings of snide comments have all been turned up to 11 with productions and 
Arguably the most influential album ever released by a female hip-hop artist, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott’s debut album, Supa Dupa Fly, is a boundary-shattering postmodern masterpiece. It had a tremendous impact on hip-hop, and an even bigger one on R&B, as its futuristic, nearly experimental style became the de facto sound of urban radio at the close of the millennium. A substantial share of the credit has to go to producer Timbaland, whose lean, digital grooves are packed with unpredictable arrangements and stuttering rhythms that often resemble slowed-down drum’n'bass breakbeats. The results are not only unique, they’re nothing short of revolutionary, making Timbaland a hip name to drop in electronica circles as well. For her part, Elliott impresses with her versatility — she’s a singer, a rapper, and an equal songwriting 
French boys Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé originally got their start in the music scene playing in bad Metallica and Nirvana cover bands, and the album art of Cross makes it look like a doomy metalcore release, but the record is anything but metal. In fact, it’s almost everything but metal. It’s a grimy mix of dancehall, techno, ’80s R&B, and lounge with Clockwork Orange synths, deadly static crunches, hard-hitting kicks, grinding groans, and a spliced slap-popping bass that recalls Michael Jackson’s disco classic, Off the Wall. The songs are scattered and chopped to all hell, but they often feel revolutionary. This is partially due to the duo’s “anything goes” attitude. It’s as if Justice is reacting to complacency in latter-day electronic music and 
A young Noel Gallagher at the height of Oasis’ popularity in the mid-’90s declared that the band would not release a compilation CD until the end of their career, since such compilations implied that a band’s career was indeed over. A decade later, an older, presumably wiser Gallagher realized that if you’re about to leave your longtime label and that label will release a compilation whether you participate or not, it’s better to write your own draft of your band’s history than having the label do it for you. And so Gallagher designed the first Oasis hits compilation, 2006’s double-disc, 18-track Stop the Clocks. As he so often has done in his career, he looked to the Beatles for guidance, choosing their two 1973 hits comps 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 — better known as The Red Album and The Blue Album — as a template for Stop the Clocks. 
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