‘Remind Me’ is another sort of song, a duet in which a husband and wife plead with each other to recapture the friskiness of their early relationship. The break-up songs on This is Country Music are specifically about marriages that couldn’t stand the test of time. If I didn’t know better, I’d be worried that his marriage is on the rocks. Paisley’s nod toward the tropes that make country music what it is has him in heartbreak territory a lot on this album. It continues a streak of wonderful records that should be the envy of artists in any genre. This album is just as heartwarming, funny and musically tight as its predecessor. This isn’t just country music, it’s country music as written and performed by Brad Paisley, and that’s a whole different story. Would this album lean more toward the sort of country music I still find tiresome, rather than the clever, winning Brad Paisley music I love so much?

I’ll admit, when I first heard the title of Paisley’s newest album, This is Country Music, and his intention to back off from the expansiveness of American Saturday Night, I was a bit worried. But once I’d spent the time and money to catch up on everything else he’d recorded, would his first new album live up to expectations? In each discography, I look at two touchstone albums - the one that marks my first exposure to the artist and the first one that I heard right along with everybody else.Īmerican Saturday Night was my intro disc for Brad Paisley, and (as intro albums often do) it remains my favorite of his records. These picks range from 1960s classics to 21st century hits, including everything from romance-charged, loved-up ballads, to humorous takes on long-term relationships and songs that encompass the emotional weight of love gone wrong.It’s always interesting to see what an artist comes up with after you’ve discovered him. Here, we look at some of country music’s top male-female duets over the years. In 20, CMT even hosted the competition show Can You Duet, which brought the duo Steel Magnolia into the spotlight. In 2013, Willie Nelson released a similar album of all-female duet partners with To All the Girls…, while Texas artist Aaron Watson is working on Cover Girl, a collection of songs featuring women collaborators. In 1984, Jones issued the album Ladies’ Choice, a collection of duets with female vocalists.

Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty made 10 studio albums together, while Bill Anderson created albums of duets with Mary Lou Turner and Jan Howard. George Jones and Tammy Wynette (who were married from 1969-1975) crafted nine studio albums as a vocal duo, while Jones also earned hit duets with Melba Montgomery and Margie Singleton. Perhaps more than any other genre, duets have a deep, storied history within the canon of country music classics, with several male-female artist pairings crafting entire albums’ worth of duets. 5, 2023) also on the chart is the new Carly Pearce track “We Don’t Fight Anymore,” featuring vocals from Chris Stapleton and the Jelly Roll/Wilson collab “Save Me.” In recent years, duets have made a strong showing on Billboard’s country charts–and in particular, male-female duets have had a moment, whether that be both vocalists fully trading off verses, or one vocalist only contributing harmonies.Ĭhart-toppers over the past three years have included the Dustin Lynch and MacKenzie Porter duet “Thinking ‘Bout You,” the Jason Aldean/Carrie Underwood collab “If I Didn’t Love You,” Kane and Katelyn Brown’s “Thank God,” Kelsea Ballerini with Kenny Chesney on “Half of My Hometown,” and Cole Swindell and Lainey Wilson’s “Never Say Never,” to name a few.Ĭurrently, the Justin Moore-Priscilla Block song “You, Me & Whiskey” is in the top 5 of the Billboard Country Airplay chart (dated Aug.

Carrie underwood remind me