Tom's Country View

"The visual is as stark as the message of the song, with Jelly standing in the middle of a dilapidated living room while singing to his reflection in a mirror and vowing that the dark voices in his head will not get him down again." (Jessica Lynch / billboard.com, August 2nd, 2024)

"In 2024, pop artists made their love for country music known, and, today, Grammy voters made their love known for those efforts.Pop and R&B stars dominated the country Grammy nominations, including Beyoncé, who was the only artist to receive a nod in all four country categories." (Melinda Newman / billboard.com, November 8, 2024)

"What was even more impressive was to sit down with this bunch and turn them loose to do the songs in whatever way fit their artistic vision. The fun part was we weren’t chasing the original recordings or arrangements or our versions." (Ronnie Dunn [Brooks & Dunn] / billboard.com, September 16, 2024)

"Both the actual book as well as the saying I’m OK – You’re OK have been featured in popular culture in the decades since the book was released, starting with a [1972] New Yorker Magazine cartoon about a phone conversation: 'Oh - we're reading "I'm O.K. - you are O.K.," and I guess we are O.K.. But I think it's because of the martinis, not the book." (Nicholas Berne Calcaterra / drthomasharris.com/im-ok-youre-ok-book-thomas-harris/)

"'Whirlwind' is another superior example of Wilson's ongoing collaboration with producer Jay Joyce, and how it generates grabbags of songs that sound completely diverse from track to track and yet all authentically country and certainly all utterly her." (Chris Willman / variety.com, 23. August 2024)

"Louis Chevrolet was born in 1878 as the second of 8 children in French-speaking Switzerland. From Paris, where he worked in a car factory, he emigrated to Canada (Montreal) in 1900. The following year he took a job in New York City before starting to race cars for Fiat. In 1911 he founded the Chevrolet Motor Car Company in Detroit with William Durant (founder of General Motors)." (Wikipedia)

"For a second, it was hard to tell what silhouetted angel was killing the beginning of Chris Stapleton’s 'Think I’m in Love With You.' [...] Her voice fit the bluesy, sultry song well, and Stapleton, a true pro at big-time duets, knew how to cede the stage." (Justin Curto / vulture.com, May 17, 2024)

"BREAKING NEWS: New York journalist discovers new genre of music called "country" due to the release of Beyonce's new record "Cowboy Carter"." (Colby Acuff / X [former Twitter], March 30, 2024)

"The idea that graves should always be 6 feet deep has been around for a long time. There is no agreement about where this idea came from. For some it comes from London in 1665, where the Lord Mayor ordered that all "graves shall be at least 6-foot deep" under the presumption that doing so would prevent the spread of the Black Death." (Chris Raymong / verywellhealth.com, 14. Oktober 2023)

"In January 1999, one month after he turned 14, Jason DeFord was baptized by full immersion at Whitsitt Chapel Baptist Church in Antioch, Tenn. By the end of that year, he was incarcerated for the first, but not the last, time." (Melinda Newman / billboard.com, Juni 1, 2023)

"When you see me, you don’t get it initially — then you meet me, and hear the story and hear the music. I just feel like I represent the guy who looks at himself in the mirror every day and goes, ‘Yeah, guys like me don’t make it.’ "   (Jelly Roll / billboard.com, December 8, 2022)