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The appeal of country music, for a sissified city slicker such as myself, largely lies in glimpsing a universe in which everyone is tougher, stronger, surlier, drunker and more adept with power tools than I am, which is not a terribly high bar, no, but it's nonetheless simultaneously dismaying and thrilling how many women can clear it. Here then we have Miranda, Taylor, Neko, Ashton, Carrie, Those Darlins and many others boozing, seething and raging, to my delight/terror. Yes, even the one named "Sunny."

Listen now: Friday Mixtape: Country Chicks Who Could Beat Me Up

I've made a personalized mixtape every month for the last five years, combining au courant new hits, old favorites, random stuff overheard in convenience stores, Songs of Personal Emotional Relevance (the one from August 2008 mostly involves my wedding, which explains, for example, "Billie Jean"), ambient stuff that relaxes me in airports (very popular genre), etc. etc. As an example, I thought I'd share the January 2008 volume, which I think hangs together pretty well, considering.

Very brief notes: So we've got hot new indie-rock stuff (Vampire Weekend, the Juno-ascendant Kimya Dawson), recent events I was woefully late on (Franz Ferdinand's LCD Soundsystem cover, plus J. Holiday's luxurious "Bed," a/k/a the greatest song of all time), a track from the There Will Be Blood soundtrack done by a dude from Radiohead, actual Radiohead (was still absorbing In Rainbows, you see), reliable favorites ("Love Is the Drug," Electric Six), a highlight from the crazy Mars Volta concert I went to (they played for, like, eight hours), Marvin Gaye complaining about attorney fees, Youssou N'Dour singing sweetly, Lez (well, Led, but this'll do) Zeppelin wailing uncouthly, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk wailing even more uncouthly. Plus Alicia Keys' "Like You'll Never See Me Again," because she played it on Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve or whatever right after the ball dropped, and I dug it a lot. If you only have time for one song here, though, by god make it Swamp Dogg's version of John Prine's "Sam Stone," which is incredible, and plus his name is Swamp Dogg. Nothing here was airport-affiliated, oddly enough. But don't hold that against them.

Friday Mixtape: My Own Personal January 2008

We all reacted to the horrible events of September 11, 2001, in our own ways — wherever we were, whatever we were doing, whichever CD or radio station or fizzy pop single we first reached for to help us cope. Here, Rhapsody's editors offer their own musical perspectives, from saber-rattling country to hopeful worship music, from pop-punk bromides to plaintive protest songs, from the momentary tentativeness of comedy to the fieriness of hip-hop to the transcendence of jazz. As Sonny Rollins put it, "Maybe music can help. I don't know, but we have to try something." Here's what we tried.

Sifting Through the Ashes in New York City

I was in Park Slope, Brooklyn, that morning, about to board the subway for work in Lower Manhattan, when my roommate told me I should turn the TV on. After the second plane hit, I went up to the roof of our apartment building and watched the smoke. Cars were dusted with ashes as far south as where I lived. I spent the day switching between staring at TV news and trying to drown out the hell in my head (and the fear that the Army might call me back up) with desolate ambient doomsday metal: Neurosis, My Dying Bride, Amorphis droning about mushroom clouds.

To celebrate our exclusive, one-week-only leak of Luke Bryan's great new album, Tailgates and Tanlines, we thought we'd put together a combination greatest hits/deep cuts sorta deal, combining smash singles ranging from "Do I" to "Country Girl (Shake It for Me)," deep album cuts, and a few live/EP-only tracks from his younger, more frat-oriented days (instructive titles: "Cold Beer Drinker," "Love in a College Town"). Consider it a fairly comprehensive portrait of a rising star adept at getting you to shake it even if you are not, in fact, a country girl. Enjoy.

Luke Bryan's Greatest Hits (So Far)

Despite looking suspiciously like Bam Margera, Jason Aldean is the hottest dude in country right now, and has been since the November 2010 unveiling of My Kinda Party, his fourth album of pop country shine expertly crossed with surly hard rock spit. He contains multitudes: fiery guitar-rock anthems, goopy Kelly Clarkson duets, strident hick-hop excursions, and tender AOR odes to various red states and the women he's lusted after while driving through or flying over 'em. Here, a look at the various dirt roads that led him to the brink of country superstardom, and the anthems he absorbed along the way.

For more, listen to my Source Material: Jason Aldean's My Kinda Party playlist.

Colt Ford
Ride Through the Country
"Dirt Road Anthem" is far and away Party's most innovative moment, Aldean slipping semi-fly-for-a-white-guy rapped verses ("If it's broke 'round here we fix it" is well turned) between Southern-rock-anthem choruses, but the innovation isn't his. Gargantuan ex-golf pro and fellow Georgian Colt Ford first cut the tune in 2008, a far better emcee than Aldean prone to farming out his sung choruses to far better singers than himself, in this case co-writer Brantley Gilbert. The switch from the original's deft acoustic guitar and digitized drum loop to the Aldean version's power chords and stomping drums makes all the difference — kudos to Jason for recognizing a smash hit when he heard it. And if your appetite's whetted, Ford does this sort of thing for a living, hailing Southern staples both real ("Waffle House") and imaginary (the more recent and way more uncouth "Titty's Beer").

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Blake Shelton, the self-styled Most Interesting Man in Country Music, may be the marquee name amid the last six weeks or so of new releases, but his Red River Blue has plenty of competition, both on the charts and in our hearts. Spare some time also for sassy Ashton Shepherd, mushy Chris Young, the gritty Dirt Drivers, the rebellious Justin Moore and the goddesslike Gillian Welch. Also, don't miss the archival Neil Young live jam A Treasure, revisiting his country-rock prime with some of the loudest, nastiest guitar solos imaginable. Some great stuff here, from traditionalists to wanton experimentalists, so dive in.

Click here to listen to our accompanying playlist: Country Roundup, July 2011


1. Blake Shelton
Red River Blue
Now a TV star (via The Voice) and a tabloid-worthy husband (via Miranda Lambert), Blake Shelton's profile has never been higher than on his sixth full-length, which he fills with an expert mix of goofiness and lovey-doveyness: "Hey" and "Get Some" (great stoner gag) represent the former; sugar-sweet No. 1 smash "Honey Bee" and titanic power ballad "God Gave Me You" the latter. Not much here for fans of his louche, bar-crashing "Kiss My Country *ss" side ("Ready to Roll" is, paradoxically, about snuggling on the couch), but an appealing crassness still shines through all the sweet talk. — Rob Harvilla

So I'm standing there in a hospital gown holding my newborn son, who has been out of the womb now for maybe five minutes, and it occurs to me that I should sing something, except I hadn't planned out what it should be, and so I open my mouth, and what comes out is Tom Petty's "Alright for Now," which is not a bad choice actually, in that it seems to be an actual young-child lullaby-type song. This situation has reoccurred frequently over the course of the last three months, and no pattern to my ostensibly soothing songs has emerged: it's a bizarre mélange of old TV-show themes, wildly inappropriate minor rap hits, and Johnny Cash. My son's reaction ranges from bemused to indifferent, even in the case of " Maxwell's Silver Hammer," which I suppose I had planned, his name being Max and all.

See if you can make any sense of this: Songs I've Sung My Newborn Son

Consider "Boogie in Your Butt," Eddie Murphy's finest musical hour, the Simon to "Party All the Time's" Garfunkel. A highlight of the comedian's self-titled 1982 debut album, "Boogie in Your Butt" is a pitch-perfect Golden Era rap jam wherein Murphy, backed by a slick bassline and some dynamite sax, ticks off a seemingly endless list of objects you could, well, put in your butt: "Put a boat in your butt! Put a moat in your butt! Put a mink coat in your butt!" And so on. The effect is oddly hypnotic.

Wiz Khalifa's pop-rap smash "Black and Yellow" has cracked the most exclusive club of all: sports arenas. Its infectious hook and fierce hometown pride insures that you'll hear it at every Pittsburgh sporting event from now on, along with a slew of universal stadium mainstays, from classic-rock jams to fiendishly catchy techno earworms ("Mortal Kombat"). And wind down with a "Don't Stop Believin'"/"Sweet Caroline" double shot, a great idea no matter whose flag you're waving.

Check out the entire playlist: Modern Jock Jams