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Cash followed his own rules in the studio, uncorking classic records that dealt with war, the plight of the American Indian, and other thorny topics—a departure from more traditional subjects of love and heartbreak. Cash’s producers let Cash be Cash, which meant throwing away the studio clock, leaving his backing band the Tennessee Three alone, however calcified its boom-chicka-boom rhythm had become, and standing by without complaint while Cash ploddingly chose songs and worked out arrangements—A&R tasks that elsewhere on Music Row would have been completed days before the session. When Waylon Jennings demanded and got such freedoms from RCA-Nashville in the early 1970s, many proclaimed that he was the first. In truth, as with so many things in that town, Cash—the godfather of Nashville’s outlaw movement—had gotten there first.

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Into this complex terminology, enter Rayna James (Connie Britton) and Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere), the lead characters of ABC’s Nashville, created by former Nashville resident Callie Khouri. Khouri is a film veteran who wrote 1991’s Thelma & Louise, a feminist classic that also won her the Academy Award for best original screenplay (typically a heavily male-dominated category). In its first season, the show has explored what it means to be both feminine and feminist in the world of country music and television.

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"He Stopped Loving Her Today"

George Jones - LIVE He Stopped Loving Her Today.3gp from Dana on Vimeo.

"The Grand Tour"

"I Don't Need Your Rocking Chair"

"She's My Rock"

"Race Is On"

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Publicist Kirt Webster says Jones died Friday at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville after being hospitalized with fever and irregular blood pressure.

Known for his clenched, precise baritone, Jones had No. 1 songs in five separate decades, 1950s to 1990s, and was idolized not just by fellow country singers, but by Frank Sinatra, Pete Townshend, Elvis Costello, James Taylor and countless others.

In a career that lasted more than 50 years, "Possum" recorded more than 150 albums and became the champion and symbol of traditional country music, a well-lined link to his hero, Hank Williams.

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Paisley told USA Today that the entire album, including "Accidental Racist," is meant to "to promote discussion." "I still think there will be people who misunderstand what I'm saying, but welcome to the Internet," he said.

But Paisley's conviction seems to crumble a little on live TV. In a clip from "Ellen," which airs today, he says that he wrote the song to address racial tension. "I think it's music's turn to have the conversation [about race]," Paisley said.

Ellen DeGeneres: And so, you're basically saying ...

Brad Paisley: I don't know.

Right. Watch the clip below:

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Here are some theories:

LL Cool J is just trying to thank Abraham Lincoln:
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Maybe Cool J and Brad Paisley are lovers?:
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Cool James is gearing up for a comeback:
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That's not LL! That's Weird Al:
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Or maybe it is just tragic and now we can all look forward to this:
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and maybe this:

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Nashville resident Kylee Francescan was throwing out some old newspapers when she discovered the letters in a dumpster outside a local elementary school. "I didn't know if they were stolen [or] discarded, so I threw them in a box," Francescan told Nashville's News 2 Investigates. "And I'm like, ‘Somebody needs to let Taylor know.'"

The letters, which I like to imagine were sealed with a combination of watermelon lip gloss, mall perfume, and a Lisa Frank panda sticker, were addressed to Taylor Swift International, a P.O. box in a strip mall a few miles outside of Nashville. News 2 reporter Andy Cordan delivered the letters to the address, where he was told that a representative from Swift's staff drops by to pick up fan mail.

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McCready's entire public life seemed shadowed by disaster and exploitation. She claimed to have had an affair with Roger Clemens that began while she was still a teenager. She made several apparent attempts at suicide – an overdose of antidepressants in 2005, an alcohol and Ambien overdose in 2008, a wrist-slashing incident later in the same year. In 2005, her then-boyfriend Billy McKnight was arrested for attempted murder after a beating and choking incident. Less than a year later, she mothered a son by him. There were multiple arrests, including one for kidnapping her son. There was the inevitable leaked sex tape. There was a stint on "Celebrity Rehab." In an interview three years ago, she admitted, "My entire life, things have been attracted to me and vice versa that turn into chaotic nightmares or I create the chaos myself." And in the past few weeks, the chaos only intensified. In January, her music producer boyfriend David Wilson, the father of her 10-month-old son, was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Her children were placed in foster care and she was ordered into rehab. And then on Sunday, her body was discovered on the same porch Wilson had died on just weeks earlier. Nearby was the body of Wilson's dog, dead from a gunshot wound.

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The former country star apparently took her own life on Sunday at her home in Heber Springs, Ark. Authorities say McCready died of a suspected self-inflicted gunshot to the head and an autopsy is planned. She was 37, and left behind two young sons.

McCready had attempted suicide at least three times since 2005, as she struggled to cope amid a series of tumultuous public events that marked much of her adult life.

Speaking to The Associated Press in 2010, McCready smiled wryly while talking about the string of issues she'd dealt with over the last half-decade.

"It is a giant whirlwind of chaos all the time," she said of her life. "I call my life a beautiful mess and organized chaos. It's just always been like that. My entire life things have been attracted to me and vice versa that turn into chaotic nightmares or I create the chaos myself. I think that's really the life of a celebrity, of a big, huge, giant personality."

This time it seems the whirlwind overwhelmed McCready.

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I have never written a letter seeking advice from a columnist before, but since I think you are the best advice columnist that has ever lived, and since you are quite well and alive, I thought I would ask for your advice today.

I recently had a friend die, a friend that I had not seen in over a decade, but whom, nonetheless, I had remained quasi-close to during most of that time. He was a musician, as am I, and so we both influenced each other at times although I consider him my mentor still, to this day. He taught me a great deal about old-time country music, from Dock Boggs to the Carter Family; from Doc Watson to Norman Blake. He was a god to me.

And he was also a junkie.

He quit junk a few years after I met him -- we all knew this. I did not find out until later that he had been smoking crack to keep himself "straight," however.

I have never so much as more than smoked a joint in my life, so you can imagine how distraught I was the first time I learned that my friend, "Nephew" Jimmy, was a junkie. One night, as I remember, at some party, I actually begged him on my knees in front of all of our friends, hysterical and in tears, to stop shooting smack. Silly me.

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In his note, Adkins, who is now on USO tour in Japan, advocated an "honest conversation about our Country’s history." This is the second time in recent months that a Southern musician has attempted to strip the Confederate Flag of its controversial association with the slavery of the antebellum south. And Abraham Lincoln, for one, isn't buying it:

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Like many great pop songwriters who break through freakishly young (Swift signed her publishing deal at 14 and released her first album two years later), Swift’s lyrical style is so direct it can be misunderstood as facile. She is an artist who, without irony, titles her songs “Love Story” and “Innocent.” You’ll find wit and sass and even sarcasm in Swift’s lyrics but never cynicism or hopelessness, and for those who’ve actually experienced life after 22, that can be difficult to stomach. Then there’s the fact that a very short list of largely female solo artists (Adele, Lady Gaga, Rihanna) currently prop up what remains of the traditional music industry. It’s bad business to bite one of the few hands that still feeds you.

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That Swift defies the current economic model of selling music is not a surprise since she is a star made for this post-recession era of staycations, “Downton Abbey” and Prius sports wagons. Like any pop singer, she mirrors her time, and lucky for her, she didn’t emerge during the economic prosperity of the post-9/11 era when McMansions lined Heartland cornfields, weapons of terror were to be found in the desert and Arnold Schwarzenegger stumped for Hummer. As is known to any market research analyst, we aren’t rewinding to those halcyon days and our current “new normal” means downsized sales expectations in almost every market sector, especially cars, real estate, tourism. Which means the raised metric for pop longevity is demure thoughtfulness, not tacky opulence.

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A mug shot released on Wednesday by the Grayson County Sheriff's Office shows a battered-looking Travis in a T-shirt, with a black eye and dried blood on his face. He later walked barefoot out of the county jail wearing scrubs and a University of Texas ball cap.

It was the second Texas arrest involving alcohol this year for the Grammy-winning singer, who was cited in February for public intoxication.

The sheriff's office in Grayson County, located in far North Texas along the border with Oklahoma, received a 911 call at 11:18 p.m. Tuesday about a man seen lying in a road west of Tioga, where the entertainer lives.

Texas troopers responding to the scene said a Pontiac Trans Am registered to the 53-year-old Travis had been driven off the road and struck several barricades in a construction road.

Travis was not wearing clothes at the time of his arrest and made threats against the Texas troopers, said Tom Vinger, a Department of Public Safety spokesman. He said the singer refused sobriety tests, so a blood specimen was taken.

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For 20 years now, Williams's cry of "Are you ready for some football?" from his anthemic "All My Rowdy Friends" has been the Pavlov bell that brings football fans to their television sets. But not last night.

Why? Because earlier Monday, Williams shot his mouth off on "Fox and Friends." After being introduced as "the voice of Monday Night Football" who "knows a little about politics," Williams quickly embraced his new role as pundit, saying he didn't like any of the GOP candidates and referring to the golf summit between the president and House Speaker John Boehner as "one of the biggest political mistakes."

"It would be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu, OK?" he explained. "Not hardly." Is it any wonder that on Monday's broadcast, even the reliably nonsense-minded hosts of Fox and Friends seemed unable to make heads or tails of what Williams was saying? When pressed for clarification, Williams said, "You know, they're the enemy. They're the enemy…" He then spelled it out: "Obama!"

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The independent record label has filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against McGraw, claiming the country superstar failed to provide a fifth and final album that met contractual obligations by an April deadline.

A statement from McGraw's spokeswoman says the singer turned in "Emotional Traffic" last fall and that Curb is holding the album "hostage" in an attempt to keep the singer "perpetually" under contract. The label contends some of the songs were recorded so long ago they violate terms of the deal.

Curb asks a judge to force McGraw to turn in new material for a fifth album, bar him from signing with another label and nullify a 2001 agreement that eliminated a sixth record from McGraw's contract.

------

Online:

http://www.timmcgraw.com

http://www.curb.com

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The message was clear to anyone reading between the lines. If you liked country music back in the early part of the aughts, you hid that love, like a high-school girl who only listens to musicals. (Hey, I can relate.) The CMA even issued a statement, saying the quote was "a challenge to everyone who has ever connected with a country song or a specific artist but may not feel a current connection to the format as a whole or is reluctant to share their enjoyment of the music with others." Yikes.

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"Born This Way" also sounds (like most Gaga songs do) exactly like an early Madonna track. Which still doesn't explain why this morning the Internet was introduced to an alt-country version of "Born This Way" that sounds suspiciously like Gwyneth Paltrow's attempts at the genre during "Country Strong."

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