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Tag: debut album

  • Jennifer Nettles Kicks Off Solo Tour in Washington DC

    Jennifer Nettles released her first solo album That Girl on January 14 and launched the tour exactly a month later. On Friday night, she performed at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, DC.

    The next night’s performance at Hard Rock Live Rocksino in the Cleveland, OH suburb of Northfield was a sold-out show.

    How are fans and reviewers responding to Nettles’ solo effort? Inevitably, they’re comparing it to the work she did as half of the country music duo Sugarland.

    While Emily Yahr of The Washington Post described Sugarland’s music as “energy-packed, carefree, delightfully weird,” she characterized Nettles’ solo performance as “calmer and more serious. The songs are slower and more thoughtful. The lyrics hit you harder … frankly, it’s just a little less fun.”

    Chuck Yarborough echoed Yahr’s thoughts after seeing the Northfield show: ” … she was a different performer.” According to him, the stripped down, more elemental nature of Nettles’ performance was a good thing, putting the focus on the songs, which he described as “high-grade.”

    That Girl was produced by music industry powerhouse Rick Rubin, whose trademark is the stripped-down sound that many reviewers have used to describe Nettles’ solo album.

    Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks has praised Rubin’s style: “He has the ability and the patience to let music be discovered, not manufactured. Come to think of it, maybe he is a guru.”

    For the most part, That Girl seems to be working for fans:

    Singer-songwriter Brandy Clark opened for Nettles over the weekend and is scheduled to tour with her through mid-April.



    Image via YouTube

  • Kacey Musgraves Surprises Everyone With Big Grammy Wins

    Kacey Musgraves may just be the newest and best thing to happen to country music in the past year. She is an emerging country artist, and was nominated for Best New Artist, along with several other awards.

    She picked up multiple Grammy Awards for her debut album, “Same Trailer Different Park” last night, although she lost the award for Best New Artist to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, which was expected.

    The Grammy Awards were filled with some legends and young talent this year, including the teen sensation Lorde, Taylor Swift, and Kacey Musgraves, who was the big surprise of the night.

    The 25-year-old country sensation took home two awards last night while being nominated for four. She won one for Country Album Of The Year, and one for Country Song Of The Year, which was not presented during the telecast of the awards.

    Her song “Merry Go Round” won the award, while she also received another nomination for Miranda Lambert’s “Mama’s Broken Heart,” which she co-wrote.

    Speaking on the significance of the song, and what it meant to win an award for it, Kacey Musgraves said “You never know what you’re going to get in a co-write, and we tapped into something special that day. I’m just so thankful. I’ll never get tired of playing that song. It’s so special to me.”

    Everyone appeared to be shocked when she won the award for Country Album Of The Year, including Kacey Musgraves, who beat out the favorite for the award, Taylor Swift, and fellow nominees with huge records that were released this year including Tim Mcgraw, Blake Shelton, and Jason Aldean.

    When accepting the award, she clearly did not plan to win, and was shocked like most people watching the show. She came up to the stage and said “Oh my god, I can’t even, I can’t even. I got to make a record that I poured myself into and I’m so proud of.” She went on to thank her producers and everyone who was involved with the process of making the album.

    Before winning the biggest honor for a country musician at the Grammy Awards, Musgraves also put on a live performance, and perhaps gained at least a handful of new fans in the process. She wore an outrageous dress during the performance along with her cowboy boots, and cactus props to elevate her country look.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ_rej6idrQ

    She performed her song “Follow Your Arrow” for audiences, which is an uplifting song for listeners about following your dreams, and being happy with the choices you make.

    While not a huge mainstream success like Taylor Swift, Kacey Musgraves is just starting out, and her debut album sold over 300,000 copies in the U.S. She is likely to continue to be a big presence in the future, and will certainly be making a name for herself with fans after the release of her debut album.

    Image via Youtube

  • Jennifer Nettles: New Album is Stripped Down and Emotional

    Jennifer Nettles’ debut solo album “That Girl” released Tuesday, and early reviewers say the songs are stripped down and full of emotion.

    The album, which was four years in the making, has been compared to the work of Carole King and Linda Ronstadt in the way that Nettles connects emotionally with the lyrics of her songs amidst “spare acoustic arrangements” that are balanced with “inventive rhythms and orchestrations.”

    Nettles wrote or co-wrote 10 of the 11 songs on the album.

    “I really didn’t put any boundaries on myself on how I wanted to write,” she said. “I just let that happen and I didn’t know what direction it was going to go. I sat down at my piano, and I called old friends, and I made new friends, and all those things just to see from a writing perspective what would come together and what kind of collection I would make. It got to a point where I decided ‘Alright, it’s time.’”

    Post by Jennifer Nettles.

    Nettles has been part of the country music duo Sugarland since 2003. In the beginning, the group was a trio consisting of Nettles, Kristian Bush and Kristen Hall. Hall left the group in 2006. The duo has sold millions of albums and won numerous awards, including two Grammys in 2009 for “Stay.”

    Nettles said that fans will see a new side of her both vocally and as a songwriter in “That Girl.”

    “I think this album so far for me musically has been the most intimate and personal … I think it’s way more intimate to me and way more personal in the sense that when you collaborate, that’s the nature of collaboration, you’re affecting each other, and playing with and inspiring each other, and yet there are things that one may not get to do or want to do when collaborating.”

    Nettles said fans immediately feared that Sugarland was over when she announced plans for a solo album, but that’s not necessarily the case.

    “I didn’t decide to do a solo venture, and Kristian didn’t decide to do his solo work and all the different projects that he’s doing out of a dislike of Sugarland.”

    Nettles and Bush have left it “open-ended” as far as when they might come back as Sugarland, but for now want to dedicate themselves 100% to their current solo projects.

    Image via YouTube