When I buy a new country cd, I have a tradition I follow. The first thing I do is read all the song titles. I want to know the name of every song before I listen – I’m weird that way. 😉 The second thing I do is crack that open and search the CD booklet for song writer information. I scan the writers for familiar names to get an idea of how the cd will sound. If I see certain writers, I know I’m more likely to like the song when I hear it; and other writers are a flag I won’t like it. Then with all the writers I don’t know, I know those songs can easily go either way. For example, If I see Jeffrey Steele listed in the credits, I know there’s a 50/50 chance of me liking the song. I always either absolutely hate or love his songs – there’s never an inbetween for me when it comes to him. If I see Neil Thrasher in the credits, I know there’s a very good chance I’ll like the song.
Case in point. I bought Lonestar’s brand new cd over the weekend. I popped it open and started looking over the credits. I spotted Neil Thrasher on 2 tunes, and was pretty pleased. Then I saw Jason Sellers’ name and was VERY happy. I knew I would love that song. Sure enough, after listening to all the songs on the cd, the one Jason wrote is by far my favorite, and I did like both of the ones that Neil wrote. With the exception of Richie & Dean, I didn’t recognize any of the other song writers names off hand, and some I liked, some I didn’t. No big surprise there.
And yes, if you haven’t guessed, there’s no real point to this post other than that I needed to ramble. I’ll be writing more – hopefully soon – about Canada. Things have been just crazy enough to keep me from writing any more than a few sentences at a time.