Brad Paisley will rock your country
If you've casually passed by magazine racks lately, you may have missed the significance of Brad Paisley's picture on the cover of the December issue of Guitar Player magazine, which was in stores Oct. 30.
Paisley is the first country artist to grace the cover of the magazine in more than 10 years. Junior Brown was the last in March 1997. The magazine says Paisley "pushes the boundaries of hot rocking country."
Here are four other things you need to know about Paisley, who'll put on a show Friday, Nov. 16, at the MetroCentre in Rockford, with openers Rodney Atkins and Taylor Swift:
He's a 'high-fiver': Paisley was tied with George Strait for the most nominations, five, at Wednesday's Country Music Association Awards. Nominations were for Entertainer, Male Vocalist, Album ("5th Gear"), Single ("Ticks") and Video ("Online").
He's a comedian, kind of: A bit like what Eminem is to rap, Paisley is nearly as well known for his songwriting humor as he is for his guitar pickin'. Take "Ticks," for example, off "5th Gear," his latest and fifth album since his 1999 debut. In the song, Paisley meets a girl at a bar and wants to lie her down in a field of wildflowers and check her for ticks.
He's a charts-grabber: Paisley has had several No. 1 hits on Billboard's Hot Country Singles & Tracks, including "He Didn't Have To Be," "We Danced," "I'm Gonna Miss Her," "Mud On The Tires," "When I Get Where I'm Going," "She's Everything," "The World," "Online" and "Ticks." Four consecutive albums have sold a total of more than 6 million copies.
He knows where Rockford is: Paisley's been here twice before, in 2004 at the Coronado Performing Arts Center and in 2005 at the MetroCentre.
If you go What: Brad Paisley, Rodney Atkins, Taylor Swift in concert
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 16
Where: MetroCentre, 300 Elm St., Rockford
Cost: $45
Information: 815-968-5222, centreevents.com
Rodney in the middle
Rodney Atkins' performance will be sandwiched between Brad Paisley's and Taylor Swift's on Nov. 16.
Seems a fitting place for Atkins, whose 2007 "Cleaning This Gun (Come On In Boy)" song shows a bit of the kind of humor Paisley is known for. And it well could be a song that Swift's dad, or any dad of a daughter, could relate to. In it, a father encourages his daughter's date to go out and have some fun but reminds him that he'll "probably be up all night still cleanin' this gun."
Ouch.
The song peaked this year at No. 33 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart. But Atkins has had three No. 1 singles on that chart: "If You're Going Through Hell (Before The Devil Even Knows)" and "Watching You" last year, and "These Are My People" this year.
He performed "These Are My People" last month for a taping of ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in Manchester, N.H., where Ty Pennington and crew helped a family whose home was wrecked by a flood. The episode will air this season.
Boy, she's Swift
She's just 17, but Taylor Swift is making history after only a year in the spotlight:
Swift is the first female solo artist in country music history to write or co-write every song on a million-selling debut album, "Taylor Swift" (2006).
She joins Gretchen Wilson and Carrie Underwood as the only female solo country artists this decade to score three straight Top 10 singles from a debut album: "Our Song," "Tim McGraw" and "Mary's Song."
And Swift is the only country artist this year to have her album spend eight consecutive weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Country Albums Chart.
A few more atta-girls
Swift is the No. 1 country artist on MySpace, with more than 26 million song streams.
2007 CMT Music Awards viewers voted her "Tim McGraw" the Breakthrough Video of the Year. The song tells how music can bring out sweet memories.
Plus, she was nominated for the Horizon Award at Wednesday's CMA Awards. The award is given to an artist who has demonstrated the most significant creative growth and development in overall chart and sales activity, live-performance professionalism and critical media recognition.
Swift has been singing all her life, motivated by her grandmother, a professional opera singer, according to industry resource allmusic.com. At age 12, she started playing guitar and began practicing four hours a day until her fingers bled. Her family moved to a Nashville suburb to get her career started when Swift was about 14 years old.