Tag: Country music

Some who survived Las Vegas were there Wednesday night in Thousand Oaks. “As far as country music goes, it’s sort of no-man’s-land to really go out and make a political statement,” said Andy Albert, a songwriter based in Nashville who writes mainly for country performers. Over the last couple of years, the genre has shifted again to a gentler, less brute kind of male star: the gentleman. “It’s just sort of in the water, it’s just understood that none of these artists are trying to use this as a soapbox,” Mr. Albert said of the songs he writes for other musicians. And I think it becomes more universal when you’re able to do that.” With mass shootings regularly blanketing the news, gun control has remained one of the most intensely partisan issues in the country. Among Democrats, the opposite was true, with 83 percent thinking the group promoted policies that were “bad” for the United States. Country stars have tended to limit their statements after shootings to condolences for the victims, avoiding any gun debate. The musician Kane Brown is releasing an album called “Experiment” on Friday that includes the song “American Bad Dream.” Mr. Brown was at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas last year and performed the night of the shooting. “Before, you never saw on the news there was a shooting today,” he said. Awards, addressed the Las Vegas shooting during last year’s show, which included the faces of the victims in the “in memoriam” segment.

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On Sunday night, longtime country music star Reba McEntire lived up to a promise, made two days earlier, to steer clear of politics as host of the 53rd annual Academy of Country Music Awards telecast. The show couldn’t very well pretend the tragedy didn’t occur, of course, and a brief opening montage acknowledged it, but did so with dignity. America, this is your #ACMawards. There’s a lot of political things you can address, stuff going on in the world. That’s not our theme,” McEntire, whose music career has spanned more than 40 years, said in the interview with Us Weekly. “Our theme is to have fun, not to be mean, not to be catty, just to have a great night of entertainment, great music, seeing everybody, and introducing new music.” As though to keep things on track, a bit more than halfway through the three-hour program, the frequent ACM Awards host quipped, “They told me I can’t talk about politics, drinking, or breakups. They do know this is a country music show, right?” Like nearly everyone else, McEntire presumably has opinions on the issues of the day, but unlike Jimmy Kimmel and all too many others among the self-important left-wing Hollywood glitterati, she recognizes that there’s a time and a place for politicking—and that an awards show is neither the time, nor the place. To my Route 91 people, you guys are in our hearts, always,” he said. “I love you guys, and we love Las Vegas. More specifically, entertainment critics have been openly critical of the country music industry for not joining the gun control crusade after the Route 91 festival.