Chris' Top Country Songs of the Decade
/It’s that time of year again and no I am not referencing another new Star Wars movie release. It’s the end of the year so people are making lists of their top movies, music, games, foods, dogs, etc. The lists are even bigger this year as it is the end of a decade. I thought I would throw myself into the fray by making a list of things I know quite a bit about. I decided to do my top country music songs of the 2010s decade. As most of you know, I worked in the country music industry for several years during this past decade (Link to my tour photography website).
This list is completely subjective and isn’t based on sales or radio performance. I picked songs based on originality, lyrics, and the change they brought to the genre. I tried to stick with released singles because they are the most well known songs. Just a forewarning, I tend to like what Dolly Parton referred to as “sad ass songs.” You’ve been warned.
Lady Antebellum - Hello World (2010)
An incredibly powerful song about losing your faith in the world until you’re reminded that your family is your entire world. Who can relate to that? Everyone.
“Sometimes I forget what living's for
And I hear my life through my front door
And I'll breathe it in
Oh I'm home again
I see my wife, little boy, little girl
Hello world”
Miranda Lambert - The House that Built Me (2010)
This is the first of my sad ass songs. The House that Built Me is an incredible song about returning to your roots to find healing. This could easily be one of the best songs of the decade in all genres.
“Won't take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me.”
Jason Aldean - Dirt Road Anthem (2011)
Full disclosure that my former boss, Colt Ford, cowrote this song. Regardless of your stance on “hick-hop,” country rap, or rap in general, you cannot deny this song forever changed country music. A lot of country fans felt that modern day pop country was not resonating with where they stood in life. Dirt Road Anthem was one of the first songs to reach out to that demographic and say “this song was written by people just like you.”
“Memory lane up in the headlights
Has got me reminiscing on the good times
I'm turning off the real life, driving, that's right
I'm hittin' easy street in mud tires”
Eric Church - Springsteen (2011)
I, like most people, have the ability to be taken back to a specific place or time whenever I hear a song. Springsteen is such a great song about attaching songs to memories. This would be the start of the world realizing the lyrical power of Eric Church.
“Funny how a melody sounds like a memory
Like the soundtrack to a July Saturday night, Springsteen”
Kacey Musgraves - Merry Go ‘Round (2013)
I feel like Kacey is such an outlier in country music. She’s finally in the last few years getting recognized for the amazing talent that she is. Merry Go ‘Round is my favorite song she’s ever released. I’m sure it’s partly because it’s a sad ass song, but it’s also brilliant!
“Mamas hooked on Mary Kay
Brothers hooked on Mary Jane
And daddy's hooked on Mary two doors down
Mary, Mary quite contrary
We get bored so we get married
And just like dust we settle in this town
On this broken merry go 'round and 'round and 'round we go”
Florida Georgia Line - Dirt (2014)
Florida Georgia Line blew up 2012 and 2013 with a smash hit called Cruise. It was the start of the “bro country” fad and songs like Cruise, This is How We Roll, Get Your Shine On, and Round Here from FGL’s first album rocketed the band and “bro country” to the top of the charts. There was a lot of speculation how FGL would continue their success going into their 2nd album. With Dirt, FGL spun the “bro country” narrative around and went with a much more traditional country song about life being surrounded by dirt.
“You came from it,
And some day you'll return to it”
Tim McGraw (Featuring Faith Hill) - Meanwhile Back at Mamas (2014)
I was a huge Tim McGraw fan in the 90’s, but his songs in the 2000’s didn’t do nearly as much for me. Meanwhile Back at Mamas was the song that changed that. The mid-tempo, train shuffle beat song about not fitting into the larger world and wanting to go back home struck a chord. It’s just a beautiful song.
“Funny the things you thought you'd never miss
In a world gone crazy as this”
Little Big Town - Girl Crush (2015)
Written by an all female powerhouse of writers (Liz Rose / Lori McKenna / Hillary Lee Lindsey), Girl Crush is the only “controversial” song on my list. It wrongly caused quite the hubbub when it was released to radio. Stations stupidly pulled the song because some listeners ignorantly claimed the song was about and promoted lesbianism. The song is actually about a girl obsessing over another girl that has, stole, or is having an affair with her lover. It’s a haunting song that gives me goose bumps every time I hear it.
“I want her long blonde hair
I want her magic touch
Yeah, 'cause maybe then
You'd want me just as much
I got a girl crush”
Chris Stapleton - Tennessee Whiskey (2015)
Even though this song has been so overplayed, there is no denying the vocal and lyrical prowess of Chris Stapleton. He’s been a powerhouse in Nashville for years, writing songs for Thomas Rhett, Kenny Chesney, George Straight, and basically anyone else that’s every been at the CMA awards. It’s nice to see him get some recognition as an artist.
“I used to spend my nights out in a barroom
Liquor was the only love I've known
But you rescued me from reachin' for the bottom
And brought me back from being too far gone”
Tyler Farr - A Guy Walks Into a Bar (2015)
Tyler Farr’s career hasn’t taken off the way it should. He’s had some great songs, but none as good as A Guy Walks Into a Bar. It’s such an original take on such a common joke introduction. I love it.
“A guy walks into a bar, orders a drink
Sees a girl that catches his eye
Asks her if she wants another
They fall for each other and end up lovers
They laugh, cry, hold on tight, make it work for a little while
Then one night her taillights fade out into the dark
And a guy walks into a bar”
Maren Morris - Sugar (2016)
In my eyes Maren Morris was the start of the opposite of a “bro country” revolution (sis-country, girl-country, woman-country). She brought the song prospective back to the woman and empowered her to be more than a “pretty little thing riding shotgun” like in most “bro country” songs. Sugar is such a fun and energetic song with awesome production.
“Baby would you be my sugar, sugar?
Make my heart race, even on a good day
You make the world taste better, better
Good on anything, want you on everything”
RaeLynn - Love Triangle (2016)
Sad ass song alert! Divorce is such a heart breaking topic, especially when children are involved. RaeLynn wrote a beautifully autobiographical song about the heartache of being torn between two parents. This one gets me every single time.
“And some mommas and daddies
Ran outta love in ninety-four
And some mommas and daddies
Don't even talk no more
And some mommas and daddies
Let their heart strings tear and tangle
And some of us get stuck
And some of us grow up
In a love triangle”
Kane Brown (Featuring Lauren Alaina) - What Ifs (2017)
I feel like country music (and honestly all other genres) gets stuck in a rut every few years until a fresh sound comes along and opens it back up. Kane Brown’s What Ifs is one of the songs for me. It just sounds fresh. Kane and Lauren’s voices sound so good together.
“What if I loved all these what ifs away”
Eric Church - Some Of It (2018)
It’s not a shock to anyone that has met me in person, but I am a huge Eric Church fan. My wife introduced me to Eric years ago and I fell in love with the Chief record. I think he is one of the most authentic and sincere artists in country music today. He puts on a hell of a live show that focuses entirely on the music. There are zero theatrics. It’s just 3 hours of an artist pouring his heart out on stage every single night. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Eric is probably one of the greatest lyricists in country music in the last decade. I was completely stunned that Some of It didn’t win Song of the Year at this year’s CMA Awards. It’s by far one of the greatest country songs of all time.
“When you can't take it slow
'Cause time sure won't
What really makes you a man
Is being true to her 'til your glass runs out of sand
Some of it you learn the hard way
Some of it you read on a page
Some of it comes from heartbreak
Most of it comes with age
And none of it ever comes easy
A bunch of it you maybe can't use
I know I don't probably know what I think I do
But there's somethin' to
Some of it”
Ask a Nerd Dad #3
/Dear Nerd Dad,
After career day at school, my son is disappointed that I didn’t’ become something more interesting than a mid-level security analyst. All he talks about is “Jack’s dad makes video games… Cindy’s mom fixed people’s brains… Why can’t you go to outer space like Jimmy’s uncle?” How can I compete with that?! What is a nerd supposed to do to impress his kids without risking his life on re-entry?
Embarrassingly boring,
Average Analyzing Analyst
Dear AAA,
Well, I write these articles and record a podcast for nerds so all jobs can’t be winners, can they?
Signed,
Nerd Dad Chris
How We Make Those Sweet, Sweet Recordings
/Hey everybody!
Brad here. Since we get so many questions about how we make our awesome podcast episodes (just let me have this delusion, ok?), I thought I’d write a little bit about how we’re currently recording. It’s not a complex setup and it will most likely change in the future, but for now it’s what we do. Being a family nerd and soon-to-be family nerd with adult bills and such, we needed to keep both our setup and process flexible and expandable, yet also affordable.
PREP
Our pre-recording process is typically the same every week, and allows us to keep things a little more spontaneous. We create a shared outline that we work on throughout the week, filling out our regular segments with topics we came up with after the last recording. Some of the ideas come from our warped little minds, and others come from readers and listeners, like you. Yes, you. You’re here, you’re reading this, and you’re now one of us. Sorry. The ideas that aren’t used get put in a running list of topics that either we don’t get to, didn’t fit the programming yet, or are just too damn weird. Even we have filters on what not to talk about in public without gratuitous amounts of bourbon. But hey, they may still turn up on an episode one day - I do have lots of bourbon.
We typically just come up with the topics, and not a lot of detail. In order to keep it more conversational, spontaneous, and “rabbit-hole”-ish, we don’t tell each other very much. When we have a top-whatever list, we might let each other know our choices, but not the explanation as to why. Sometimes we don’t even go that far. Any “research” we do is usually kept to ourselves until the time of recording. It makes recording much more fun, and we can hopefully reach an end result resembling the long-lost “bar discussion”.
GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS... CASUAL NERD STYLE.
We run a two-mic setup, unless we have a guest with us. Chris prefers his Amazon mini-condenser mic, while I use one of two Blue Snowballs, depending on the room we’re recording in. The main one has a 3-way switch on the back to change the pick-up pattern, so it’s a little easier to cut out the room noise. When we have a guest we have another Snowball to pick up a couple people at once. Having access to large rooms is pretty convenient at times when we don’t want to work on cancelling out echo in post.
Our original plan was to both use the Amazon mics. However, due to Apple’s odd handling of USB devices, two devices with the same hardware identifier can’t be used at the same time. It works on Windows… it works on Linux… it just doesn’t work on macOS. Why not look at the addresses on the bus and differentiate the devices? Who knows. Perhaps one day we can get Matthew on the show to give a deep-level hardware/OS explanation. Or maybe he’ll keep saying he doesn’t want to speak to the masses and just hang out in the background. It’s his prerogative.
It’s finally time for recording. Chris heard on other podcasts he listened to about the majestic glory of Audio Hijack. We tried it, we loved it, so we use it. It does a great job of isolating each input, including application audio, and lets us EQ, control volume, or add effects to each piece independently of the others. All without having to drop our fairly minimal, hard earned money on a fancy-ass multitrack mixer… yet. Hey, a nerd can dream… I generally don’t do too much to the incoming audio though, as to reduce the processing and make sure we don’t get any lags or breaks in the sound. Any issues we do have (echo, room noise, Brad’s awkward congested mouth-breathing) just gets handled in post. It’s not perfect, but neither are we.
POST-PRODUCTION
So we have our voices in these giant files. Now what? Well, now we try to play nice with an app called Audacity. It’s bare-bones, but also not, which is why I like it so much. Where other editors try to do things for you, Audacity doesn’t do anything it’s not told to do. So, if something goes wrong, it’s my own fault. <cue Preds goalie chant> It’s just me, a lot of waveforms, and a cramped hand from keyboard shortcuts - just the way I like it.
Our editing comes down to some pretty basic stuff - cut, silence, fade in/out, envelope, and time shift. First, I import all the tracks, put them in order, and then place label tracks between our main vocals, the audio clips, and our “cutting floor.” The label tracks are use create separate sync-locked sections. That way if I cut out a section of my audio it cuts the same area out of Chris’ audio, but the label track keeps it from moving our audio tracks all over the place - like when we had that nice background fireplace during the Holiday Extravaganza. It keeps it all aligned and happy so it doesn’t have to be manually synced every time something is moved. I then normalize the audio to bring it all to the same level, which is probably as much of a “plug-in” that we use at the moment. After that, it’s just cutting what we don’t want (Chris has a lot of “uh” and I have a lot of “yeah”) and silencing out sections of room noise. Fading in and out around the cuts keeps it sounding seamless to you, I hope.
Our most recent episode in Forecast
Once I send Chris the edited final master file (the Golden Master, if you like), he loads it into Apple’s Logic Pro X and places the chapter markers into the file. I know, I know… “Why don’t you just use Logic in the first place?” Because we don’t - that’s why. For what our editing needs are, it’s a little much, and as I said earlier, I don’t want it making decisions for me. However, since Audacity doesn’t correctly handle converting the labels into chapter markers (yet, fingers crossed), we have to pull out the big guns. Chris listens in real time and marks out our sections (movies, music, etc.) or any top-notch exclamations of nerdiness. He then exports the file one last time and places it into Forecast, an app that finalizes everything for podcast publishing.
SHARING WITH THE WORLD
We use Squarespace to host our site and podcast, which you may know by now seeing as you’re reading this and all, and it is so easy to use. This is our third version of the site after fine-tuning, and it’s by far the most manageable. We upload the final mp3 podcast file to Squarespace and they are responsible for linking it to Apple and the other podcast services. If we’re not on your favorite service, let us know and we’ll see what we can do. We use Blubrry for podcast analytics so we can track listeners, average length listened, etc. and make sure we’re spreading to the masses. The data helps us figure out what we need to change to ensure we’re bring you content that is both interesting and entertaining.
Once it’s up, we tell the world through our Twitter account, which you can find at @bizcasualnerd, on this site businesscasualnerd.com, and through our personal accounts on whatever platform we feel like. Have any comments or questions about this process or anything else? Hit us up! Until later, see ya’.
Ask a Nerd Dad #2
/Dear Nerd Dad,
In an age of inclusion and anti-bullying, how do I let my children enjoy the classic games of our childhood? I don’t want them to grow up calling all reptiles evil and stomping on turtles because it was ok for Mario to do it.
Sincerely,
Muddled in the Mushroom Kingdom
Dear M.M.K.,
Let's have a little refresher in Super Mario Bros. lore. If you recall, there are many "animals" or creatures in the Mario worlds. In the original Super Mario Bros. there are Goombas (essentially walking mushrooms), Cheep-Cheeps (flying fish), Buzzy Beetles (hard shell beetles),and Bloobers (white squids). There are also Koopas, cute turtle-like creatures that hurt Mario if he touches them in any other way besides jumping on their shell. All of these creatures are forces of the evil Bowser used to prevent Mario from rescuing his beloved Princess Peach.
What's Mario to do? I'll tell you. He's out to kick the ass of anything in his way from keeping him from his girl and sometimes that's even cute little creatures. Yes, that means curb stomping some turtles, It's not all American History X though, because let's not forget that these turtles can be useful. Mario can stomp on the shell of a Koopa and send it careening across the screen to take out other creatures standing in his way. That's simply called being resourceful.
Let's also not forget in future games there are animals that are helpful to Mario. He can obtain a frog suit to swim and a raccoon suit to fly (Raccoons don't fly though, so....). Let this serve as the primary lesson to your children: just like in real life, not all creatures in the Mario world are bad; some are even incredibly helpful. If they aren't helpful, simply curb stomp them and make them useful.
Signed,
Nerd Dad Chris
