On Friday, August 23, my wife and I went to see country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who performed at Skylands Stadium in Augusta, NJ, which is the home to a minor league baseball team, the Sussex Country Miners. And while there are a few pundits out that who say it was apropos that Cyrus perform there, he actually put on a very good show.
Granted, I had a couple other events that I was planning on that day. One friend invited me to a barbecue and bonfire and him and his wife's home, and there was a geocaching event down in Hillsborough as well. But my wife has been a fan since the "Achy Breaky Heart" days, although I'm not sure if it was because of his music, or that mullet that he wore back then. But since it's been awhile since I went to a concert, and heck, Cyrus as a featured performer just broke Billboard's record for the most weeks at #1 on the Hot 100 (with Lil Nas X), so I went along.
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| Billy Ray Cyrus at Skyland Stadium on August 23 |
Billy Ray has been a performer that somehow has managed to stay visible long after his big "Achy Breaky Heart" hit in 1992. That song reached #4 that year which was pretty hard to do as rap, grunge and adult contemporary songs dominated that year. It was the first country crossover hit in over eight years. The hit spawned the "Achy Breaky" line dance which started the whole country line dance craze. It also came on the crest of a "new country" movement spearheaded by artists like Garth Brooks, Clint Black, Tim McGraw, Reba McEntire, Faith Hill. Brooks & Dunn, and many others.
Country, like rap and hip-hop, is and was a close-knit community and anyone conceived as an "outsider" gets pretty much scrutinized, especially if that so-called "outsider". A perfect example of that would be Vanilla Ice. Ice ruled the charted in the latter half of 1990 with "Ice Ice Baby", and his album To The Extreme was #1 for sixteen weeks on the Billboard 200 and went seven-times-platinum. However, he was the subject of one of the biggest backlashes in music history. In part, this due to his record label's insistence that he take a more commercial approach and image, and making up his backstory. This eventually led to resentment, compounded by the fact that he was a white rapper in a genre dominated by African-Americans. Aside from a follow-up single, "Play That Funky Music" (based on the Wild Cherry hit) reaching #4, he never had another hit and no subsequent albums even charted.
Cyrus , too, dominated the charts, in 1992. His album, Some Gave All, which featured his hit song, went nine-times-platinum and topped the Billboard 200 for 17 weeks. But perhaps it became too big, inviting the inevitable backlash. Travis Tritt, a developing country star at the time, criticized the song, calling it "frivolous" and "doesn't really make much of a statement". One critic called Cyrus "the Vanilla Ice of country music". And sure enough, "Achy Breaky Heart" would be his only #1 country single. He would have several more top 10's on the country list, but his success was checkered at best. After limited success with a follow-up to Some Gave All, he was, at best, a journeyman.
Still, though a series of breaks, Cyrus was still in the public eye. In the early 2000's, he starred in a TV series, Doc. But it was a few years later, starring in the Disney series Hannah Montana, which featured his daughter, Miley Cyrus in the lead role that Billy Ray got some notice. Sure, it was on his daughter's coattails, but his career, to a certain extent, was revived. He also appeared on Dancing With the Stars in 2007.
Miley Cyrus became a star, first as Hannah Montana, then a pop star in her own right, peaking with the suggestive and controversial Wrecking Ball album and with her "twerking". While her career had cooled off somewhat, her music became much better, specifically "Malibu", which became a hit on my blog in 2017. She also was a coach on The Voice. As for her dad, he still was kicking around, but his last single on the country chart came in 2011.
Enter Lil Nas X.
The young, aspiring rapper recorded his first album in late 2018, and came up with this country-flavored rap song, "Old Town Road". He briefly considered contacting Cyrus to help him on the record, but at the time, he did it all himself. As the single was released early this year, it slowly caught on. As it was on the verge of hitting number one on Billboard, Lil Nas X contacted Cyrus to help him out on a remix of the song, and Cyrus was welcome to oblige. "Old Town Road" first hit the top on April 13, with only Nas as the credited artist; however, from the second week on, Billy Ray Cyrus' remixed version was listed as the artist as a featured performer. While the song debuted at #19 on the Billboard country singles chart (Nas-only version), it was yanked off the chart because, according to Billboard, the song did not have the elements of a modern country song--another factor that led to Cyrus being included. The song never did re-enter and only peaked at #50 on the country airplay chart.
Which brings us to the current scheme of things. As I headed to Skylands Stadium, I had wondered whether he and his band would play "Old Town Road". Skylands is a rather small stadium, and we actually had "seats" right on the field, and when we arrived, we had a great view of the stage. However, when the opening act, Johnny McGuire performed, he invited those in the seats to come onto the field, thus it was rather mobbed. Still, we had a nice view as we were up near front.
As I am not too familiar with Billy Ray's music catalog, I didn't know many of the songs he was performing, but they were decent. One song I am familiar with, the title track from his debut, "Some Gave All", was a touching tribute to our service people who fought for our freedom; Cyrus wrote that for a friend who died in Vietnam. After the song, the crowded chanted "USA USA USA".
Other songs followed, including a cover of the Georgia Satellites' 1987 hit, "Keep Your Hands to Yourself", and another song which featured opening act McGuire. During the set, he mentioned that one female member of his band did a version of "Old Town Road", but then Cyrus contemplated to his band that "we may have to find a spot in our setlist for that song". As the time, I was disappointed in that I wouldn't hear it that night, but I needed not to worry. He also acknowledged a few Miley Cyrus fans in the crowd, saying that in fact, the pop star is his daughter; these girls were waving a "Hannah Montana" T-shirt
The crowd, predictably went wild for "Acky Breaky Heart". Two songs later, he and his band did play "Old Town Road", and, in keeping with the metaphor of the venue, he knocked it out of the park, with a nine-minute jam of the song. Cyrus--nowadays with long hair and a beard, was cooking on guitar and received a big ovation of the crowd. So, once again, Billy Ray Cyrus, thanks to Lil Nas X, is on top again. The video below is his awesome performance of "Old Town Road":
So, what did I think of the concert? It was good, Cyrus was in top form. I hadn't been to a country music concert since the early 2000's, when I saw such stars as Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney and Tim McCraw, as the PNC Band Arts Center. The crowd at those concerts was packed; all of them sponsored by a local radio station. In relation to that, this audience was pretty sparse; and let's face it, Cyrus' talents are a notch below those mentioned performers. But Cyrus did deliver the goods, and we were more than overjoyed by the reception. Performing a day before his 58th birthday, the crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to him.
Two days later, he appeared at the VMA Awards, which took place at Newark's Prudential Center. He did not perform, although daughter Miley did, and Lil Nas X did perform "Old Town Road". Still, he posted on his Facebook page that he was pretty much in heaven and he loved the outpouring of love from the state of New Jersey.
It's really hard not to root for Billy Ray Cyrus. Twenty-seven years after "Achy Breaky Heart", he's still around.
COPYWRITERS: As we near the end of the year and decade, I've been starting to remember the events of the last ten years. I recently made a video of my good times of 2010, including the trips, parties, music, and other events I participated in. I included snippets of tracks from songs from that year, as well as a few older ones. In addition, I created a "Top 20" montage of my favorite songs from that year. They were posted on Facebook, and upon it loading, I received a message that two of the music corporations, Warner and Sony were "owning" my videos, as it contained copyrighted music. Of course, these were songs I legally purchased, and they were only posted on Facebook, not imported to YouTube. Regardless, I had gotten a message that the offending songs were muted out; however, to my knowledge, none of them were actually muted; at least not in this country, as they were all present when I replayed the videos.
All of this brings to mind of the problems that the music corporations have had in the digital era. They pretty much took a hit when services like Napster allowed users to download just about any song they wanted for free. After Napster shut down, other peer-to-peer services arose; most were eventually removed by the record industry association. Still, we had legal digital download services like iTunes and Amazon rise from those ashes, and, while the music industry never really regained the healthiness from when they sold CD's and vinyl, it made music popular again. With the millions and millions of plays songs get from streaming these days, it eases the pain a bit, but understandably, the labels can still be paranoid about having music "copied", something which has stemmed back decades to the days when you could tape a song from the radio or from a friend's album.
Hopefully, these music companies know that I am just a fan of the music and am just incorporating them into my video as a reminder of the times that I had during when these songs were popular. I subsequently made a video montage from 1969 that was fine.
SNS 100: The Cyrus' concert and his performance of "Old Town Road", resulted in the song storming back to my #1 spot, for its third non-consecutive week. Nationally, the song drops from 3 to 4, two weeks removed from its record-breaking 19 weeks at the top. Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy" drops to #2 on Billboard after a lone week at the top; the new #1 there is "Senorita" by Shawn Mendes and Camilla Cabello. On my list, "Go" by The Black Keys drops to #2 after a week at the top. The Horrors, Foster the People and Shannon Marsyada round out the top 5.
20/20 FITZ BLITZ: "Don't Ever Let 'Em" by Fitz and the Tantrums rises 23-20, becoming that band's 20th song to reach my top 20. Meanwhile, the simultaneously-released song "I Need Help", which I heard on a news feature, rises 12-9. A new song, "I Just Wanna Shine" has been released as well. Along with the title track of their forthcoming album, "All the Feels", that makes five songs out before the album has been even released. Meanwhile, the first single "123456" holds at #20 in the Billboard Hot AC list, one notch lower than the peak of "Fool" back in 2018. None of the Tantrum's newer songs has made a chart, however, so it looks like I may have them all to myself again.
Zac Brown Band's "Someone I Used to Know" makes a good jump from 42 to 24, thanks, in part, to friend Gary Gabriel posting the song. He recently saw the band in concert and they put on a great show.
The Top Debut this week goes to "My Cheating Heart" by a "band" called Love Fame Tragedy. It is actually a solo side project from Matthew Murphy. He is with the band The Wombats, who've had success here at SNS with "Tokyo" (#3 in 2011), and "Jump Into the Fog" (#7in 2012).
DID THEY LISTEN: Last week, I had lamented that two of my current favorite alternative songs, "Go" by the Black Keys, and "Kombucha" by Winnetka Bowling League had peaked, confirming that the current taste in alt rock is moving away from my personal tastes. So, what happened on the most recent Billboard alternative songs chart? "Go" shifts gears and reaches a new peak of #14 with a bullet, and while "Kombucha" is still holding at #39, it regards its bullet, indicating increased airplay. So, did the powers that be read my blog last week? Well, one can dream, right?
Scenes ‘n’ Soundwaves 100
August 25, 2019
| This Week | Last Week | ARTIST-Title | Weeks on List |
| 1 | 2 |
NUMBER ONE:
Album 7 (EP)
(3 weeks at #1)
|
10 |
| 2 | 1 | The Black Keys - Go | 11 |
| 3 | 4 | The Horrors - Point of No Reply | 11 |
| 4 | 6 | Foster the People - Imagination | 7 |
| 5 | 5 | Shannon Marsyada - Caught Falling | 8 |
| 6 | 9 | Nick Waterhouse - Song For Winners | 6 |
| 7 | 3 | Blanco Brown - The Git Up | 9 |
| 8 | 11 | Amber Arcades - Something's Gonna Take Your Love Away | 11 |
| 9 | 12 | Fitz and the Tantrums - I Need Help | 8 |
| 10 | 13 | Donna Missal - Transformer | 7 |
| 11 | 7 | Winnetka Bowling League - Kombucha | 12 |
| 12 | 14 | Band of Skulls - Love is All You Love | 9 |
| 13 | 8 | The Driver Era - Low | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | Kungs ft Olly Murs and Coely - More Mess | 9 |
| 15 | 10 | Molly Burch - Candy | 18 |
| 16 | 17 | Shannon Marsyada - Oceans | 22 |
| 17 | 19 | Maybird - Gonna Lose Your Mind | 9 |
| 18 | 20 | Absofacto - Dissolve | 10 |
| 19 | 26 |
TOP 20 IMPACT OF THE WEEK:
Album: Alive
|
4 |
| 20 | 23 | Fitz and the Tantrums - Don't Ever Let Em | 8 |
|
|
Songs with the greatest increase in favorite
points over the prior week.
● Songs
with 25 or more plays on my iPod.
▲ Songs with 50 or more
plays on my iPod.
¨ Songs with 100 or more
plays on my iPod.
The “Scenes ‘n’ Soundwaves 100” is a list
of current and recent song playlist which I am listening to.
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