Eric Church's Talladega Does A Magnificent Job Reminiscing About The Past

I've made it no secret to say how much I enjoy Eric Church, and I'll keep up tradition and make it no secret in this review. The dude just oozes talent, especially in songs like Springsteen and Give Me Back My Hometown, and seeing him pop up looking like a badass biker on the Country Music Awards last night reaffirmed my admiration of the dude.

Editorial: Country Music Has Been Ruined By Sexism

Country Music has always had its fair share of cliches, but in the past they seemed more charming than anything else. After all, they were usually dealt with some form of self-awareness, such as in Kenny Chesney's She Thinks My Tractors Sexy, which the title alone lets you know the song is more than a bit tongue-in-cheek. But now the cliches are being reused constantly, the worst part being they're being used in the same fashion each and every time. Cliches are totally fine to utilize if done in a unique manner, and many modern Country Music singers apparently don't even know the word innovation.

Country Music Spotlight: Eric Church

The first singles of Eric Church's career made him stood out from the crowd from the get-go. Him and (especially) Brantley Gilbert have an iron grip over the image of a biker country boy, one adorn with scruffy jeans, baseball hats and perhaps a touch of remorse in his soul. That image was reinforced by his tunes that introduced him to the country music crowd, one of which was titled Two Pink Lines, which dealt with two folks, after spending the night together, awaiting the results of a pregnancy test.  Not exactly the stuff Junior Brown would croon about, but then again, for Eric Church, the norm was just another barrier to burst. But he wouldn't burst through one particular barrier, that of incredible success, until his third album, Chef.