Thursday, February 4, 2010

Today's Country Tidbits

A huge congrats to Lady Antebellum on first-week sales of their sophomore album. "Need You Now" sold nearly half a million units, giving them the biggest first-week sales of any country album since Taylor Swift first released "Fearless" in November of 2008. It also puts them firmly atop not just the Billboard Country Album chart, but also atop the all-genre Billboard 200.

Newly married Charles Kelly of Lady A has a running joke with his wife. She pretends not to watch the end of the "Need You Now" video, where he kisses another woman. It's tough to be a big star's spouse!

Lee Ann Womack has been on the road with George Strait and Reba. They play Friday night and Saturday night, and are home on Sunday for the Superbowl. Is she planning to celebrate football with America? Lee Ann says she doesn't even know who's playing, but they'll probably have some people over, have too much food, and if she gets her way, about halftime, the guitars will come out, the volume will be muted on the tv, and the Superbowl party will turn into a guitar pull. That wouldn't fly at my house!

Carrie Underwood makes her Hollywood Bowl debut on October 2nd. She'll do the Los Angeles show with the Hollywood Bowl orchestra. Tickets go on sale on Valentine's Day.

Trisha Yearwood and Paula Deen spent yesterday together, filming an upcoming episode of Paula's show on the Food Network. They made jalepeno hush puppies, undoubtedly a recipe from Trisha's upcoming cookbook. No word on an air date for the episode yet.



Who will be the new Simon Cowell on American Idol? Well, if current judge Kara Dioguardi has her way, Garth Brooks or Vince Gill. She'd like to see someone from country music with a big personality and big opinions take Simon's place. One problem...country artists are too nice to be like Simon!

The music sounds like there could be a dangerous shark on the prowl. The visuals look like a huge party is going on. Is it a disaster about to happen? Nah, it's just Luke Bryan's way of promoting his "Spring Break 2: Hangover Edition" release on iTunes. If the party looks fun, head over to Luke's Facebook page and enter to win a spring break crash pad.

The Ellen Degeneres show will feature Taylor Swift's "Grammy-Cam" video on today's show. It was supposed to air yesterday, but they pushed it out a day.

Happy birthday to Clint Black, who turns 48 today.