Blake Shelton and Adam Levine have decided to raise money for charity in an innovative way - they've set up a curse jar on the set of "The Voice." Adam confesses to cursing a lot during taping of the show, so he set up the curse jar. Blake decided to play along, so any time either of them lets fly with a bad word, they put $100 in the jar. No word on which charity will get the windfall.
"Tuskeegee" is out today. It's the duets projet Lionel Richie has been working on for the last couple of years. He loved working with country acts, and they loved working with him. According to Blake Shelton, who sings with Lionel on "You Are," “He came over and introduced himself and thanked me 50 times for being there and I felt ridiculous, you know, with him thanking me!” About his country collaborators Lionel says, “I have never laughed that much since the days of recording with the Commodores in a recording studio. You would figure it would be a lot of pressure...not at all. I mean, Tim McGraw was hilarious, you know, along with Kenny Chesney...along with...all of them.”
Carrie Underwood's new album, "Blown Away," is out May first, and she's written or co-written half of the songs on it. Why not all of them? “My stuff is basically submitted like everybody else’s and I do my best to be objective. I mean, I’ll be the first one to listen to one of my songs and be like, ‘Nah! It’s not good. I don’t like it. Next!’ And I feel like I can be pretty hard on myself, as well as everybody else, because we just want the best stuff.”
In other Carrie news, she's performing at the Grand Ole Opry tonight. “The Opry is just a great place to go and be yourself and sing. Obviously since I have a new song, I’ll probably be doing that because it’s fun to have new material. I don’t get tired of the songs that I sing, but I just feel like I see so many familiar faces in the audience every single time and it’s really nice to have new stuff to do for them – as well as for me.”
Steel Magnolia, who broke up at the end of last year, are officially back together, at least where making music is concerned. Joshua Jones reveals, “We’ve been through a lot this year and we’re making a record right now, so we’re looking forward to the future and kind of showing a new side of us too and digging in deep on this next record.” They're up for Vocal Duo at Sunday night's ACM Awards.
Thursday night's American Idol results show will be a little bit country. Scotty McCreery will perform his new single, "Water Tower Town," and contestants will perform songs by their musical heroes. Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert are a couple of country artists who's songs could get the Idol treatment Thursday.
Martina fans, head up - she'll make an "important announcement" today.
There are two major country music charts: Billboard and Country Aircheck, and they usually agree about the #1 country song each week. Not this week. On Country Aircheck this week, Taylor Swift has the #1 country song in America with "Ours," while the Billboard chart lists Jake Owen's "Alone With You" at the top.
If you missed out on it the first time around, pick it up today - Alan Jackson has re-released "Precious Memories," a gospel album he originally produced for his mom. According to Alan, “We just had so many people still wanting it, it’s just amazing – that thing has sold and sold. I still want to do another one, my momma she’s getting pretty elderly now and doesn’t get out much, but I’d really like to do another version of that for her.” He has another album due out later this year which will include his new song, "So You Don't Have to Love Me Anymore" and another Zac Brown Band collaboration.
Lionel Richie and Little Big Town are on the Today show this morning. Sugarland performs twice on Dancing With the Stars tonight, and Lionel Richie and Jason Aldean visit with David Letterman.
The tweet of the day is from Joe Nichols: "A message to Tim Tebow..... The 'high road' is a lonely place..... But it's an awesome view..."
