Best Betts: Best in This Week's New Music

Posted by amyclark on 08/17/2008
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9/11/2007 Stephen L. Betts No Kanye vs. 50 Cent-style feuds among country artists releasing albums this week. After all, the top two albums hitting stores and digital outlets today (9/11) are the latest from Kenny Chesney and a best-of from Trisha Yearwood. Kenny will no doubt dominate the country chart (and could top the Billboard 200 chart as well - no matter what Kanye and Fiddy have to say about it!), but both of these are definitely worth a listen. Kenny Chesney, Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates (BNA Records) It may be the first of his albums that doesn’t include a song he’s written, but the introspective Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates is still quintessential Kenny Chesney. Though he’s supposedly older and wiser, as suggested in woe-is-me weepers like “Wife and Kids,” and “Better as a Memory,” the kid in Kenny still lives to rock, and gets to do so here with Joe Walsh on guitar (on the Dwight Yoakam-penned “Wild Ride.”) And although there's still plenty to recommend it, it just wouldn’t be a Kenny record without one truly cringe-worthy tune tacked on. That honor this time goes to “Dancing for the Groceries,” a song for all you stripper/moms out there.   Trisha Yearwood, Greatest Hits (MCA Nashville) Though she’ll be releasing a brand-new album on a new label (Big Machine) later this year, and she’s already released one best-of collection (1997’s Songbook), Trisha Yearwood’s career is always worth a look back. Packed with hits from her very first (“She’s in Love with the Boy”) to her more recent (“I Would’ve Loved You Anyway”) and supplemented by two previously unreleased gems (the bittersweet “Just a Cup of Coffee” and the grassy shuffle “Nothin’ to Lose”), Greatest Hits reminds us why Trisha Yearwood still matters, and gets us even more excited for the record to come.