It’s the holiday season, and you’re going to the mall anyway, so how about stuffing a stocking with these new Christmas albums?
Diamond Rio, The Star Still Shines
These guys must love A Charlie Brown Christmas as much as we do, presenting both “Christmas Time Is Here” and an instrumental jam, “Christmas Is Coming.”
Toby Keith, A Classic [...]

Editor’s note: Trace Adkins‘ new album, American Man, Greatest Hits Volume II, will be released Dec. 4, but he’s also getting national media attention for his first book, A Personal Stand
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Roughneck. In this excerpt, the third chapter of [...]

Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
Sheryl Crow will return Feb. 5 with her next A&M/Interscope album, “Detours.” The first single, “Shine Over Bayblon,” is at iTunes now. Crow told Billboard.com this summer that the song “is very environmentally conscious, in the tradition of Bob Dylan.” “I’m really encouraging artists to write about what’s going on, because we seem [...]

Scott Borchetta, the president and CEO for Big Machine Records, is launching a second imprint, the Valory Music Company, and has signed Jewel to a multi-album deal, billboard.com reports.“She’s just one of the best singer/songwriters in any genre,” Scott says, adding that a move to country is “a natural progression for her.”
The label’s name is [...]

LeAnn Rimes confesses that appearing on awards shows isn’t quite as much fun as simply attending.
“It’s nice to have people all in one place,” she tells the New York Daily News, “but if you’re performing or hosting, it gets pretty busy. You’re running around, you’re changing clothes, there’s some tension, you really don’t get to [...]

When the smoke was cleared and all the numbers were counted, SoundScan reported that Carrie Underwood’s new CD, Carnival Ride, sold 527,101 copies during its first week of release to place the American Idol queen at No. 1 on Billboard country albums chart and the Billboard 200 pop chart. It sets a record as the [...]

Nashville, TN…McCoury Music, the artist-owned and operated label that released legendary singer/songwriter Merle Haggard’s The Bluegrass Sessions on October 2nd, expressed its shock today at a National Academy Of Recording Arts & Sciences committee’s decision to exclude the acclaimed album from consideration for nomination in its “Best Bluegrass Album” Grammy category. The label, created [...]