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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2013 22:50:39 GMT -5
I'd be very very surprised if "When the Credits Roll" was not a big hit. That is much more of a swan song than GIAWGT. I do expect 1-2 singles before that though I'm not sure how they fare. The right choices should certainly make the top 20 if not the top 10. Remember Alan's quality song (SYDHTLMA) was very very slow. George has very upbeat radio-friendly material. His scenario is really different, but the key words are right choice. Well sure "When The Credits Roll" might sound like a swan song but I think radio made GIAWGT into a swan song, especially when MCA came up with the ridiculous 60for60 stunt. I mean, that song labored up the chart its entire run, even before the whole 60for60 nonsense. It was a lead single and radio-friendly too. I think most of the songs on the album sound like they would've been easy top 10's in years past but now I just don't see it.
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Post by straitfan87 on Aug 18, 2013 17:08:49 GMT -5
I thought "I Got A Car" would have been a nobrainer to release as the second single, but since that wasn't the case I think we have another unfortunate "As Far As It Goes" on our hands. I even had some of my casual country music listening friends (the ones who dig the current stuff) hooked on "I Got A Car." MCA and George have really missed so many single opportunities these past ten years...including the great "Stars on the Water." I'm predicting "That's What Breaking Hearts Do" as the third single, though, and I am ok with that...it's one of my favorites on the album. I was also disappointed "As Far As It Goes" wasn't released as a single back in 2003, really thought it would have done great at radio. Hopefully the next single will do better and pick up momentum. ^ My biggest pick for missed George Strait song? "Designated Drinker". I know it's technically an Alan Jackson song, but IMO it would've been hue. I would also agree it would've been a great song to release, what a pairing on a great song! Then again there are so many great songs that would've probably been hits at radio.
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Post by tim on Aug 19, 2013 3:49:46 GMT -5
I remember seeing George and Alan perform "Designated Drinker" at a show in Dallas and will never know why it wasn't released. I still hear it every now and then here on the radio in Texas.
Well, I don't know about anyone else but I'm getting anxious for another single. With September right around the corner George and MCA need to release something new from this great album. For whatever reason I was envisioning a great video to go along with "I Got A Car" for the summer months and it just never transpired. Somewhere along the lines of George and the band singing in a corn field, a barn, and a car. But yea. My mind still envisions it as a great video...but alas it's never going to happen. This song isn't going to get released.
In regards to "Stars on the Water," I always thought it was a hit. I get this sense we are in an era where George finally wants to release some songs that he would have always wanted (with "Drinkin' Man" and "I Believe" the two most recent examples...maybe even "Tell Me Something Bad About Tulsa" being another). I think George would've even picked "I Ain't Her Cowboy Anymore" as a single over "How 'Bout Them Cowboys" if this was then...mind you two great songs but also two great examples of what will work at radio and what won't. IAHCA is no doubt a better quality song overall...but at radio it's just not going to make it.
Anyways, I just don't know if now is the right time for George to take these chances with singles because it's shortchanging his radio appeal. I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just these past couple of songs are not going to played, no matter how great they are. As a longtime and forever Strait fan I just want to hear him on the radio as long as possible...
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dajross6
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Post by dajross6 on Aug 19, 2013 20:34:27 GMT -5
Good articles in this week's Billboard about Mr. Strait. He doesn't hit the cover very often, and is worth the read.
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Post by straitfan87 on Aug 20, 2013 16:11:52 GMT -5
Good articles in this week's Billboard about Mr. Strait. He doesn't hit the cover very often, and is worth the read. Just read the article, thought it was good, too bad it didn't come out sooner though.
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rsmatto
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Post by rsmatto on Aug 20, 2013 16:29:56 GMT -5
Sad to say, I do not think anything will save I Believe. I do not think that if all the program directors got their hands on the current Country Weekly, they will say to themselves, "It's time to play the new George Strait" after reading the article. I read mine last night. Great story, but not great reception at country radio. Universal/Capitol radio promo staff had to pull too many strings and ask for too many favors from radio to get Give It All We Got Tonight up to #1. There's a price to pay for everything. It might be a while before George has another hit - if ever. Naw. They'll play him again. They'll even play songs from this album. "I Got A Car" or "When The Credits Roll" feel like radio hits. Radio's demographic shift may be 18-34, but many of those people still LOVE George Strait.
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Post by tim on Aug 20, 2013 17:53:18 GMT -5
Saw the new issue of Country Weekly yesterday and had to pick it up. As was stated above, great story but it's not going to save this song or get it played.
I also agree that if George releases the right song radio will not ignore him. This album still has too many killer songs on it and I believe radio will play them.
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joey2002
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Post by joey2002 on Aug 20, 2013 22:11:30 GMT -5
Universal/Capitol radio promo staff had to pull too many strings and ask for too many favors from radio to get Give It All We Got Tonight up to #1. There's a price to pay for everything. It might be a while before George has another hit - if ever. Naw. They'll play him again. They'll even play songs from this album. "I Got A Car" or "When The Credits Roll" feel like radio hits. Radio's demographic shift may be 18-34, but many of those people still LOVE George Strait. If "I Got A Car" was released immediately following "Give It All We Got", I'm sure it would've been a radio hit. Just a big mistake on their part.
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kirkw
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Post by kirkw on Aug 20, 2013 22:18:14 GMT -5
George will be right back in the game when they release one of these other tracks people have been posting about here. I personally like "When Love Comes around Again," but "I Got a Car" could do well although 4:32 might be an issue. "That's What Breaking Hearts Do," "Sittin' On the Fence" are huge prospects as well. I think this is the best CD George has put out since "Carrying Your Love with Me" in 1997. "I Believe" never was a good radio choice which is why many, including myself, were very surprised they went with this as the second single.
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joey2002
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Post by joey2002 on Aug 20, 2013 23:36:31 GMT -5
"I Got a Car" could do well although 4:32 might be an issue. His vocals end by the 3:45 mark, so they could trim it down with a radio edit. It's just such a radio-friendly song, I'm sure it still has a chance to do pretty well even with the loss of momentum.
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dajross6
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Post by dajross6 on Aug 21, 2013 13:55:26 GMT -5
Vocals end at the 3:45 mark, but the strings the next 45 seconds are very well done. In a perfect world I would have liked the final verse about going to the hospital edited some because it seems a bit corny, but it's a good song nonetheless. I found it interesting in the Billboard articles that George tried to send a message directly to radio saying "Please don't give up on me. There's plenty of music left in the tank." Although the Billboard articles didn't mention this current single much beyond its background, it is dead and I'm guessing MCA is moving on. It barely kept its bullet this week, and has done virtually nothing in the 4-5 weeks on the Billboard chart.
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Post by tim on Aug 22, 2013 23:31:42 GMT -5
On the drive home tonight I was thinking about this song and that MCA and George are likely going to try and push this song for the rest of the year and into 2014. And that is my problem with releasing this song as the second single. With 2014 the official last year of a full Strait tour, I was thinking that they needed to keep the singles rolling. And when "Love is Everything" was released my thoughts were for sure George had enough radio material here to last him through the end of that tour. They'd roll into the summer months with "I Got a Car" (maybe even release a video for it), follow that smash up with something like "That's What Breaking Hearts Do" or "Sittin' On A Fence," and release a fourth single (maybe something like "I Believe"). But now, I just don't know what they are doing/thinking.
Alas, my end thought on that drive was..."I Believe" is here to stay for a single for the rest of the year...and what 2013 could have been for at George radio wise just as he hangs up his hat on the road.
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Post by tim on Aug 23, 2013 0:14:23 GMT -5
On a quick side note here, I read George has scheduled a press conference on September 9th at the AT&T Stadium in Dallas to discuss details of the 2014 tour. More details soon...
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Zazie
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Post by Zazie on Aug 23, 2013 14:12:29 GMT -5
Alas, my end thought on that drive was..."I Believe" is here to stay for a single for the rest of the year...and what 2013 could have been for at George radio wise just as he hangs up his hat on the road. A sad thought indeed. But look on the bright side, which isn't all that bright -- maybe the song won't stay on the chart for the rest of the year. It has about a tenth the audience it needs to reach the top 20. So radio gets a vote here, and if they use it, we'll either see a new single or absolutely nothing new on the radio from George. And either one of those alternatives would be preferable. At its current rate of gain, this song won't last through October.
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churchchoir
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Post by churchchoir on Aug 23, 2013 15:24:39 GMT -5
I highly doubt George will stay on the chart for the rest of the year and I certainly can't imagine him still climbing into 2014, when his single is obviously going nowhere. It seems quite unlikely George will even manage to reach the top 25 with this, regardless of how long and hard the label pushes. I bet he'll either collapse or the label will let go, realizing his radio career is over and "I Believe" is hopeless, by the end of November, with a peak somewhere in the upper 40's, or possibly lower 30's.
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Post by drummerman2009 on Aug 23, 2013 18:31:47 GMT -5
A few years ago, George might have gotten a No. 1 with this and as I said earlier in the thread the time isn't/wasn't right for this song and I don't think one would want to hear a song like this so close to the holidays as one poster said that it might but MCA Records, George Strait and radio in general will decide when to pull the song and whether we see it just languishing on the charts for weeks without anything going for it. We'll see but I don't see it happening unless they plan on George performing this song on the CMA's in November.
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.indulgecountry
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Post by .indulgecountry on Aug 24, 2013 17:32:06 GMT -5
This'll be lucky if it even makes the Top 40 the way things are going for it now. I really don't think this is going to last much longer and move up too much more, if at all. There's no way it's going to hang around for the rest of the year unless radio suddenly falls in love with it, which isn't going to happen.
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Zazie
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Post by Zazie on Aug 24, 2013 20:28:14 GMT -5
There's no way to prove counterfactual statements incorrect, but I don't think this song would have been a #1 for George in any year dating back to his debut on the charts. I don't think he's ever released anything remotely resembling this in tone or content, and its performance on the chart does not indicate anything about his future at country radio other than "country radio is telling you not to release this kind of material if you want to have your music played on the radio." Now if I Got A Car fails to make the top 3, you've got a story along the lines of "George is in trouble at radio." But I don't see how I Believe tells us about his future (or his past).
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joey2002
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Post by joey2002 on Aug 24, 2013 20:56:57 GMT -5
Now if I Got A Car fails to make the top 3, you've got a story along the lines of "George is in trouble at radio." But I don't see how I Believe tells us about his future (or his past). Wise words, as always. I strongly believe that if George releases the right material, radio will still play him.
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churchchoir
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Post by churchchoir on Aug 24, 2013 22:19:51 GMT -5
Radio WOULD HAVE still played George if he released the right follow-up to GIAWGT, but I fear "I Believe" may seal the nail in the coffin of George's radio career. I agree that "I Got a Car" would have been another top 10 for George if it had been released instead of this, but I don't know if radio will even give George's next song a chance after this single does so poorly on the charts. It was no secret GIAWGT was one of George's last hits and I get the feeling most radio folks figured George's 60th #1 would have been his last, so releasing such a poor choice for radio next pretty much sends across the message that George and MCA don't care much about George's radio career anymore and thickens radio's opposition to playing George's music in the future.
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Zazie
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Post by Zazie on Aug 26, 2013 14:46:01 GMT -5
I can see why you fear it, and I fear it too, but that's just fear. We have no reason to think that George's zillions of fans will stop requesting Carrying Your Love With Me, and Run, and Amarillo By Morning, and Give It Away, and on and on goes the list. So radio rediscovers, every single day of the calendar year, that it can please its listeners by spinning Strait songs.
So how determined do they have to be to discourage their own listeners by refusing to spin a new Strait song, one that is likely to produce requests and happy listeners just as the last 100+ singles have done? They really don't want those listeners to stick around?
Maybe. I do understand that radio can stop playing Clint Black, or Vince Gill, or even Alan Jackson. I can (barely) imagine that for every devoted AJ listener there is some higher number of people who don't get why AJ is interesting, who want to hear Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean, who actively don't want to hear AJ, and who might change the station if radio dares to spin an AJ song. I can imagine that.
But George Strait is his own category, and I don't think (even though he's 60) that he's ready to become irrelevant at country radio. And if country radio thinks so, then I'm wrong (not for the first time). But I think they still think they'd be hurting themselves to pull Strait's new material off the radio. (They'll continue to spin the old ones, and I don't think anybody is saying they won't.) We'll find out, but we won't find out until I Believe goes away.
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Ten Pound Hammer
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Post by Ten Pound Hammer on Aug 27, 2013 12:59:29 GMT -5
^ I still think that, while he's not done, he's obviously less of a draw than he has been. He's really had to claw and scratch his way into Top 5 lately, and he hasn't had a clear path to a Billboard #1 since "River of Love". (Was there any condition that could have gotten, say, "Here for a Good Time" or "Love's Gonna Make It Alright" to #1 on BB, or were those lost causes?)
I will admit that he's sent radio-unfriendly singles out before. "Tell Me Something Bad About Tulsa" was great, but not radio-friendly. "Seashores of Old Mexico"? Same. But those still got to #11. So I would've imagined that George Strait being George Strait could've compensated at least somewhat for the radio-unfriendliness of "Drinkin' Man", or for the resistance this song is getting.
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McCreerian
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Post by McCreerian on Aug 28, 2013 20:18:26 GMT -5
Country Weekly George Strait being honored at Schermerhorn Symphony tonight - just announced, George signed on for 5 more albums!!! Long live George!
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dajross6
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Post by dajross6 on Aug 28, 2013 20:37:40 GMT -5
Well at least I'll have 50 more new songs to listen to.
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whynotnow
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Post by whynotnow on Aug 29, 2013 1:09:08 GMT -5
Amen.
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onebuffalo
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Post by onebuffalo on Aug 29, 2013 10:45:05 GMT -5
Country Weekly George Strait being honored at Schermerhorn Symphony tonight - just announced, George signed on for 5 more albums!!! Long live George! Given how artists release CDs these days, that means George Strait's career has been extended for ten more years. Not a bad thing!
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Post by straitfan87 on Aug 29, 2013 16:59:03 GMT -5
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VictoriaRR
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Post by VictoriaRR on Sept 2, 2013 2:21:01 GMT -5
Five more albums means that there is reason for MCA to care how George performs on the radio. They need to get songs played if they want to continue to sell records, and that starts with putting out the absolute best material out there that's compatible with modern Country radio yet still purely George Strait. He's managed to survive this long by sticking with that formula, and releasing subpar songs like this or "Drinkin' Man" isn't going to help much. That being said, I remember reading sometime back that George personally picks his own radio singles. I'm not sure if that may still be the case today, though I'm sure as long as he's been with the label they probably rely on his input quite a bit. I think "I Believe" was more the result of what George wanted than what the label may have preferred, but now that they've gotten it out of the way, they can continue with another, far stronger single.
I get the impression that even though MCA obviously wants the song to get airplay, they probably didn't expect much from it. If they did, and if they believed in the song more than they seem to, they would have George out there a bit more talking about the song, and they would have put together a video that features clips of George performing the song in the last show of the first leg of his tour intermingled with a montage of the people whose lives were taken in the tragedy and an ending shot of George with his father and a closing credit dedicating the song to them. They could have gone a step beyond that and dedicated the profits of the single to the families of those involved in the tragedy. So while the song itself plays a big part in its success, there was still a lot of potential to push its boundaries a lot further by promoting it in these ways.
Oh, and keep in mind, although he's signed on for five more albums, that can mean several things beyond straight (no pun intended) new albums of all-new material. There could also be a live album or Christmas album in there, or perhaps a new greatest hits package. Hopefully I'm wrong, though.
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Post by Old Fart In NC on Sept 2, 2013 10:41:34 GMT -5
^I'd anticipate one of the albums being a live album from the Cowboy Rides Away tour. Perhaps a DVD/CD combo from the final concert, which should be a major event.
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churchchoir
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Post by churchchoir on Sept 2, 2013 19:20:59 GMT -5
Five more albums means that there is reason for MCA to care how George performs on the radio. They need to get songs played if they want to continue to sell records, and that starts with putting out the absolute best material out there that's compatible with modern Country radio yet still purely George Strait. He's managed to survive this long by sticking with that formula, and releasing subpar songs like this or "Drinkin' Man" isn't going to help much. That being said, I remember reading sometime back that George personally picks his own radio singles. I'm not sure if that may still be the case today, though I'm sure as long as he's been with the label they probably rely on his input quite a bit. I think "I Believe" was more the result of what George wanted than what the label may have preferred, but now that they've gotten it out of the way, they can continue with another, far stronger single. I get the impression that even though MCA obviously wants the song to get airplay, they probably didn't expect much from it. If they did, and if they believed in the song more than they seem to, they would have George out there a bit more talking about the song, and they would have put together a video that features clips of George performing the song in the last show of the first leg of his tour intermingled with a montage of the people whose lives were taken in the tragedy and an ending shot of George with his father and a closing credit dedicating the song to them. They could have gone a step beyond that and dedicated the profits of the single to the families of those involved in the tragedy. So while the song itself plays a big part in its success, there was still a lot of potential to push its boundaries a lot further by promoting it in these ways. Oh, and keep in mind, although he's signed on for five more albums, that can mean several things beyond straight (no pun intended) new albums of all-new material. There could also be a live album or Christmas album in there, or perhaps a new greatest hits package. Hopefully I'm wrong, though. George is going to continue to sell music with or without the airplay. It's likely 80% of folks who listen to modern day country radio don't care for George's music and wouldn't by his records anyway, but there will always be the hardcore Strait fans who will buy his albums and show their support. I'm not sure how much radio airplay does for George's career at this point. I agree that MCA couldn't have expected much airplay for "I Believe." It's just a textbook example of how not to get a single played on country radio today. The melody is rather dull, the lyrics don't offer anything new (Carrie Underwood just took a song with a similar message but significantly better and more radio-friendly delivery into the top 5), and it sounds even more traditional than George's recent several singles. George took a pretty big risk referencing the Sandy Hook shooting in his song and I can totally understand why programmers wouldn't want to play a song that reminds everyone of such a tragic event. Especially over the past year or so, country radio tries to play mostly upbeat songs that can be listened to passively. No one wants to be reminded of tragedy when they turn on the radio.
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