Recall This Hit?: “Cover You In Kisses”

I apologize profusely for the huge delay in posting.  I attribute it to busyness and laziness (but mostly the latter haha).  I thought I would take this opportunity to start up a new feature series named “Recall This Hit?” about past hit radio singles that radio doesn’t seem to play anymore and seems like most people have forgotten about.  These are songs that I enjoy and think should be discussed and brought to forefront once again (they are ready and waiting to do battle.  Stubborn fighters they are. Yes.)  Well, this gives me the convenience of not using past radio singles in future iCF Music recommendations and provides me access to talk about almost anything I want to with less restrictions :p.  So here goes…

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The first tune for the “Recall This Hit?” series is John Michael Montgomery’s “Cover You In Kisses” from his 1998 Leave a Mark album. This one has seriously been forgotten, it seems by everybody and that is disappointing.  Every now and then, (if I remember correctly) I hear it on XM Radio, which is a very pleasant surprise.  Beside from the fact that he mentions “Denver” in the first line of the song (where I reside currently, and where it snowed last night as well), I just cannot get enough of this song.  Maybe it’s the steel guitar-drenched production that really calls me in?  This is truly one of the greatest tunes of the ’90s era.  It’s not total traditional country – it’s got a slight pop feel to it, but it’s still undeniably pure country with a contemporary update, and goes real well with Montgomery’s calm twangy vocals.  The lyrics have a warm message of intense love for his girl, and how much he misses her when she’s not around.  Just an all-round winner. If you don’t like the production, then you must just be evil lol.  Btw, I just found a video clip of a fan performing a cover of the song, and their vocal performance is impressive (actually, I just looked at more of his videos and he has done a lot.  His name is Tyler Barham – He’s got a better voice than most of today’s country singers!).

Recommendation XXXVI: Vince Gill (triple-track)

Now we’ve hit a milestone (for me, at least)…: number 36. This one is real special for me because it’s my lucky number (won’t tell ya why), so I needed a special artist to go with it. I had trouble choosing the artist and the songs that I’d select from them. I know it needed to be a triple track one (hmm, that sounds like a better title than “threesome”, doesn’t it?. Okay, I’m changing it to that now, because the former was almost borderline weird-ish, though it wasn’t intended to be), so I finally made a choice I was satisfied with. This post will be a kinda long one, so prepare yourself for it: take out a comfortable chair and a nice glass of something to sip on…

My thirty-sixth recommendation is/are: Vince Gill’s “Out of My Mind” and “What You Don’t Say” from his 2006 These Days album, AND “Kindly Keep It Country” from his 1998 The Key album.  Yes, yes, it is Vince!  I really couldn’t imagine not discussing him and his music, and it took me quite a while to get to him, but the time has finally come.  Vince Gill is truly one of my absolute favorites and he’s one of the one most talented people in the music industry, ever.  He can sing, write, produce, and play at the highest quality there can be, and that makes him an all-around five-star musician.  I was a fan of his back in the ’90s when I was a little boy, and I didn’t realize how great he was until I bought the Souvenirs album (a greatest hits collection) some years ago and remembered all those songs I loved back then.  As of this moment, I own 71 of his songs (not including the songs I own that include his harmonies/background vocals) and I do plan to add more (he’s probably worked with everybody that I’ve reviewed on this site already lol).  Choosing the three tracks for this recommendation was not an easy task , but I made up my mind.

Recommendation XXXIV: Sheryl Crow

All I can say to this site’s audience: thanks so much for waiting.  It means a lot to me that people still check out this site regularly even when I don’t post too often.  With my time off from school, I’ve got my good times and bad: it’s nice not having to stress over work and papers (my film class woulda been so fun though), but it is killing me not being able to hang out with my many buddies and others back there.  I feel like I’m missing out and will miss out on lots of stuff, and I’m thinking I might not be able to return in 2009.  But I came up with a plan to visit my friends early than planned before 2008 is over, so I’m excited about that (will be kinda expensive though…lol).  Anyway, I can guess what most of you are thinking when you saw the picture on the side: what’s she doing on the site?  She’s not country! I know she may not be considered “country”, but she’s done several works within the genre and she has integrated it somewhat in her style throughout her whole career.  She’s worked with Willie Nelson, Dwight Yoakam, Johnny Cash, the Dixie Chicks, Jack Ingram, Brooks & Dunn, Vince Gill, and others, and even her duet with Kid Rock (“Picture”) sounded more country than most songs on country radio, so I think she’s earned at least a recommendation (She even had another single on the country charts with the poppier single, “The First Cut is the Deepest”, if you can remember that.)

My thirty-fourth recommendation is: Sheryl Crow’s “Anything But Down” from her 1998 The Globe Sessions album.  Sheryl is one of my favorite rock/pop artists and I like a fair amount of her work.  I’d have to say that “All I Wanna Do” (the much much better of the songs with that name.  Yeah, I said it, and I do mean it, Sugarland.) is my favorite song of her’s because it’s so catchy and reminds me of the ’90s.  It’s got a slight country feel to it with the steel guitar that’s used prominently in the track, and her voice is always easy to notice.  Even when she turned pop with “Soak Up the Sun”, she was still as good as ever (though, her rockier, edgier stuff is preferred).  I remember when I was young, I confused her with Martina McBride when I saw her lol, especially with her music video for the James Bond movie, “Tomorrow Never Dies” (now I don’t really see any similarities, except that they had real short hair in the past).  My only complaint about Ms. Sheryl Crow is that she seems to kinda mumble when she performs live and while it it part of her style and isn’t done on purpose, it gets somewhat distracting.  But whatever, she’s still a great music icon.