Lady Antebellum has never toured the UK but they’ve visited there twice, and they’ve been nominated for the International Group award at tonight’s Brit Awards, which will take place in London. “The UK has been one of those places that has been one of the biggest responders to our music from a global perspective and so we spent the most time there as far as promoting our records and stuff, and so that’s such a huge honor,” Charles told The Country Vibe. Hillary thinks it’s crazy that they are nominated against Foo Fighters, Jay-Z/Kanye West, Maroon 5 and Fleet Foxes for the award and she says, “It’s really eye opening and humbling whenever we have been able to go and travel to these places and you can see just how far your music’s traveled and it’s really wild.”
Taylor Swift has two songs on the upcoming soundtrack for The Hunger Games. In the books and the movie, the characters develop skills that help them do battle in games, and during a recent Q&A session on MTV, and fan asked Taylor what skill she would possess if she were in The Hunger Games. Taylor admitted she had actually given that some thought because she says, “reading the books you’re so sucked into it that as you go about living your life you sit there and you’re like ‘Could I climb that tree? Could I make a weapon out of this? Like, if I had to forage for food what would I do?’” But being totally honest, Taylor said, “I think I would just be the person who runs and hides, honestly. … you know how you have fight, flight or freeze, those are your three reactions to something scary, like I just freeze. So I would try to run and hide somewhere…” The Hunger Games soundtrack will be released March 21st and the movie will be in theaters on March 23rd.
Taylor Swift and her co-star from the new Dr. Seuss movie The Lorax, Zac Efron, will be on The Ellen DeGeneres Show today. They’ll be promoting the film, which will be in theaters on March 2nd.
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Jake Owen is continuing to promote his latest single, “Alone With You,” with a performance tonight on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. He’ll sing that song and his #1 hit, “Barefoot Blue Jean Night.”
David Nail just finished up a run of sold out tour dates on the West Coast, including stops in Bakersfield and Los Angeles. David says he can feel the momentum the success of his songs “Red Light” and “Let It Rain” have created. “You can feel it when you hit the stage,” he says. “There’s a real energy. People know the songs, especially the album cuts, and they sing it back to you like they’re singing you their life. When I started chasing this dream, that’s all I ever wanted – for my songs to make people feel something, to feel their lives.” Next month David will join Gavin DeGraw on the road for a short run of dates and then he will team up with Billy Currington on his first headlining tour.
Tim McGraw has accomplished a lot in his career, but there are still things on his wish list, or more specifically people that he would like to work with. If Tim had the chance to collaborate with any other artist he told CMT Insider without question it would be Bruce Springsteen. Tim says, “[He’s] one of my heroes and really the ultimate performer … If I could ever do a song, a show or a tour with him, I would do it in a heartbeat.” Tim also has a wish list of co-stars he’d love to act with, and it includes Daniel Day-Lewis, Clint Eastwood and Sean Penn.
Justin Moore, who is from Poyen, Arkansas, has wanted to organize a hometown event to raise money for charity, and it looks like 2012 may be the year he’ll get it started. “I kinda wanted to wait until I had what I thought was a legitimate platform instead of just going down there and raising a few hundred dollars, which every little bit counts.” Now that he’s had some success and could attract more attention to an event and raise more money he says, “We’ve been trying to find a date for it.” Plus he’s already started enlisting friends. Justin boasts, “Darius [Rucker] owes me a bet. We bet on the South Carolina/Arkansas game last year, so he lost it so he’s gotta come do a charity event for free for me. F-R-E-E, free. We just gotta find a date.” As a father of two healthy little girls Justin will likely choose St. Jude as the beneficiary of his event because he says, “I’ve got a soft place in my heart for that place and those kids. I mean I’ve been able to go down and visit those kids and see that. And if that don’t touch your life and change you then you’ve got something wrong with you.”
Georgia native Jason Aldean was thrilled when tickets for his Atlanta show on May 19th sold out in just four minutes last Friday. Demand for his show was so high that a second show has been added on May 18th. Those tickets will go on sale this coming Friday through livenation.com. When Jason heard the news he said, “It feels like 2011 was sort of my coming out year, but this is a milestone I’ve been working toward for over a decade. From the days when my mom used to drive me all over Georgia and I was playing clubs for 20 people my dream was always to play for 20,000. Big shout out to all my peeps in Georgia for throwing me such a big coming home party!”
Even in this tough economy Jason has been selling out shows all across the country and attributes that to keeping his ticket prices reasonable. “A couple and their two kids want to go to a show they don’t want to spend 500 bucks to go see a show. I wouldn’t go see Elvis for 500 bucks. We’re not that good,” he told The Country Vibe with a laugh. “That’s the biggest thing, just trying to keep ticket prices down so that the people can come to the show and not feel like they gotta miss a house payment the next month.” And once they do buy a ticket Jason says it’s his responsibility to give them their money’s worth. “You want them to be entertained from the minute they get there to the minute they leave. And that’s part of the experience we try to give ‘em. And so far, so good.”
Dierks Bentley’s #1 album, Home, features 12 songs, but he tells The Republic, “I wrote too many songs. I wrote 70. I wrote a lot. There’s 64 that are never going to see the light of day. That’s 64 days that I can’t get back.” You may remember about a year ago Dierks holed up in a studio in Asheville, North Carolina to record a new album. He even streamed the recording process online so fans could be a part of it. It turns out he recorded 15 songs that were supposed to be his next album, but he reveals when he started playing some of the songs live in concert they just didn’t feel right, so he scrapped the whole project, except for one song, and started over. The only song he kept was “Am I The Only One,” which went on to be his first #1 song off of Home.
Things are going so well in Blake Shelton’s career these days that he tells The Toledo Blade, “It freaks me out when I think about it too much.” But now more than ever Blake is thinking about his career and how to continue the momentum he has and how to take it to the next level. “We’re swinging for the fence this year with the tour. You’ve got to lay it out on the line if you want to be one of those artists who get a lot of people to come out to their shows. We’ve got staging I’ve never seen before,” he says with a laugh. “If you knew how odd it is for me to talk about this stuff … because I’ve never cared about it before. I’m the kind of guy who likes to get out there and sing. I’m a musician, but even I’m impressed by some of the cool stuff we’ve got.” Blake is out on his first headlining tour, the Well Lit & Amplified tour, and he even though it’s his first he says, “I don’t ask other artists for too much advice. I’m afraid to do that too much because then you end up copying someone’s show. One of my pet peeves about Nashville is that it tends to be copycatted. I don’t want to do that. I’ve got to be different.”
Ever since Carrie Underwood and Mike Fisher got married in 2010 people have been speculating about when they will have kids, with many tabloid rumors circulating about her already being pregnant, but Carrie says it’s going to be a while, maybe a couple of years before they consider having kids. In a recent radio interview “This year is going to be so busy and I think 2013 is probably gonna end up being pretty busy as well, and my husband’s hockey schedule is absolutely insane. I really think it’d be a bad idea — ‘Sorry, honey, you’re not gonna see the kids for a couple months cause we’re all going on tour.’ I just don’t think that’d be really fair, and we’re not ready. We’re enjoying each other and spending time with each other and just having fun and being silly.”
