A pink ribbon song.  A young woman shouldn’t have to go through cancer.  But, it happens.  Martina brings the listener into the family crisis.  We feel the fear and the no way out.  Here’s where a strong husband comes in, where loving through it is all he can do.  Martina McBride can truly connect the emotion of the song with the heart of the audience and not attract any attention to herself.  She’s not the star of the song and that’s what makes her one of the biggest stars in CM today.

A proud to be me song.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Eddie and Troy serve up a long list of remembrances sure to be familiar to country music listeners.  Describes a town we’d all like to live in or wish to have grown up in.  Or maybe it is and we just want to be reminded.  After one listen you sure do agree right along with them.  This is what Montgomery Gentry is best at.

Clap your hands to this one.  Got an early 60’s Memphis thing going on.  It is always good songwriting when the title is in the chorus and the chorus is still in your head thirty minutes after hearing it.  The lyrics run through the question Katie is singing about.  Does he or doesn’t he?  Does she or doesn’t she?

Everybody knows him by a different name.  Most of all he wants to be known as the singer.  A nice slow ballad where Lawrence describes his main heartfelt purpose in life.  Tracy has a 20 year career and many hits that prove he is a singer.  Add the title track from his new album to the list.

Is there such a thing as the Taylor Swift sound?  Here’s another good example of her country-pop princess romance songwriting style.  Taylor has turned into an artist that other artists will list as an influence years down the road.

A cover version of the David Barnes song from early last year.  Barely able to keep his truck on the road after hearing it on the radio, Blake just had to record this song for himself.  Blake sings it pretty much straight on as David wrote it.  I’m sure Barnes is happy. It is always great to have one picked up by an artist with as many fans as Blake Shelton.

For Eric Lee the Great Depression didn’t start with the stock market crash.  He takes us on a tour of his world after she left.  Just when everything was going good, too.  The song combines Georgia style southern rock beneath a folk-country common sense delivery.  Beddingfield’s sound is not unfamiliar.  We can hear where he gets it from.  But, it is a unique approach and not often used by the current class of country artists.

A good time driving with your girl song.  Its a crank ’em down and crank it up slow thumping anthem that won’t cause other drivers to roll up theirs.  “This Ole Boy” is the advance single chosen to attract interest in Craig’s yet to be finished next album.

TMI. Yes, men really don’t want to know and, most likely, won’t care to hear this song more than once.  But for women, its another matter.  This is the song to kick off an evening.  This is the song to drive home to after work and slap the steering wheel in agreement.  This girl speaks the truth.  “Girls Night Out” is an example of what makes country music so great.

A song about the kind of person you want to live next door.  The man who causes nobody any problems and helps everyone else out deserves to be admired in lyrics.  What D.J. does with these lyrics is turn “Between Sundays” into a familiar and recognizable song.  After a play or two it sounds like Miller is rightly inheriting his position on the charts passed down from the hat act superstars one generation his senior.

Funky groove on this confident I’m leaving you and you’re tough out of luck song.  A good choice for the third release off her self titled rookie album.  The song has already spun nearly 100,000 times on her myspace page.

Here’s a song to add to your beach, babes, and Buffett playlist.  The switch here is that he takes his kids and their friends to Daytona for a family values iced tea drinking vacation.  Life couldn’t be better especially when there’s Jamaican steel drums backing his countrified American dream.  It has been nearly six years since Sawyer Brown released a CD.  Did we even have iPods back then?  On “Smokin’ Hot Wife” they put their toes back in the water.  Or, should I say, in the sand?

Getting whiskey drunk is different from getting any other kind of drunk. As usual he got drunk did wrong and is now begging and confessing his way back. Now, all this is nothing new. Its been a regular thing for a decade and a half. This time I believe he means it because the band means it too. I hear an old time country church alter call melody written into the verse. When he wails with broken heart that his whiskey drinking days are gone you know that he was married to the bottle. He is equally tore up about saying goodbye to whiskey as having lost his woman. “Whiskey Days” is one of the rare drinking songs where the music really matches the lyrics.

Here’s a rodeo song that does just what it says.  It is Darren singing about his way of life.  Plenty of uptempo drumming, fiddling and a power guitar solo that ropes it all together.  “Cowboy Up and Party Down” is released in support of his upcoming six song EP called “Darren Warren”.  For a quick listen, he has a sample of the song in the sound check area of his website.

A nice honky tonk shuffle that moves ya right along.  Good and twangy.  Substitutes a bottleneck slide for the steel guitar parts.  “Anything Other Than Love” is the first single off Deborah’s new album “Hear Me Now”.  Of course she wrote this song herself about not wanting or needing to fall in love just now.  But, that is exactly what she fears is happening (in the song at least). This is the kind of song you enjoy keeping in your head long after you finish listening to it.  She has the song as a featured track on the music page of her website.  Or, listen on her ReverbNation page.