Smoother than butter. 'Tis the season to fire up the Christmas carols. While Christmas music might not be everyone's cup of tea, we can all agree that a few songs get us in the holiday spirit. One of those songs for me is Dolly Parton's "Hard Candy Christmas." "Hard Candy Christmas" was recorded by the legendary singer in 1982 for her role in the movie The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and made an appearance in the top ten of the Billboard U.S. Hot Country Songs chart in 1983. If you've never seen the movie, Dolly was BRINGING it. https://twitter.com/NotablePhotos/status/1751072764377633152 It's a Christmas classic, although Parton does not consider it a Christmas tune. “It’s kind of funny that people think it’s a Christmas song, and it’s really not. It’s really just about people having hard times and saying, ‘It’s like a hard candy Christmas,’ like when you’re so poor that all you get for Christmas is a piece of hard candy.” While Parton did not pen the tune, Carol Hall wrote it; she related to the lyrics of not getting much other than a box of hard candy because you were living in poverty hit home. “In the early days we didn’t have electricity so we used to go out I the woods with my Dad in the afternoon, find the best tree that we could and we’d take it back in the house and decorate it with whatever Mamma could (find). Buttons and popcorn, anything that we could have which was great, those days were great. Momma would always tell Christmas stories, read the Bible, then we’d go out to the barn and they would tell us that at midnight the cattle would kneel, like in honor. But we never could stay awake long enough to see it. We could never see that happen. But we always had a little something…. It didn’t matter what we got… it was great for us.” While Dolly's version will always hold the number one spot in my heart, Zach Top covered the track last year, and it's pure country gold. Over the years, "Hard Candy Christmas" has been covered by a handful of artists, including Reba, Caylee Hammack, and more. However, the majority of covers have been by fellow female artists, so when Zach Top dropped his take on the song, my ears immediately perked up. Released as part of his For You For Christmas project, Top did Parton justice with this cover. The lyrics cut a little deeper coming from Top, who often sings about a broken or lonely heart. The soft melody is a change of pace from the honky tonk jukebox melodies we typically see from the Washington native, which allows his vocals to shine. "Hey, maybe I’ll buy some smokes Or Maybe I'll just lie low Maybe I'll hit the bars Maybe I'll count the stars until the dawn Me, I will go on Maybe I'll settle down Maybe I'll just leave town Maybe I'll have some fun Maybe I'll meet someone and make her mine Me, I'll be just..." Zach Top's smooth-as-silk vocals coat your ears, and during the entire song, listeners are dialed in. Since he released this cover, I have found myself reaching for it more than Dolly's version. It's that good. Zach Top does not miss, and this is a cover that Dolly Parton would approve of. If you like a sad Christmas song, fire up this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdEyIcBaJPs Without Dolly Parton's version of the song, we would not be able to enjoy this stellar cover, so listen to hers while you're here, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOzi-gD7-ts

In nearly every measurable way, 2024 was a banner year for country music. Not only was the genre immensely popular (just take a look at Spotify Wrapped data) but all things considered, the overall quality of music was pretty great. Of course, independent (or independent adjacent) artists lead the charge but even in the mainstream things were solid. Chris Stapleton, Cody Johnson, and Megan Moroney all took home hardware at the CMAs and, though they didn't win, Zach Top and The Red Clay Strays were nominated for awards, which is a sign that the Nashville industry may be finally acknowledging that fans want something real in a bad way, as shown by the popularity of Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, and Sturgill Simpson. While we can talk about the music all day long, another reason that people love country so much are the crazy stories that seemingly always come from the genre, with some of the biggest names also being the wildest characters. Willie Nelson used to shoot bibles on his tour bus, Merle Haggard was a true criminal who spent plenty of time behind bars, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings spent upwards of $1,000 a day on drugs while living together, heck even America's sweetheart Dolly Parton claims to have fought the woman "Jolene" was written about, and that barely scratches the surface on the incredible number of nearly unbelievable stories country artists have given us throughout the years. Today's crop of artists may not be quite as unhinged but there's certainly still a few wildcards out there, so I want to take a look back on the craziest moments in country music this year, starting with its biggest star and the commotion he caused in downtown Nashville this Spring. Eric Church Opens Nashville Bar Back in April, Morgan Wallen once again found himself in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Eric Church had just recently opened his 6-story Nashville bar name Chief's and Morgan and crew decided to go check it out for themselves. A security guard said he saw Wallen come in through the front door (which was unusual since they have a specific entrance for VIPs) and immediately head up to the rooftop bar. Less than 30 minutes later, he got a call on his radio that somebody had thrown a chair off the rooftop and it had landed just a few feet away from some police officers that were standing outside. He and other bouncers raced upstairs, located the person who threw it, and escorted them out before turning them over to Nashville Metro Police. That person was, of course, Morgan Wallen. The security guard said there was no altercation beforehand and nothing that would have caused him to do this, other than maybe a little bit of liquor talking: "They just say he was being an idiot and just threw it. There really wasn’t no argument or nothing about it. Just him being drunk I feel like. He wasn’t in the right state of mind." @micheal_phillips #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp ♬ original sound - micheal Phillips Will Morgan Wallen Go To Jail? To this day we still don't know why he threw the chair but his little lapse in judgement ended with three charges of reckless endangerment and one of disorderly conduct. After an initial hearing on May 3rd (which Morgan did not attend), the follow-up court date originally scheduled for August 15th was pushed back to December 12th. It was unclear why the hearing was moved but we should get some answers next Thursday when Wallen (who is expected to be present) stands before a judge. We shouldn't expect everything to get wrapped up next week unless his attorneys are able to work out some sort of plea agreement; if the case does go to trial we won't get a resolution until well into next year. "Inside sources" told Life & Style Magazine that Wallen and his attorneys are preparing to spend some time behind bars: "It’s looking bleak at this point. He’s likely to spend time behind bars… I don’t think the prosecutors want him to skate away with no time because people will think it’s because of his celebrity status. Morgan is being told the best scenario is a 30- to 60-day sentence.” I wouldn't be so sure about that... Wallen has been silent on many things of late (like winning Entertainer of the Year) but he did release an official statement a while back to address these allegations: "I didn’t feel right publicly checking in until I made amends with some folks. I’ve touched base with Nashville law enforcement, my family, and the good people at Chief’s. I’m not proud of my behavior, and I accept responsibility. I have the utmost respect for the officers working every day to keep us all safe. Regarding my tour, there will be no change. -MW" Fingers crossed we'll get some more details on what lead up to the moment the chair was thrown because it still just doesn't make any sense to me. Let's also be extremely grateful that it didn't actually land on the officers below because a heavy chair falling 60 feet would cause immense damage, if not death, and we'd be having a much different conversation about what's going to happen to Morgan Wallen. @elizabeth.linerIykyk ? ♬ Last Night (Morgan Wallen vs Chainsmokers Last Night Roadhouse x Skillz ReMix) - Morgan Wallen

How's everybody feel about their Spotify Wrapped this year? The streaming giant dropped their annual year in review last year, giving listeners a recap of their listening habits from the past year. (And also inventing some new genres in process...apparently one of my top genres was "Sweater Weather Tavern Country Folk," whatever that means). But anyway, with the annual drop of Spotify Wrapped naturally comes listeners sharing their own stats, and others judging people for how bad (or good) their music taste is. Naturally, Taylor Swift was the most streamed artist of the year - and surprisingly, there weren't any country artists in the top 10, which included pop artists like The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, Drake and Billie Eilish. But honestly, that's not what's interesting to me anyway. What I wait for every year is for artists to post their own year-end stats showing just how much their music was streamed. The reason I find it so interesting is because this data generally isn't made available to the public, so it's one of the rare glimpses behind the scenes that we get into just who people are listening to, and how much they're listening. It's an interesting way to gauge whether an artist really is as big as you thought they were, whether there's somebody that you may have missed, and just get a peek behind the curtain into how many streams these artists really get. I love to see who's being streamed more than I expected, or whose streams are low for an artist of their size. What can I say, I'm a numbers nerd. So as usual, I tried to catch all of the artists who have shared their Spotify Wrapped for Artists stats this year so we could take a look at the numbers and see if anything stands out. Of course, there are some things to keep in mind when we look at these numbers. First, an artist's streams are obviously going to be heavily dependant on whether they released new music that year or not. So a guy like Zach Bryan who drops new music every other week is obviously going to get a boost in streams when he releases new music versus an artist like Morgan Wallen who didn't drop a new album this year (though he did release a couple songs). These are also only stats from a single streaming platform, so we have no idea how much an artist is streamed on other platforms like Apple Music, Pandora, YouTube, or any of the other dozens of platforms out there. (Drop those Amazon Music stats, Garth). And we also obviously have an incomplete data set here, because not all artists share their stats publicly, so we can only work off those who do. But keeping all that in mind, there were still some numbers in the data that we have that I found surprising. Let's start with one of the most-streamed country artists of the year: Lainey Wilson. Obviously Lainey had one of the biggest years of anybody in country music, headlining her Country's Cool Again tour and dropping her album "Whirlwind" back in August. She was also the reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year coming into 2024, so Lainey is no doubt one of the hottest names in country music right now. Just how hot? Well she outstreamed names like George Strait and Eric Church. Lainey finished the year with 613 MILLION streams, while King George had a (still incredible) 608 million despite releasing an album of his own earlier this year. And Church, who hasn't released an album since 2021 but is still a staple of playlists with songs like "Springsteen" and "Drink In My Hand," had 536 million streams. Meanwhile, one of the hottest new acts of the year was the Red Clay Strays, who not only gave us their stats from the year but also shared that their streams had gone up an insane TWO THOUSAND PERCENT over last year. And Zach Top also had quite the increase in streams, more than doubling his listenership from the past year and racking up nearly 200 million streams thanks to viral hits like "I Never Lie" and "Sounds Like The Radio." Parker McCollum's numbers also surprised me - not because of the numbers themselves, but seeing that he managed to rack up nearly half as many streams as George Strait, despite being (to state the obvious) significantly newer and with a much smaller catalog to stream. Now, my guess is that's due in large part to the difference in audiences. Strait naturally has an older crowd that probably doesn't stream music as much, while Parker has a much younger crowd who grew up only listening to music on streaming. But still, I expected the gap between a legend like George Strait and a relative newcomer like Parker to be higher. (I'd say Parker would still prefer to have the King's 60 number one hits though). It was also nice to see that one of my favorite artists, Charles Wesley Godwin, managed to double his streams from 2023 - despite his most recent album coming in September of last year. Nice to know that people have good taste in music and are finally discovering CWG. Obviously those are just a few of the interesting things that I saw in the numbers that were posted this year. I'm sure we could go through and make plenty of assumptions about what the data tells us, but in reality, it's just a cool little peak behind the curtain and a small piece of a much bigger puzzle. Ultimately, these may not tell us much, but if you're like me and enjoy looking through the numbers, we can thank these artists who share their stats for giving us something to talk about. Here are a few more from country artists who shared their Wrapped for Artists: Kaitlin Butts Jake Worthington (This number should be a lot higher, by the way. This guy is incredible). Vincent Mason Randall King 49 Winchester Josh Meloy Muscadine Bloodine It's pretty cool to see these kinds of numbers from an independent artist - and I'm sure being on tour with Post Malone led a lot of people to check them out, which is well-deserved for the boys from Alabama. Craig Morgan Evan Honer Travis Tritt Jesse Daniel (This is another one that should be a lot higher. Need people to wake up to Jesse Daniel, because for my money he's one of the best out there doing it right now). Josiah and the Bonnevilles Drayton Farley Mason Ramsey Shoutout to all 6.5 million of you out there still listening to the Yodel Kid.

“Dominick The Donkey,” Lou Monte's 1960 holiday earworm, is a novelty song even by Christmas music standards.

The Mattel hovercraft was a figment of imagination, but that didn't stop kids (and their parents) from demanding where to buy one.

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The following article, New York City- Another Day, Another Murder, was first published on Conservative Firing Line. This morning (12/04/24) I read that United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson had been shot and killed while standing outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel. New York City’s police commissioner stated that it was a, “brazen, targeted attack”.  He was one of the latest victims of another murder in the city. Murder in gun-controlled New … Continue reading New York City- Another Day, Another Murder ...

The FBI has issued a warning to Americans about sending regular text messages between Androids and iPhones. The agency revealed that exchanges between the two brands leave messages vulnerable to hackers.  Instead, users are advised to use secure, encrypted messaging and phone calls on apps like WhatsApp to prevent third parties from accessing conversations.

President Biden has pardoned his son Hunter Biden of federal gun, drug, and tax charges. The pardon, which was issued on Sunday, is “full and unconditional,” for “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” Over the past year, the president had said multiple times that he wouldn't pardon his son. Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced for gun and tax charges...