Kenny Chesney Still Tops the Country Charts

The names are the same at the top of Billboard's country albums and songs charts this week, where Kenny Chesney's "Out Last Night" and the soundtrack CD to Hannah Montana: The Movie continue to hold sway. Album sales and song downloads increased substantially for several artists this past week, probably due to the double promotional whammy of the four-day CMA Music Festival (which concluded June 14) and the 2009 CMT Music Awards (telecast live June 16). The total number of country albums sold during the week just tabulated (June 14-21), according to Nielsen SoundScan, was 487,342 copies. There were 403,269 units purchased the week before (June 7-14)...Read the rest of the story

Tanya Tucker Honors Her Father

As a grade-schooler in Arizona, Tanya Tucker and her father, Beau Tucker, would convince touring country singers like Ernest Tubb and Little Jimmy Dickens to give her a moment in the spotlight, too. And by the time she was 13, Tucker was working her own shows in a Las Vegas nightclub, fearlessly performing honky-tonk classics like Faron Young's "Wine Me Up." So it's no surprise the 50-year-old singer sounds perfectly comfortable on her new album of country classics, My Turn. She says she recorded famous songs by the likes of Lefty Frizzell, Buck Owens, Ray Price and Hank Williams to honor her late father...Read the rest

Miranda Lambert Talks About "Dead Flowers"

Miranda Lambert reunited with director Randee St. Nicholas to shoot the music video for "Dead Flowers." It's the first single from her third album, Revolution, scheduled for release in late September. St. Nicholas, who also directed Lambert's "More Like Her" video, is a photographer who evolved into a highly-successful director whose country credits include Alan Jackson's "Like Red on a Rose." She has also directed videos for Prince, the Bee Gees, Marc Anthony and many others...Check out more Scene and Heard in Country