Music: Faith Hill: Country Top 20 year's last week

"Faith Hill (born Audrey Faith Perry; September 21, 1967) is an American country singer. She is known both for her commercial success and her marriage to fellow country star Tim McGraw. Hill has sold more than 40 million records worldwide and accumulated eight number-one singles and three number-one albums on the U.S. Country charts.

Hill has been honored by the Grammy Awards, the Academy of Country Music, the Country Music Association, the American Music Awards and the People's Choice Awards. Her Soul2Soul II Tour 2006 with McGraw became the highest-grossing country tour of all time. In 2001, she was named one of the "30 Most Powerful Women in America" by Ladies Home Journal. In 2008, Hill released her first Christmas album, titled Joy to the World. In 2009 Billboard named her as the No. 1 Adult Contemporary artist of the decade 2000–2009. Hill was ranked the 39th best artist of the 2000–2010 decade by Billboard.^"

— Wikipedia

Faith Hill was an adoptive dawter, and she was raised with the two biological sons of her adoptive parents, the Perrys, "in a devout Christian environment."

The semiotics of the image below certainly bring patriotism to the fore and a view of America, faith in God expressed as a personal commitment, and a certain polysemous blend that features into one ideological expression of Faith's Christian faith.  We don't expect her to be a theologian or a phliosopher but this image is so ideologically precise and driven (blame it on the fotographer and producer) that it deserves sustained analysis and deconstruction.  Sorry, Faith, you shoud become more conscious of how you're being manipulated, for your financial gain too, by persons who are worshiping the flag and the unspoken symbolism for which it is made to do considerable propaganda work.  And they too know how to entice consumers precisely with this fusion of images and gestures fotographed.

— Musikos, refWrite Backpage music newspotter, analyst, columnist

Here's Great American Country music's weekly chart of the Top 20 in Country Music (USA):

For the last Top 20 Country Countdown of the year and we brought you the best of the best! Host Nan Kelley along with Storme Warren and Suzanne Alexander revisited some of their favorite Top 20 moments, including interviews with Lionel Richie, Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton, Kenny Chesney, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Lisa Marie Presley, Garth Brooksand Lady Antebellum! Miss Friday night’s premiere? Check the schedule for airtimes. Full schedule »

On the chart this week, Faith Hill takes over at No. 1 with “American Heart” while Dwight Yoakam drops down to no. 8. New videos from Gary Allan, Kelly Clarkson with Vince Gill, Sarah Darling and Uncle Kracker all make their countdown debuts.

This Week’s Chart:

1. Faith Hill – “American Heart”
2. Taylor Swift – “Begin Again”
3. Taylor Swift – “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”
4. Luke Bryan – “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye”
5. Little Big Town – “Tornado”
6. Lady Antebellum – “A Holly Jolly Christmas”
7. Gary Allan – “Every Storm Runs Out of Rain”
8. Dwight Yoakam – “A Heart Like Mine”
9. Kelly Clarkson with Vince Gill – “Don’t Rush”
10. Toby Keith – “Hope On The Rocks”
11. Sarah Darling – “Home To Me”
12. Rascal Flatts – “Come Wake Me Up”
13. Justin Moore – “Til My Last Day”
14. Ray Scott – “Those Jeans”
15. Uncle Kracker – “Nobody’s Sad On A Saturday”
16. Eric Church – “Creepin’”
17.  Tim McGraw – “Truck Yeah”
18. Florida Georgia Line – “Cruise”
19. Jason Aldean – “That’s The Only Way I Know”
20. Kip Moore – “Beer Money”

Vote for GAC’s Top 20 Country Countdown now »

Programming Note: Following  this week’s show, the GAC Top 20 crew is taking a brief holiday break but will be back with the first countdown of 2013 on Friday, Jan. 11. Have a happy and safe holiday and remember to keep voting daily for all your favorite videos!

Sports: Football/Soccer: England's Manchester United wins over Blackpool

byBBC Sports (May22,2k11)

Respect for the writer, Phil McNulty, one of the best in sports writing in the English-speaking language, the "Chief football writer at Old Traffor".

Old Trafford, I learned thru Google, is the name of a township within the Greater Manchester Area, where I presume the ManchUs have their stadium and headquarters.  Anyway, the brilliant McNulty has an unsigned photo to enhance his page, a photo of such brilliant composition, precisely the ball is centered in the painterly sense, with the goalie an off-weighing figure juxtaposed radiatingly to two leading figures, the goalie's figure being less distinct becawz it's chunked out of the zone of the main force.

Read more ... click on the time-stamp below to read the best

Music: Contemporary: Bunbury Deluxe Argentina where Enrique vocalizes in Spanish is phenom

"Bunbury & Vegas - Welcome To El CallejÃn Sin Salida"
  [Babelfish says this translates "The street with no exit"]

This video contains content from Vevo, 
which has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds,


says an earlier webpage thus preventing a listen to the Bunbury music.


Somebody in Latin America to my fevered mind suggested that Enrique Bunbury now of Bunbury Deluxe Argentina, after establishing a name in contemporary Spain, his native country, was / is a Christian.  I don't know what I expected, but I signed onto his espanolic Facebook page some months ago, and have been receiving his noticias ever since.  Eventually, as the enigma grew in my mind,  I checked out his most recent website, there to find, inter alia, this image of him with his band -- and not in the colourful stage clothes they wear in performance.


The Saints Innocent, or in more grammatical English, The Innocent Saints -- The Band of the Devil, or perhaps The Saints of Innocence -- The Devil's Band.  I considered this all inauspicious; not the best recommendation, but capable of being given a Christian spin, with which I will dispense here.  Perhaps this Bunbury is a thoro ironist, irony being a genre that enriches many arts (along with satire) not much appreciated among most thawtful Christians, to our discredit. But irony woud have to be the order of the day in reading and musically experiencing the always-new Bunbury a Christian practioner of contemporary musical arts.


But, hecks, there's lots more interesting about the man and his bands and their processes of development over the years than whether the group's leader has been able to achieve some expression or other of a possible Christian culture.  As I listen to the music, I'm finding interesting, attractive flows of sound that have an integrity in their own rite.  


Oh yeah, the name "Bunbury."  Enrique acquired it as a nickname from a mention in the comedic drama The Importance of Being Ernest, by that consummate ironist and satirist, Oscar Wilde.  In turn he was poking at and alluding to the Bunbury Group, a social circle that included Alfred Keynes the prominent economist and many other literati and intellectuals in an area of London.  In my college days, I performed the character's role of Dr Chasuble, the presumably Anglican cleric who preferred to quote 'the pagan authors' to convey his tidy Christian witticisms and maxims.


-- Musikos

Semiotics: Romantic Archetypic: No direct 'troubled cosmic' format (Seerveld)

 

And  a certain feminine styling as well,

perhaps a child's artwork.

More of a 'life is a lark" format, 

than it is "troubled cosmic" format, 

which Seerveld once theorized 

was the most appropriate format 

for Christians following a painterly calling.

Hat Tip to the source the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.