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Crossover star provides something for everybody and a few new songs, too
By Malcolm X Abram
Beacon Journal music writer
Published on Friday, Jul 04, 2008
Tim McGraw has been a country music superstar for more than 15 years and a mainstream pop star for a decade. He took the mantle of crossover king from the semiretired Garth Brooks and racked up a string of chart-topping albums, and sells out tours alone and with his crossover superstar wife, Faith Hill.
One of the reasons McGraw has topped both country and pop charts is he's not afraid to cross-pollinate his music, mixing in crunchy rock, slick soul and big pop ballads with his neo-traditional country and contemporary honky-tonk.
Wednesday night at Blossom, McGraw and his band, the Dancehall Doctors, wowed and wooed a near-sellout crowd of screaming women who wish they could touch his chiseled body, and urban cowboys who would love to drink a beer with him.
McGraw's superstar status doesn't stop him from bucking the fairly codified country music system; he uses his touring band in the studio and records tunes with rappers and rockers. While many artists have stopped playing soon-to-be-released songs in concert because of camera phones and YouTube, McGraw opened the Blossom show with a solid new song, Still, from his next album, due in the fall, and played three more new ones.
McGraw isn't a particularly animated performer, preferring to let his (usually) tight pants and tighter shirt carry much of the visual load. But the singer, wearing surprisingly loose cargo pants but a tight black tank top, oozes charisma and gives his nine band mates — some who have been with him for 20 years — plenty of room to elicit their own screams from the audience.
McGraw whipped out hit after hit, spanning his career from 1993's still politically incorrect Indian Outlaw through his recent hit If You're Reading This, about fallen soldiers.
In between, he showed his soulful side with a cover of Eddie Rabbit's Suspicion, revisited his daddy issues on the new ballad You Had to Be There, and on the new rootsy rocker Southern Voices, he name-checked a slew of Southern icons, including Dale Earnhardt, Hank Williams Sr., Rosa Parks and Billy Graham.
Blossom is one of the final stops on McGraw's Live Your Voice tour, but given the energetic performance, neither he nor his band seem ready to leave the road.
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.
Tim McGraw has been a country music superstar for more than 15 years and a mainstream pop star for a decade. He took the mantle of crossover king from the semiretired Garth Brooks and racked up a string of chart-topping albums, and sells out tours alone and with his crossover superstar wife, Faith Hill.
Get the full article here.
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