January 15, 2010

Where's the Country Music Coverage for Ray Stevens?

It's been a month and four days since "We The People" from Ray Stevens was uploaded onto You Tube. December 11, 2009 is the exact date and since then it's gotten 2,071,569 hits, or plays, whichever term one uses. The commercial single is also a hit on Amazon as it's been among the Top-50 Mp3 singles for several weeks. There is a physical copy of the single available for purchase, too, and it can be found at Ray's web-site store. Given that it's a physical copy it'll cost just a bit higher because you'll be paying for the actual CD and it's case.

Anyway, the subject of this specific blog entry is about my confusion over why "We The People" isn't heavily publicized among country music circles. The last I remember I thought Ray Stevens was considered a country comedian and given the phenomenal success of the music video doesn't it seem a bit strange that the two leading country music outlets, CMT and GAC, have nothing on their web-sites about Ray's accomplishment...not even in their news sections...

When you search CMT for Ray Stevens news it'll bring up news from March 2009 in which Ray's name is mentioned in passing as an act associated with Curb Records. To date that's the last news item they've added about Ray Stevens. If you're at GAC's web-site and search for news about Ray Stevens it'll take you to a page where his name is tagged within stories that don't really have anything to do with him, much like CMT's news section on Ray Stevens. At the GAC web-site, the last time Ray's name was mentioned in a news item was an October 2009 article and it wasn't about his music or his latest happenings.

So, you see, there's not been any coverage among country music media that I'm aware of for "We The People" and I'm wondering why. Even though I know that the single isn't going to get mainstream airplay on country radio it still doesn't mean that the country music media should also ignore the song...the fact is there are plenty of write-up's in country music publications about songs and albums by acts marketed as "country" that won't get embraced by radio so why is Ray's song any different. It isn't that he needs the publicity from country music's media but it just looks odd that he hasn't gotten any coverage at all about the song from the country music media and it's been over a month since the music video debuted.

Maybe because CMT and GAC are known as music video channels they feel awkward if they'd publicize Ray's success on You Tube? That's a possibility but what excuse do the country music critics and columnists have for not talking about it? Is it the overt political nature of the song that makes the country media nervous? If this is the case, Toby Keith's been quite political for years and he's gotten coverage.

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