Celebrity Buzz
Country music star jokes about not being straight on 'Songland'
More InfoNBC’s fascinating new talent competition Songland, the brainchild of executive producers Adam Levine and the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, puts the focus on composers instead of performers. And in the process, the show is not only making stars out of contestants submitting songs for stars like this week’s guest, Meghan Trainor, but it’s increasing the public profiles for judges Ester Dean and Shane McAnally -- who are huge names in the industry, but not necessarily well-known by the average television viewer. McAnally, who moved from the tiny Texas town of Mineral Wells to Branson at age 15 and then to Nashville at 19, certainly got in the best made-for-TV zinger of Tuesday’s Songland episode, when he and Dean were discussing their largely behind-the-scenes careers. “I was relieved when I find out [songwriting] was a job, because I thought you had to be George Strait to go to Nashville,” said McAnally, “and the truth is, my name isn’t George and I wasn’t straight!” McAnally released only one solo album, in 2000, a self-titled effort that received mixed reviews and yielded three moderately successful singles that cracked the top 50 of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. But he is now one of the most successful country songwriters of all time, with a multi-page résumé that includes credits for pretty much every major name in Nashville, including Miranda Lambert, Florida Georgia Line, Carrie Underwood, Maren Morris, Keith Urban, Kelly Clarkson, Blake Shelton, Dan + Shay, and most notably Kacey Musgraves, whose “Follow Your Arrow” featured the inclusive line “kiss lots of boys, or kiss lots of girls, if that’s what you’re into.” And McAnally has done all this as an openly gay man in a historically conservative genre/scene, which why he landed on Rolling Stone’s recent “Music’s Unsung LGBTQ Heroes” list next to Frankie Knuckles, Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, and Big Freedia. McAnally shares a country pedigree with Trainor -- who some may not know got her start penning songs for the likes of Rascal Flatts and Hunter Hayes – though on Songland he glowingly praised Trainor for being a complete package artist who can sing, dance, and write for both herself and others. But certainly any aspiring songwriter on Songland, like this this week’s four hopefuls, would be happy to have a career like McAnally’s or Trainor’s. While the one country-leaning songwriter of Tuesday’s bunch, Southern gentleman Zachary Kale, was passed over because his sentimental “All Over Again” was too “cute” and “bouncy” (and because newlywed Trainor apparently already has enough love songs set aside for her forthcoming third album), the three other contenders came with the “sassy power anthems” that Trainor was looking for.
