>From this week's Nashville Scene:
Soft Bomb
Singer gets pleasant surprise
On Feb. 9, as Allison Moorer returned home from breakfast with her
husband and
songwriting partner, Butch Primm, her cellular phone rang. On the
other end of the line was
Bruce Hinton, chairman of the Nashville division of MCA Records.
That got Moorer's attention. In the nearly two years since she had
signed with MCA, Hinton
had never called her. He opened the conversation by telling the singer
that Tony Brown,
president of MCA Nashville and the man who signed Moorer to her
contract, was in the office
with him.
"My first thought was, `Oh my God! They're going to drop me from the
label!' " Moorer
laughs.
After all, MCA had been at the center of recent music-industry
consolidations, and several
artists connected with MCA/Universal had lost their record contracts
in recent weeks. Because
Moorer's first album, Alabama Song, hadn't sold particularly well, she
feared the label might
be letting her go.
But Hinton's call was anything but bad news. The label exec informed
Moorer that her song,
"A Soft Place to Fall," had been nominated for an Academy Award for
Best Original Song.
The tune, written by Moorer and Nashville rocker Gwil Owen, was
featured in the Robert
Redford movie The Horse Whisperer. Moorer appeared in the movie as a
nightclub singer,
performing the song while Redford danced with actress Kristin Scott
Thomas.
"I had no idea the nominations were coming out that morning," she
says. "It had crossed my
mind that maybe the song would be in the running to be nominated, but
I never thought in a
million years that it would actually happen. So when Bruce gave me the
news, all I could say
was, `Oh my God, you're kidding?' "
Last spring, the movie role helped jump-start Moorer's career. But
country radio unjustly
ignored "A Soft Place to Fall," a languid, melancholy ballad rich with
emotion. Apparently,
"power country" programmers found it too low-key for their tastes, and
they assumed listeners
would naturally tune out in search of something peppier.
Indeed, there may be no better example of country radio's
head-in-the-sand approach to
programming. Even Jay Leno, an avowed country music fan, expressed his
frustration about
this very subject prior to Moorer's performance on the Tonight Show
Feb. 15. As the host put
it, she's appearing in films, Robert Redford loves her, movie fans
love her, music critics love
her, and now she's been nominated for an Academy Award. Yet she's
still not getting any
airplay. "What's wrong with those people?" Leno asked.
At least Moorer can feel vindicated in knowing that her nomination
will result in a flood of
exposure. To top it all off, on Oscar night, she'll perform "A Soft
Place to Fall" during the
worldwide telecast. That means she'll be seen by millions of
people--and, in music-industry
terms, that's millions of consumers.
People picking up on Moorer in the next couple of months will likely
be asking two questions:
One, why haven't we heard this outstanding and unusual singer before?
Then, once they start
thinking about the country music they do hear on the radio, they'll
echo Leno and ask, "What's
wrong with those people?"
There is one way to change that: Call a country radio station and ask
the program director to
play Allison Moorer. Should he refuse, ask him, "What's wrong with you
people?" Then tell
him you'll be listening to another station from now on.
--Michael McCall
