I’ve always hated the coun­try music genre. The first twang in a song was enough to make me cringe. Car­rie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” became the first recent “coun­try” song I could with­stand. When Tay­lor Swift started to hit the air­waves with “Teardrops on My Gui­tar” I wanted to like it but couldn’t get past the coun­try sound. Thank­fully, they released a pop mix of the sin­gle and all was loved. My point being, coun­try music has an inter­est­ing oppor­tu­nity to impact main­stream music… and some labels are tak­ing advan­tage of the win­dow. Tay­lor Swift has become some­thing that nobody could have guessed. Peo­ple embraced her sound, myself included. A few weeks ago, she sold-out Madi­son Square Gar­den in NYC in 60 sec­onds. That’s 20,000+ seats.

The indus­try is, I imag­ine, try­ing to pump out some crossover artists while this win­dow of oppor­tu­nity is open. By no means is this a unique sit­u­a­tion, rap and hip-hop has expe­ri­enced sim­i­lar crossover suc­cess over the last year or two; in fact, coun­try has expe­ri­enced sim­i­lar main­stream suc­cess in the past.

As labels try to fig­ure out what the next step for a suc­cess in the music indus­try as a whole, it’s inter­est­ing to see the impact peo­ple get­ting bored with the same old top 40 repet­i­tive­ness. It’s almost a catch-22. Rap and rock have impacted top 40 sta­tions, and now coun­try has increas­ingly seen pop­u­lar­ity in the genre. We’re truly liv­ing in some inter­est­ing times: the econ­omy sucks over­all, the music indus­try is hurt­ing beyond what any­body thought was pos­si­ble 10 years ago. Will peo­ple get sick of crossover suc­cess as well?

Con­tribut­ing to the country-pop-top40 crossover, Island Records is hop­ing to gather some suc­cess for new artist Jessie James. Her debut sin­gle goes for adds this week and All Access has been push­ing this sin­gle pretty hard. I decided to take a lis­ten, and it’s pretty darn good. Although it was pretty hard to track down, it should gain some ground with the release of the May edi­tion of Promo Only. I wouldn’t say it’s orig­i­nal by any means or even ground­break­ing… but will peo­ple eat it up? Absolutely.

“Wanted”

I wanna lie in my bed
And do noth­ing
I don’t care what any­one says
I got you on my mind
Thinkin’ about one thing
Gonna show you how I do it best

Put my lips on your mouth
Keep you com­min’ around
’Cause I like it, yeah
Put your hands on my hips
Take me down
Sink this ship
Boy, I can’t resist

I wanna wear my hair up in a mess
Cut-off jeans, can you get with that?
Give you some, like you’ve never had
’Cause I only wanna be wanted by you
I wanna tease you ’till you’re beg­ging me
And you’re on your knees
And it’s hard to breathe
And every other time, it’s just a mem­ory
’Cause I only wanna be wanted by you

Those other guys when they call
I might answer
But you’re the one I’m think­ing ’bout
So baby don’t dis­ap­point
Just move faster
And show me what you’re feel­ing now

Put your lips on my mouth
Keep it com­min’ around
’Cause I like it, yeah
Nothing’s wrong
It’s so right
Got per­mis­sion from me tonight
So turn off the lights

Now I’m going crazy
I’m tired of wait­ing
My lips are on fire
I just want you to know
I’m los­ing my patience
For the time that you’ve wasted

Per­formed by Jessie James. Writ­ten by Jessie James, Kara Dio­Guardi, Mitch Allan and David Hodges. ©2009 Mercury/Island Records (a divi­sion of Island Def Jam Music Group) and Uni­ver­sal Music Group.