The heart of all country music songs lies in the lyrics, the everyday relatable stories that ground the music in authenticity. These stories may be told over a variety of sounds but their heart is in the true-to-life tales. If you think you’ve got a fantastic story to tell, then we’d like to point you to a great new Country Strong “Your Song”Contest.
The premise of the contest is simple. If you think you have a story to tell (in 1500 characters or less) about how you overcame some adversity and turned that negative thing in your life into a positive. If you’re story is selected, a Sony/ATV country music songwriter will turn your story into a song! It’s even possible (but not guaranteed) that your story will be so compelling that a country music star will record the song and turn it into a hit!
Here are the prizes for the contest:
- Grand Prize: A Sony/ATV songwriter will turn the winning
story into a song, plus the winner will receive a $2,000 Sony
Style Gift card - Three Runners Up will receive DVD prize packs
Click here to enter the contest and don’t forget to red below to find out more about the Country Strong film and the fantastic Country Strong soundtrack.
About the film:
With authenticity at the heart of country music, it’s not surprising that the filmmakers behind Country Strong would insist on the stars of the film singing their own songs. With that in mind the filmmakers – which include producers Jenno Topping and Tobey Maguire and writer/director Shana Feste – secured a cast who could do just that. Starring Gwyneth Paltrow as a fallen, emotionally unstable star who gets involved with a young, Kristofferson-like singer/songwriter played by Garret Hedlund. Soon after the pair meet, they embark on a career-resurrection tour helmed by her husband/manager (played by Tim McGraw), and featuring a beauty-queen-turned-singer (Leighton Meester). Between the concerts, the drama is ratcheted up when romantic entanglements and old demons like alcoholism threaten to derail them all. The songs each actor performs help forward the narrative of the film along.
Country music has a long history of being part of country music films with Coal Miner’s Daughter, Pure Country and last year’s Crazy Heart immediately coming to mind. The latter two of these films tell fictional tales of stars at varying levels of success while the first one is the story of Loretta Lynn’s rise to stardom. Country Strong looks set to join these films with the trailer (see below) of the film showcasing a strong cast making the characters believable. The stars of the film each are featured on the soundtrack with Paltrow getting three songs for her Character Kelly Cantor on the soundtrack while Hedlund and Meester get their own as well. The rest of the soundtrack is rounded out with a strong who’s who of country music (Trace Adkins, Hank Williams, Jr., Sara Evans, etc.) and is capped off by a strong duet by stars Gwyneth Paltrow & Tim McGraw.
The film is set to open in limited release in Nashville, New York and Los Angeles on December 17 and will open on January 7 everywhere else. With the soundtrack and trailer preview setting me up, I am really looking forward to checking this film out.
The Screen Gems/Sony film is rated PG-13 for thematic elements involving alcohol abuse and some sexual content.
For more information check out www.countrystrong-movie.com.
You can also check out our review of the soundtrack by clicking here.
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