The formal complaint finds curb claiming McGraw did this “in a transparent tactic to attempt to fufill his contractual recording commitment to Curb prematurely in breach of the recording agreement” and when looking further, the complaint states that McGraw’s contract with curb calls for the singer’s submitted material to be ‘topical and new’ and thus his new master recordings must be delivered to the label ‘no earlier than 12 months and no later than 18 months’ after the release of his last album. Tim’s last album, Southern Voice, was released in 2009 by Curb Records. The label then goes on to state in the complaint that some of the material recorded for “Emotional Traffic” was started during “2008 or befre” which would be forbidden by the contract, considering the final stuff was submitted in October 2010.
Curb has taken a weird route of late with McGraw’s career and it would be interesting to see what they consider to be the last album submitted. It should be that 2009 album but there’s also the possibility that Curb considers 2010’s Number One Hits the third of three separate greatest hits collections released over a six year period. 2006 saw “Greatest Hits, Volume 2” (which McGraw was for) then saw a release of Let It Go in 2007 followed by Greatest Hits, Vol 3 in 2008 followed by Southern Voice in 2009 followed by Number One Hits in 2010.
Curb’s seeking damages (unspecified at this point) and another ‘option period record’ on top trying to prevent him from recording for another record label “other than Curb Records until he has fulfilled his duties and obligations under the recording agreement.”
The problem with this lawsuit, in this layperson’s eyes, is that with those Greatest Hits albums being released every couple of years (he now has seven different hits packages), the record label is not only seemingly trying to keep Tim McGraw for as long as possible, no matter how disgruntled he gets with the label or – for that matter – how much they seem to kill the goodwill of fans. This is a sad state of affairs and it’s sad because the label had Emotional Traffic delivered in the fall of 2010 (within their time frame after Southern Voice) but the label pulled the #1 hit “Felt Good On My Lips” from the album and released Number One Hits instead.
Reading the tealeaves a little further, it looks like the label will ultimately have to settle with Tim McGraw for Emotional Traffic and allow him to move on with the recording somewhere else (he’ll have to buy it much like Toby Keith did with How Do You Like Me Now a decade ago) or if they refuse to settle, they could end up losing and release Emotional Traffic and have it ‘flop’ by not putting any support behind the record, or it’s even possible Tim McGraw will break free from the record label in a settlement and watch this recording never get ‘released’ until right about the time he sets to release a new recording with his own or another record label.
However this plays out, one thing’s for certain Tim McGraw has hit “emotional traffic” indeed.
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