Ayla Gala

Ayla Brown

It's always bewildered me that people in search of a genre in which to sell recordings of themselves singing songs always say "I'm country, through and through, and that's why I'm moving to Nashville to cut a country record."

The latest to feel a sudden affinity with area code 615 is Ayla Brown.  You might remember Ayla from American Idol a couple of years ago, where she sang nothing that sounded even remotely like country music.  She listed her favorite artists thusly: 

Favorite Female Artist:
Celine Dion, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston Favorite Male Artist:
Luther Vandross, Josh Groban, Boyz 2 Men

and I dunno, I don't see Kitty Wells or Loretta Lynn or Ernest Tubb or Tim McGraw on the list.  Things have changed for Ayla since her Idol tryout days; her father was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts and she felt the stirrings of steel guitar and twin fiddles in her musical soul.

This is jumping ahead a bit, though.  Used to be, a person would have some moderate success in pop or rock, and then when the records sales dipped and the concert bookings dwindled down to the occasional Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet here and there, they decided to go country.  Alan Jackson did a song about it, and the legend has it that Conway Twitty and his band were playing the Steel Pier in the pre-casino Atlantic City when suddenly he announced to the group, "Boys, we're going country!"

Worked out great for him.  Let's see how the road trip from Wrentham, MA to Nashville goes for her!