Lady Antebellum have stayed in the mainstream country world Taylor Swift forded to full pop stardom. Beginning alongside her on Nashville’s aptly named Big Machine label, they’ve kept the genre’s knack for narrative, emotion and residual hints of authenticity alongside imposing chart power.

With US number one singles and Grammys coming out of his ears, a record-breaking streak at the top for debut album This One’s For You and collaborations with country big-timers aplenty, Luke Combs is riding high.

It was the fabled Nashville songwriter Harlan Howard who commented that country music is “three chords and the truth”. Rose-Lynn, the protagonist of Wild Rose, just happens to have the surname Harlan, and she has the “three chords” motto tattooed on her forearm. 

Oh this is annoying. One really doesn't want to be mean about the People's Princess. Kylie is one of the great pop stars of our time: charming, witty, a survivor, with several dozen proper classic songs under her belt, she has never stopped sparking with star quality. And the way she talks about her creative process, it's clear she still cares, so it's very easy to believe that she still has an album in her that can stand with her best and cement her status as one of the best to do it.

If there's one thing I've learned from Nashville the TV show it's that the best musical collaborations can birth the most beautiful love stories.

Johnnyswim is the real life version of boy (Abner Ramirez) meets girl (Amanda Sudano) in Nashville Tennessee, who got together to collaborate back in 2005. They made beautiful music together, and ended up in love.

The unsinkable Dolly Parton turned 70 in 2016 and the new year marks the 50^th anniversary of her debut album, Hello, I’m Dolly. Pure & Simple is her 43^rd studio album, its genesis a brace of stripped-down concerts given at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium which were reprised at Dollywood. Such a back-to-basics approach is much favoured by country musicians – Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and Loretta Lynn have trodden a similar path.

A legacy can be a hell of a thing. When someone has a recorded archive of stone cold classics, it must be very tough indeed to present their new works, knowing they'll be compared to their best. This goes double with a voice as distinctive as Chrissie Hynde's: even the smallest inflexions of her singing are so recognisable that they instantly trigger sense memories of all the times that her songs have struck an emotional chord in the listener.

If Kris Kristofferson had just been the writer of “Help Me Make It Through the Night”, “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”, his legacy would have been assured. Each song is a classic, and each is wonderful. Elvis Presley and Gladys Knight & the Pips ensured that “Help Me Make It Through the Night” would live forever. Kristofferson’s ex-girlfriend Janis Joplin did the same with “Me and Bobby McGee” – the writer did not initially know she had recorded it. In 1969, Ray Stevens was first to tackle “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”. Johnny Cash was next.

Life and art have generally had a troubled relationship. In the case of former hobo and punk-blues singer Seasick Steve, however, it all seemed so simple. When he sang "Dog House Boogie" on his extraordinary Hootenanny debut nearly a decade ago, it was his grit and authenticity, even more than his musical skills – though the two go hand-in-hand – that the audience fell in love with. Read any fan forum and it’s clear that Steve is loved because most audiences believe he’s experienced exactly what he sings.

I interviewed Merle Haggard once and he’s a slippery old snake: dry, reserved and fiercely intelligent, with an ornery pride and an oft-used gift for riling people. I’m not sure we got to know him all that much better after Gandulf Hennig’s superb documentary Learning to Live with Myself, but it was a hell of a ride none the less. A man with hidden depths buried inside his hidden depths, Haggard said towards the end of the film that he had struggled his whole life to achieve his aim of being “self-contained, totally”. He wasn't about to go all therapy-speak on our asses now.