Last night I had the privilege and rare honor of seeing Martina McBride at Radio City Music Hall. Let me tell you something. Few people can put on a show the way she can, and much like the first time I saw her, she just blew me away. Truth is, I expected to love every song and I did, but what caught me the most was that her two opening acts were just fantastic.

First Martina.

She did a great batch of her older and newer stuff and even some covers of Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. For the song Concrete Angels, she had the video playing on the gigantic LCDs around her and the projection screens stage left and stage right. If you’ve never seen the video, it’s probably one of the saddest things ever. The song is a song about child abuse and the video is devastating to the point where Martina actually teared up singing it. The video is below:

Other mega hits were “Where would you be?” and even a pretty stirring encore in which she did “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” Other favorites played included “When God Fearing Women Get the Blues” and one of my all-time favorites, “Independence Day.” All in all, Martina dazzled the crowd and got a standing ovation for almost every song she sang. Who knew country could be that big in New York?

Beth and I are huge Martina fans, but we had never heard of Rodney Atkins or Little Big Town, and frankly they impressed the hell out of us too. So much so, that I went on to iTunes and bought the newest albums from Both artists.

Rodney Atkins is the man. He came out just looking like a nice young guy and proceeded to rock the shit out of RCMH. In fact, I don’t know anyone that was sitting after his short 4-song set. Like most country singers he had that “awwwwwwwww” moment that makes you reflect, and in this case it was “Watchin’ You” which got what seemed like a never-ending standing ovation. Here’s the song if you’ve never heard it:

Of course, one can’t forget Little Big Town, another band I had never heard of. They started off slow, but really picked up steam. One of my favorite songs from the night was A Little More You…

Overall, we went for one singer and got three awesome performances. I was quite happy and I’m glad I went. It was well worth the $90 a ticket price for 23rd row seats and I would definitely go see any of those three if they were back in New York in the near future.

Technorati Tags: martina mcbride, little big town, rodney atkins