Keith, Toby

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    Toby Keith Will Be Inducted Into the Country Hall of Fame This Year

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    The organization behind the honors avoids electing artists in the year of their death, but the singer died in February just after this year’s vote closed.The country music star Toby Keith, who died last month after battling stomach cancer, has been selected for the Country Music Hall of Fame despite a rule against electing artists in the year of their death, the Country Music Association said on Monday.The induction is moving forward on a technicality: The vote closed on Feb. 2 — three days before the singer’s death on Feb. 5 at age 62.A few hours after officials at the association learned about the death of Keith, the artist behind No. 1 country hits like “Who’s Your Daddy?” and “Made in America,” they received the results of the vote, which included Keith as a chosen inductee.“My heart sank that Tuesday afternoon, knowing that we had missed the chance to inform Toby while he was still with us,” Sarah Trahern, the chief executive of the Country Music Association, said as the group announced the new inductees on Monday.It is not uncommon for inductees to be added to the hall of fame posthumously, but the association’s rule specifically disallows artists to be elected in the year of their death. “That doesn’t apply this year,” Trahern said.With a catalog that included both traditional honky-tonk and pop-country, Keith released 20 No. 1 Billboard country singles during his three-decade career. He was a political lightning rod at times, and many remember Keith, who wrote or co-wrote most of his material, for his post-9/11 song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” which proclaimed that putting a “boot in your ass” is the “American way.”Chosen by an anonymous panel of voters, Keith will join more than 150 figures who have helped shape country music, a roster that includes Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley and Charley Pride. The other two additions to the hall of fame that were announced Monday are the musicians John Anderson and James Burton, who will be inducted along with Keith in October at the CMA Theater in Nashville. More

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      Toby Keith and His Complexities

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe country music superstar Toby Keith, who died this month at 62, was best known for the songs he released in the wake of 9/11 — especially his big, brawny anthems about American power and soldiers.But while he is most remembered for those tracks, they comprised only a portion of his whole catalog, which also included tenderly lighthearted love songs and numbers about the hollowness of masculinity.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Keith’s various modes, and the ways in which they bolstered each other; how his most successful songs were used as cultural proxies for political arguments; and the ways that patriotism and jingoism have shaped country music over the past two decades.Guest:David Cantwell, longtime country music journalist, co-author of the No Fences Review newsletter and author of “The Running Kind: Listening to Merle Haggard”Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Toby Keith’s ’35 Biggest Hits’ Tops the Billboard Album Chart

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      A week after his death at 62, the country musician’s 16-year-old hits collection is No. 1.Toby Keith, the boisterous, unapologetically patriotic country star who died last week at 62, has a posthumous No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart, as a 16-year-old hits collection narrowly edged out Morgan Wallen’s latest — and easily topped releases by the rapper 21 Savage and the Grammy winners Taylor Swift and SZA — to reach the top of the chart.Keith’s “35 Biggest Hits,” with tracks like “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” “Who’s Your Daddy?,” “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” and the Willie Nelson duet “Beer for My Horses” — all of them No. 1 country smashes — re-entered the Billboard 200 chart at No. 1. It had the equivalent of 66,000 sales in the United States, including 64 million streams and 11,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate.“35 Biggest Hits,” which came out in 2008 on two CDs and previously reached as high as No. 2, becomes Keith’s fifth album to go to No. 1, and the first since “Bullets in the Gun” in 2010.“35 Biggest Hits” is the first posthumous No. 1 on the Billboard 200 since “Faith” by Pop Smoke, in early 2021, about a year after the Brooklyn rapper was killed in a shooting at age 20. Billboard notes that Keith’s collection is also the first retrospective album to hit No. 1 since “The Very Best of Prince,” shortly after Prince’s death in 2016.The 66,000 equivalent sales for “35 Biggest Hits” barely beat out Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time,” a streaming blockbuster for much of the last year that has logged a total of 18 weeks at No. 1 and had the equivalent of 65,000 sales in its most recent week, landing at No. 2.Also this week, SZA’s “SOS” is No. 3, 21 Savage’s “American Dream” is No. 4 and Swift’s “Midnights” — the album of the year winner at the Grammy Awards on Feb. 4 — rises four spots to No. 5. More

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      Toby Keith’s Music and Politics Were More Complicated Than You Might Think

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      His choice to become a post-9/11 culture-war champion overshadowed the work of a musician who was funnier, subtler and more politically slippery than his most famous work let on.It is important to note right from the beginning that Toby Keith, when presented with the opportunity to become the music industry’s jingoist-in-chief, leaned in. At the turn of the millennium, just after the Sept. 11 attacks, Keith, who died Monday at 62, released a string of songs that were notable for their political stridency, commitment to American exceptionalism and flexed-bicep threat.Keith had a three-decade career in country music, selling more than 20 million albums and releasing 20 No. 1 Billboard country singles. But he will indisputably be remembered first and most intently for this era of songs: “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (the Angry American),” a thunderstorm of pro-war propaganda peaking with the exclamation “We’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way”; “American Soldier,” a warm hum of bombastic treacle; and even “The Taliban Song,” a cheeky ditty in the Jimmy Buffett mold aiming to satirize, if not quite sympathize with, life in Afghanistan under the repressive Taliban regime.These songs, released in 2002 and 2003, made Keith a culture-war champion. He understood instinctually that culture is politics, and politics is theater, and for this fraught period in American history, he was determined to provide the soundtrack.Nonetheless, Keith’s career was also an object lesson in how one incandescent and hard-to-ignore moment can shine so brightly that it obscures more nuanced truths below. For most of the rest of his career, Keith was a sly humorist, a good-natured blowhard, a chronicler of what really happens below thick skin.Much of his best music was about how masculinity is performance. Take “As Good as I Once Was,” one of the great country songs of the 2000s, which is delivered from the perspective of a man in decline, physically and sexually:I got a few years on me nowBut there was a time, back in my primeWhen I could really lay it downAnd if you need some love tonightThen I might have just enoughThe semi-rapped “I Wanna Talk About Me” manages to wrap a critique of male petulance in a song superficially about a woman who doesn’t come up for air. And then there’s “How Do You Like Me Now?!” which is perhaps Keith’s most blustery song, a victory march in search of a Ford F-150 commercial.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Timeline of Toby Keith’s Biggest Songs and Career Moments

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      The singer-songwriter was known for anthems, and political stances, that alternated between confrontation and big-tent populism.Toby Keith first drew recognition beyond country music as the artist behind the divisive post-9/11 rallying cry “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).” But the singer-songwriter, who died Monday at the age of 62 after a battle with stomach cancer, appeared to view himself as a unifying force. “As far extreme as I seem,” he said in 2003, “I’m probably catching the average Joe in the middle better than anybody.”Keith topped the country chart 20 times with a catalog of sturdily built anthems including those that romanticized the cowboy’s life and traded on the big-tent appeal of a favorite bar and the charms of drinking beer out of a “Red Solo Cup.” His robust voice was just as adept at conveying rueful heartache as it was at carrying riled-up swagger, and his surprisingly shaded political stances showed a similar range and savvy. Here’s a look back at some of his biggest hits and most prominent moments during a three-decade career.1993‘Should’ve Been a Cowboy’Keith topped the U.S. country chart with his debut single, in which he longed for a life spent “wearing my six-shooter, riding my pony on a cattle drive,” and tipped his Stetson hat to legendary screen cowboys like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon of “Gunsmoke.” But the song was hardly the first rodeo for Keith, who had spent years playing the honky-tonk circuit in and around his native Oklahoma after high school. The 6-foot-4 musician also worked at an oil field — an experience that, he later reflected, “made a man out of me” — and played semipro football. He would come to view his winding path to success as a blessing.“If I’d come out of the box with my first No. 1 hit at 21, instead of when I was 29, I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it because I wasn’t mature enough then,” he said in 2012. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Toby Keith, Popular Country Music Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 62

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      Mr. Keith, who announced in 2022 he had cancer, cultivated an in-your-face persona with hits like “Who’s Your Daddy” and “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.”Toby Keith, the larger-than-life singer-songwriter of No. 1 country hits like “Who’s Your Daddy?” and “Made in America” and one of the biggest stars to come out of Nashville in three decades, died on Monday. He was 62.His death was announced on his official website. Elaine Schock, Mr. Keith’s publicist, said in an email that he died in Oklahoma, where he had lived his entire life.Mr. Keith announced in the summer of 2022 that he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and was being treated with chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.In a recent interview with the Oklahoma City television station KWTV, Mr. Keith, who played a run of shows in Las Vegas in December, said he was still in treatment. “Cancer is a roller coaster,” he said. “You just sit here and wait on it to go away — it may not ever go away.” He said that his Christian faith was helping him get through the treatment and the potential dark outcome.Singing in an alternately declamatory and crooning baritone, Mr. Keith cultivated a boisterous, in-your-face persona with recordings like “I Wanna Talk About Me” and “Beer for My Horses.”Built around clever wordplay and droll humor — and more than a little macho bluster — both topped the Billboard country chart, with “Beer for My Horses,” a twangy, Rolling Stones-style rocker that featuring Willie Nelson as guest vocalist, crossing over to the pop Top 40.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Toby Keith Says He Has Stomach Cancer, but ‘So Far, So Good’

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      The country music star has been undergoing treatment, including chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, for the last six months, he said in a statement.Toby Keith, the country music star, announced on Sunday afternoon on social media that he was treated for stomach cancer over the past six months.The singer said he was diagnosed with cancer in the fall and had been receiving chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.“So far, so good,” Mr. Keith, 60, wrote in a statement on multiple social media platforms. “I need time to breathe, recover and relax. I am looking forward to spending this time with my family. But I will see the fans sooner than later. I can’t wait.”pic.twitter.com/TeADP7UN8h— Toby Keith (@tobykeith) June 12, 2022
      Tour dates previously listed on Mr. Keith’s website were removed after his announcement.Stomach cancer, also known as gastric cancer, accounts for more than 26,000 new cases a year, or about 1.5 percent of all new cancer diagnoses each year, according to the American Cancer Society. About 11,100 people die each year of that form of cancer.In 2003, Fred Rogers, best known for his beloved role on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” died of stomach cancer at 74. The fashion designer Liz Claiborne and the prolific Hollywood actor John Wayne also died of stomach cancer in their 70s.Mr. Keith, a native of Oklahoma, has been a longtime supporter of pediatric cancer patients and their families. In 2004, he helped found a nonprofit for Oklahoma children with cancer called Ally’s House, after the daughter of one of his original bandmates died. Two years later, he started the Toby Keith Foundation, which helps provide support and free housing for pediatric cancer patients and their families in Oklahoma.“There is no greater gift than keeping families strong and together during a difficult time,” the foundation’s website said about its mission. “If we can alleviate stress on a family, encourage a brother or sister and comfort a sick child, then we will make a difference in the fight against cancer.”Mr. Keith is a heavyweight in the country music industry with more than 40 top 10 hits and over 30 No. 1 songs. The singer-songwriter won the Merle Haggard Spirit Award from the Academy of Country Music last year for exemplifying the spirit of Mr. Haggard, a 20-time A.C.M. award winner. Mr. Keith was also awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Donald J. Trump in January 2020.Mr. Keith released his debut album in 1993 and is known for hits like “Red Solo Cup” and his breakthrough song that was one of the most played country songs of the 1990s, “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.” Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Keith released “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” which made him a household name.Since 2002, Mr. Keith has performed for more than 250,000 service members in 17 countries, including Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the United Service Organizations.His most recent album, “Peso in My Pocket,” was released in October 2021. He achieved his highest-career debut on Billboard’s airplay chart with “Old School,” the first single released from the album. More