by Julian Spivey
In December when Sturgill Simpson’s third studio album A Sailor’s Guide to Earth was nominated for Album of the Year at the GRAMMY Awards alongside releases by Beyonce, Adele, Drake and Justin Bieber it led to many people questioning who Simpson even was. Simpson immediately got a kick out of this telling The New York Times: “I was so certain that when the tour wrapped up, we were done. But it might be a good idea to go play some shows again, I don’t know, given how many millions of people are saying, ‘Who the fuck is Sturgill Simpson?’ as of this morning.” Simpson’s website immediately started selling shirts with the phrase on them. Well, after Simpson’s performances on “Saturday Night Live” on Jan. 14 a lot more people thankfully know who the fuck Sturgill Simpson is. As someone who’s been on the Simpson bandwagon since his debut album High Top Mountain was released in 2013 I’m thrilled that people are now finding out how kickass of a musician and songwriter he is – if only they would have listened to me all these years – but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being absolutely mesmerized and floored by his ‘SNL’ appearance, even having seen him twice in person. I was pleasantly flabbergasted in December when I found out Simpson would be performing on ‘SNL,’ but the boost in popularity should’ve been expected after his surprise Album of the Year GRAMMY nomination. Even though I expected the usual brilliance out of Simpson I didn’t expect the fire and ferocity of “Keep It Between the Lines” and especially “Call to Arms,” which some viewers were instantly hailing as the greatest performance in ‘SNL’ history directly after Simpson triumphantly slammed his guitar to the Studio 8H stage. Simpson’s decision to drop the final verse of “Call to Arms,” which would’ve needed to have been censored for live television due to the frequent use of the word “bullshit” anyway, and just jam with his kickass band – culminating in organist Bobby Emmett’s organ being thrown on its side (after Emmett previously performed on top of it) and Simpson slamming his electric guitar on the stage before showing off a maniacally determined look showing that he’d accomplished what he came for was the perfect decision. The performance was also a gigantic boost to Simpson’s sales. A Sailor’s Guide to Earth shot straight to the top of the iTunes country album chart after the performance and remained there through Tuesday (Jan. 17). All three of his albums – High Top Mountain (2013) and Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (2014) would shoot to the top four on Amazon’s country albums sales. There’s no doubt Simpson’s killer ‘SNL’ performance was the biggest boost to his career thus far. Hopefully we’ll see another one at the GRAMMYs next month, but Simpson’s wife is due with their second child that week and it might keep him from performing at the award ceremony. If you haven’t seen the ‘SNL’ performances yet you’re truly missing out on some of the greatest musical moments frankly ever televised.
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