Rascal Flatts
No doubt, these suburban cowboys play country music for Friday-afternoon drive times and Saturday nights at the mall, not the honky-tonk, the ranch, or the porch. With harmonies as squeaky-clean as their faces, Rascal Flatts relish the pop and lite-groove direction that the genre has taken at the turn of the century. In fact, they seem to take pride in their distance from hard-core country roots. To their credit, this trio of earnest young men sounds as if they are truly enjoying themselves as they run through their bouncy, bubbly love songs. And at least these boys don't pay lip service to keeping country traditions alive in 2000. Heck, they even find the fact that their label has "the power of Disney" behind it "really exciting." If you're looking for music with instantly digestible pop melodies, tight harmonies, and very little grit, Rascal Flatts will delight you and they will most likely delight their Disney-backed label, who's obviously taken aim squarely at the teenage market. Goes down as easy as a milkshake--a nonfat milkshake.--Marc Greilsamer