I suspect the people who would dismiss the MIDLAND album because country bands shouldn't have connections to CALVIN KLEIN ads and BRUNO MARS videos and should be more sincere about their come-up are the same people who would dismiss the new DEMI LOVATO album because it took 29 writers and 15 producers to craft its 12 songs and how can you possibly hear an artist's authentic heart when a crew the size of an American football team is standing between you and her? But what makes an actor and underwear model from TUCSON any less suited to sing breezy honky-tonk drinking songs than someone who grew up on a farm in OKLAHOMA? And what if those 29 writers and 15 producers are the instruments Lovato is using to tell her story and express what's in her heart, just as someone else may use 29 keyboards or 15 amps? I love Lovato's album unreservedly, and I like the Midland album quite a bit. The latter is more early EAGLES than early DWIGHT YOAKAM, and if there's anything "inauthentic" about it, it's that country music in 2017 doesn't particularly sound like either the Eagles *or* Yoakam. MIDLAND's close harmonies and steel-guitar yacht-rock details are rigorously retro, consciously counter to what either country music or pop music currently is. But country music tends to like challenges to its own state of the art (see: CHRIS STAPLETON and MARGO PRICE), and if a drinking song that boasts "they call it a problem, I call it a solution" doesn't cross every border wall country music has ever tried to erect, I don't know what will. On her sixth album, Lovato explores under the sheets of sexual obsession in ways both conventionally lustful and unconventionally creepy, fueled by a dizzyingly catchy array of R&B and pop beats. She holds that array together with a soulful, confident voice that can open a big, brash soul ballad by cooing "I see the future without you" in a way that leaves all sorts of room for regret but none for doubt. If you can't hear authenticity in that, I don't know where to tell you to look... I like to think small sometimes. Reading this BEN SISARIO profile of TUNESMAP, a company that aims to put songs in context by displaying photos, news clippings and other relevant material on your APPLE TV while the songs are playing on your SONOS, I asked myself why can't someone just show me who programmed the drums on this JAX JONES song while I'm listening to it, on the same app on the same device that I'm listening to it on? (Spoiler: Jones does her own programming)... MILES DAVIS and DEEP PURPLE preserved in DNA... RIP CEDELL DAVIS and REGGIE LAVONG... Best wishes to JERRY JEFF WALKER.