Tim McGraw Battles Label Over Contract

Tim McGraw performs at the Music Builds: CMT Disaster Relief Concert on May 11, 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Rick Diamond

Country star Tim McGraw may soon go to court with his label Curb Records over an unreleased album. The label has filed a breach-of-contract suit against the singer, claiming that he refused to provide a fifth album that would have completed his contractual obligation to the label by an April deadline. In addition to demanding a finished album, Curb is seeking to bar McGraw from signing to another label and cancel an agreement made in 2001 that cut a sixth record from his contract.

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In a statement released by McGraw's spokeswoman, the singer says that he submitted an album titled Emotional Traffic in the fall but the label refuses to issue the record because they intend to keep him under control indefinitely. According to Curb, some of the recordings on Emotional Traffic are so old that they violate the terms of their deal.

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Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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