The 9513.com had a great Year in Review article posted a few days ago.  They listed the Top 20 Music News Stories of 2008.  The #2 and #3 pick of the year was John Rich.  It made me laugh – they picked their best John Rich moments of the year.

• March 11: John Rich unleashes Gone Country Season 1 winner Julio Iglesias Jr.’s John Rich-produced country single “The Way I Want You.”
• March 24: John Rich announces that John Rich will host the Get Rich talent search.
• May 5: John Rich is infuriated by American Idol because it’s not as good as Nashville Star.
• May 6: John Rich begins another season as host of Gone Country, the CMT “reality” show where people you don’t care about sing songs you never want to hear.
• June 16: John Rich has a moment of clarity in which he (correctly) tells “Underwear Boy” Justin Gaston that he doesn’t belong on a country talent competition. John Rich fails to see any irony in this statement.
• July 26: John Rich is reportedly asked to leave a number of Nashville honky-tonks after trying (repeatedly) to bring in an underage woman.
• October 17: John Rich is involved in a brawl with former Danzig bassist Jerry Montano. Sources for TMZ claim that Rich got into an argument with “two tattooed, large gentlemen,” when things escalated and he swung a beer bottle at Montano, hitting him in the face, supposedly breaking his nose. Following the clash, Montano repeatedly mumbled, “the little guy hit me.”
• November 13: John Rich gets sued by Jerry Montano for smashing Jerry Montano’s nose on October 17. The suit alleges that Rich intentionally hit Montano after realizing that one of his female friends “was only interested in talking to him and nothing else.”
• November 17: John Rich releases solo single, thinks it’s really good.
• December 11: John Rich sets fire to guitar on stage in Vegas using a bottle of rum and matches.

The #2 story was a bad step that I agree John Rich made this year.  John Rich speaking on behalf of Johnny Cash.

John Rich may have penned the John McCain theme song “Raising McCain,” but it was Rich’s comments about another John that caused a firestorm. “I’m sure Johnny Cash would have been a John McCain supporter if he was still around,” Rich told an audience at a Florida concert in August.

Rosanne Cash, the late icon’s daughter, fired back: “It is appalling to me that people still want to invoke my father’s name, five years after his death, to ascribe beliefs, ideals, values and loyalties to him that cannot possibly be determined and to try to further their own agendas by doing so. Even I would not presume to say publicly what I ‘know’ he thought or felt. This is especially dangerous in the case of political affiliation. It is unfair and presumptuous to use him to bolster any platform.”

What a year for John Rich.  If it weren’t for him we would have had little to nothing to talk about in 2008.  Now obviously the 9513 doesn’t feel the same about John Rich as I do.  I really do like John Rich.  I think he is talented and when I had the chance to meet him he was really a sweetheart. 

He does go a bit overboard sometimes with his antics but I think that is just who he is.  He is over the top.  That is one of the reasons I like him so much.