E-Mail This Article to a Friend Nashville royalty Tim McGraw and Alan Jackson gear up for the Country Music Awards BY SEAN RICHARDSON

With two consecutive CMA Awards for Entertainer of the Year under his belt, Alan Jackson is the reigning king of country. At this year’s ceremony, which takes place on Tuesday in Nashville, he’ll have plenty of competition for the big prize: previous winners Tim McGraw and Brooks & Dunn are also up for it, along with perennial bridesmaids Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney. Still riding high on the biggest hit of his career, "It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere," Jackson just topped the pop charts with his current CD, What I Do (Arista). But that triumph has been overshadowed by the retail dominance of McGraw’s latest, Live like You Were Dying (Curb), which moved more than 700,000 units in its opening week and became the fastest-selling country release of the year. That could spell victory at the CMAs for McGraw, who last won Entertainer of the Year in 2001.

The success of Live like You Were Dying is being driven by its smash title track, a blustery ballad about a man who makes the best of his terminal illness. McGraw didn’t write the song, but since he sings it from the perspective of the protagonist’s son, it begs comparison with his personal life: his father Tug, the baseball star, died of cancer earlier this year. "All a sudden going fishing/Wasn’t such an imposition/And I went three times that year I lost my dad" are the lines most likely to get fans all choked up. Like the album cover, the video uses a heavenly white backdrop, and the sentimental home movies in the background enhance the track’s string-driven, widescreen feel: "I went skydiving/I went rocky mountain climbing/I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu." As the clip comes to a close, it includes footage of the defining moment of Tug’s career: pitching the Philadelphia Phillies to their 1980 World Series triumph.

Tug, who described himself as a "part-time father" on the cover of his autobiography, was the first celebrity in Tim’s immediate family. But he wasn’t the last: these days, McGraw is perhaps best known as the husband of fellow country star Faith Hill, whom he married in 1996. At the time, the blockbuster sales of his second disc, Not a Moment Too Soon, made him the more successful of the two. Since then, they’ve been a cultural juggernaut: touring together, appearing on each other’s albums, and conquering both the country and the pop charts. McGraw’s biggest hit, the bombastic wedding song "It’s Your Love," was a duet with his wife, and he won his only Grammy to date for an appearance on her 1999 smash, Breathe (Warner Bros.). Earlier this year, Hill made her Hollywood debut in The Stepford Wives, and now McGraw is making his in Friday Night Lights.

Despite their broadening horizons, the star couple continue to play to their core country constituency. Like its hit predecessor, Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors, Live like You Were Dying was recorded at Allaire Studios in upstate New York, using McGraw’s touring band instead of session players. Those two moves go against Nashville convention; nevertheless, McGraw has been embraced by the industry and fans alike for the rootsy results of his maverick approach. He’ll never be mistaken for a traditionalist, he has never written his own songs like Jackson or Keith, and his decent voice sometimes takes a back seat to his sex appeal. His biggest claim to credibility is as a producer: along with Byron Gallimore, he has received that credit on the majority of his own releases, along with several by Massachusetts native Jo Dee Messina.

Since Live like You Were Dying is McGraw’s seventh proper album, fans know what to expect: an hour-plus of tunes both funny and sad, with a crossover sensibility that chooses pop over the classic-rock pretensions of his peers. On the disc’s first half, he surrounds the title track with a truckload of probable smashes. The opening "How Bad Do You Want It," which has been earmarked as the first performance of the night at the CMAs, is a bluesy shuffle that gives the band a chance to strut their stuff right out of the gate. The groove mellows out a bit from there: "My Old Friend" is tear-stained nostalgia, and "Old Town New" is a melancholy ballad that longs to see a "color other than blue again."

"Back When" is the kind of inane novelty song that gives mainstream country a bad name: "Back when a hoe was a hoe/Coke was a Coke/Crack’s what you were doing when you were cracking jokes." Its well-crafted melodies are hard to resist all the same, but the lighthearted "Can’t Tell Me Nothin’ " is a more guilt-free rabble rouser. One of McGraw’s strengths is the ease with which he shifts between moments of seriousness and levity, a trick he milks from beginning to end on this album. On the gospel-tinged ballad "Drugs or Jesus," he quotes Bruce Springsteen’s "My Hometown" and joins a choir at the end to cry, "Hallelujah."

Hill makes a tasteful guest appearance on "Blank Sheet of Paper," which also features background vocals by one of its authors, Brett Warren. (Fans should keep an eye out for McGraw on Barely Famous, the hilarious CMT reality show that Warren stars in with his brother and band mate Brad.) "This fool’s about to write you a letter/To tell you that he’s sorry," McGraw sings, taking on the identity of the object in the song’s title. On the gorgeous "Walk like a Man," he evokes his own troubled childhood, with a stark verse about father and son taking the bus uptown one hungover morning to "find the car." "Just Be Your Tear" takes on an undeserving lover with pop accents borrowed from Shania Twain; "Do You Want Fries with That" does the same thing with wry humor and rock guitar.

After starting off in the roadhouse, Live like You Were Dying ends up in the church: the closing "We Carry On" conquers hard luck with gospel piano and eternal optimism. McGraw might be the most charismatic country star of the last decade, and he continues to find tunes that are powerful enough to match his engaging persona.

EVEN IF JACKSON RELINQUISHES the Entertainer of the Year award to McGraw at the CMAs, it stands to be a banner night for him. His seven nominations are the most on the ballot, and three wins would push him ahead of Vince Gill as the show’s most decorated performer of all time. Three of his tracks are up for awards, including the Jimmy Buffett collaborations "It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere" and "Hey Good Lookin’." The hit ballad "Remember When," one of Jackson’s most personal songs, is nominated in three different categories. That tune is a love letter to his wife, Denise, who shows up in the middle of the video to share a slow dance with him.

Denise is also the presumable inspiration behind his current single, the laid-back honky-tonker "Too Much of a Good Thing." "Some would say it’s too perfect/But I don’t think what we have is so bad," he drawls, ushering in the sunny harmonies and steel guitar that drive the chorus. He goes one step farther than McGraw, who’s nine years his junior, by rejecting both pop and rock in favor of straight-up country. His old-school leanings are even more apparent in the video, where the legendary Porter Wagoner introduces his performance at the Grand Ole Opry House.

"It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere" was such a near-gimmick that many country fans will be glad to see Jackson returning to the staunch traditionalism that has defined his career. But the effects of that move are already being felt on radio and at retail, where What I Do has gotten off to a slower start than his last two releases did. On his ninth proper album, the star sometimes sounds as if he were just repeating himself: the five originals here are not his best, and the title itself is too close for comfort to that of his 1994 hit, Who I Am.

Two tracks stand out as main offenders: "USA Today" and "If French Fries Were Fat Free," both of which waste stellar instrumental performances on lazy wordplay. But "Rainy Day in June" is effective as a mournful counterpoint to "Too Much of a Good Thing," and "You Don’t Have To Paint Me a Picture" plays to Jackson’s strengths by finding beauty in heartbreak. The album also serves as an introduction to the first signing to his new label, Alan’s Country Records: Jackson’s nephew Adam Wright and his wife, Shannon, who are also known as the Wrights. Their lonesome "Strong Enough" — "Mexico, you don’t make tequila/Strong enough to get her off my mind" — is a highlight.

The more upbeat second half of What I Do includes the humorous "The Talkin’ Song Repair Blues," on which Jackson fixes his mechanic’s fledgling country song while the guy works on his car. The disc closes on a celebratory note with the tender "To Do What I Do": "The thrill when I hear you singing along/Has been worth everything I’ve been through." Indeed, Jackson’s career has been such an unqualified success that it’s going to take more than a minor misstep like this one to knock him down.

Tim McGraw and Alan Jackson perform this Tuesday, November 9, at the 38th Annual CMA Awards, which airs live at 8 p.m. on CBS, WBZ Channel 4, from the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville.