The countdown is on for Brad Paisley. It’s 21 days until he co-hosts the 44th annual Country Music Association Awards. And it’s 12 days until the release of his two-disc Hits Alive album.

The track list was unveiled Tuesday, and it includes 25 performances total — 21 different songs, some of them appearing in both studio and in-concert versions. And “Online” appears twice; it’s at the close of the studio disc and an “Online” reprise is the finale of the live disc.

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Taylor Swift photo courtesy of Big Machine Records.

Taylor Swift couldn’t ask for much better timing. As she heads into the last week of promotion for her new album, Speak Now, she was named Songwriter/Artist of the Year Sunday night during the Nashville Songwriters Association International’s annual songwriter awards at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel.

Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin took Song of the Year for penning the emotional Miranda Lambert hit “The House That Built Me,” and Chris DuBois earned Songwriter of the Year for his work as an author of Craig Morgan’s “This Ain’t Nothin’” and the Brad Paisley singles “Then” and “Welcome To The Future.”

The awards were part of a formal evening that saw four new members added to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and had 11 titles recognized by the songwriting community as the cream of the crop: Songs I Wish I’d Written. That list included “Need You Now,” “White Liar,” “Big Green Tractor” and Taylor’s “You Belong With Me.”

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Lady Antebellum photo courtesy of Capitol Nashville.

Lady Antebellum wasn’t sure when it wrote “Need You Now” how Capitol Records would react to it. Likewise, the band wasn’t entirely convinced that radio stations would like it or that the general public would warm to it.

They certainly weren’t expecting the song to become a major pop record, but that’s exactly what’s happened. “Need You Now” reached No. 9 this week on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, and it’s likewise at No. 22 on the magazine’s Top Pop Songs list.

It’s not a development the band tried to create. A handful of pop stations started playing the song in November or December. Once the label figured out what was happening, it got proactive in promoting the song to the pop market. In the meantime, Lady A wants to reassure its core country fans that the band won’t suddenly start chasing the other genre.

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Brad Paisley photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

One trick psychologists employ to make their clients recognize their personal progress is to have them look back a year — or five or 10 — to compare where they were emotionally against where they are now. Looking back is a technique that Brad Paisley has used to craft such hits as “Welcome To The Future,” “Letter To Me” and “Then,” and when he puts it to work in evaluating his career, it yields an amazing contrast.

Back in 1999, when Brad released his first single and album, he travelled in a van, sometimes driving himself to the gig with his band members and the equipment all piled in the vehicle. Once they got to the venue, it was as if nobody knew — or cared — who he was.

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Brad Paisley photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

Every person is a summation of life’s experiences, everything that’s happened in his or her past. Brad Paisley has made a living by connecting the dots between the past and the present through much of his career — most notably on his current “Welcome To The Future.”

That song ties technology, global politics and racial advances in one well-written portrait of contemporary America, but it’s hardly the only time he’s tackled the subject. His first hit, “Who Needs Pictures,” used photographs of a past relationship to portray a broken heart; “Letter To Me” made a connection between the adult Brad and the teenage version; and his ballad “Then” — currently nominated for the Country Music Association’s Song of the Year — puts the early years of his marriage in context with its current state.

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