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Madame Tussauds Nashville opened its doors last month, bringing Music City its first wax experience.
'When you hear ‘museum,' you think dusty and static,” marketing manager Mindy Powell-Hardy says. 'We're definitely not static; we're very interactive. Rather than just viewing it as an outsider, we want you to feel like you're a part of the attraction, too.”
Here in Nashville, that means being invited in to a kind of jam session for eyes, as well as ears. Located at Opry Mills, Madame Tussauds Nashville is arranged thematically, so that moving from one room to the next creates the effect of a voyage through local music history. The path leads from Hank Williams up to a recreation of the Grand Ole Opry stage and many of country music's modern superstars, with detours along the way into the city's blues, jazz, and R&B legacies. Each figure is fashioned to scale and so lifelike that they seem ready to step forward and greet visitors personally.
'You can put your arm around Taylor Swift and take a selfie,” Powell-Hardy points out. 'You can write lyrics to a song by one of the figures and record it in our WSM studio set. You can create your own t-shirts and album covers.”
Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, Minnie Pearl, Jimi Hendrix, and other icons of Nashville music are ready for those selfies now.
Bob Doerschuk