Thread of country-pop album of 2018 which is Missy Lancaster's 'Piece of Me'

Missy is Australian which has a thriving country scene which can be effectively indistinguishable in output from the US original it apes (in a whole bunch of ways parts of our "outback" probably feel closer socially / culturally / politically to Nashville than to say Sydney), and this album came out in January and has been pretty huge in those circles? I'd never heard of it but one of the songs from it came on at the gym yesterday and I was like "wait who is this great crossover-primed US country singer I've never heard of?"

Anyway ever since '1989' came out I've been wondering when we'd get an enterprising emerging country star game to try to fill the space that Taylor has vacated - trembling, slightly vulnerable, occasionally very literate but always very shiny and appealing crossover-minded country-pop. This doesn't map precisely onto any particular part of Taylor's ouvre - "Falling In Love" and "All That You Are" could be from the debut, "Party of the Year" and "Heatwave" are like "22" recorded Tennessee rather than Sweden, "Never In Love" is like a better version of "White Horse" (and is one of my favourite things here), "Bridesmaid" and "Run" are lovely composites of all of these vibes?

Anyway maybe it's mainly the vocal performances that make this special for me, there's that same sense of fragile earnestness and openness, I can't help but find it super-affecting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwqUFD3HSaQ

https://youtu.be/GjfuNM8j5mk

Genuinely curious why this is even classified as country. Because she can strum a guitar?

record has plenty of antecedents in pop country

Yeah, I'm only hearing this one song, but it scans to me as "oh, there's a bit of a lilt to your voice, so we'll call this country." wtf do I even know though. It's 2018 and anything is put wherever it will move the most units.

It's pretty clearly pop-country - and slightly more faithfully so than say Maren Morris (who herself is a big pop country star). Try the second youtube link.

I streamed the first half of the album, but I knew going in that this isn't the world I spend any time in or want to. And I was right. Nothing about the structure of any part of these songs is the least bit different from 21st century hit songwriting except for a little banjo here and some stomp, stomp, stomping there. The bones of these songs are the things Max Martin and Dr. Luke and Ryan Tedder have all done 50 thousand times now. I could at least fuck a little with top 40 country when all the old AOR writers moved to Nashville and bought cowboy hats and worked for Gretchen Wilson and Tim McGraw, but this seems like it's made in bad faith.

You guys seem to enjoy it, though.

I knew going in that this isn't the world I spend any time in or want to

so you weren't genuinely curious

and Tim McGraw, but this seems like it's made in bad faith.

I want to believe that this post ends on a Faith Hill pun, please don't shatter my illusion

Not a Hill he wants to die on, obviously.

so you weren't genuinely curious

I was genuinely curious about how/why it's marketed as country, not whether or not I'd like it.

I want to believe that this post ends on a Faith Hill pun, please don't shatter my illusion

It wasn't planned, but I realized that before I hit submit and was v pleased with myself.

sort of fascinated by the way she adopts a very american accent, is this common in australian country music?

In the last decade or so it seems very common, as though it's an inextricable component of the genre.

Another thought about this album: an underacknowledged viral quality across so much good earnest-sounding pop music of various stripes is about 5% Vanessa Carlton.

Pretty rare IME for any UK or Australian country music not to adopt an American accent of some kind but I don't know as much as I might about the Aussie stuff.

I like this stuff (thanks Tim) and it sounds fairly on-the-button pop country to me.

I'm interested in this:

Nothing about the structure of any part of these songs is the least bit different from 21st century hit songwriting except for a little banjo here and some stomp, stomp, stomping there.

What od you mean by "structurally" here? Arrangements and tone? Chordal / harmonic structure? In terms of song structure I'm not sure country music has ever strayed very far from the hit songwriting of its time.

trembling, slightly vulnerable, occasionally very literate but always very shiny and appealing
concise!

sounds good to me

and very taylor

"Never in Love" could have fooled me

Tim, you can't tell me you think the gap between Randy Travis and Madonna is the same as the one between Missy Lancaster and P!nk.

OMG how is it possible this conversation is already this soul-crushing?

Like what on earth is the point of going "why is this marketed as country when it basically sounds like mainstream pop?" at a time when the biggest mainstream pop star in the world came... right out of pop country.

tbf I was genuinely curious last night. Now I'm just mad at it.

Seriously what's the point? You've been making a virtue out of your alienation from modern music for years now but if you aren't prepared to even try and meet the music half way then you're just being a more literate version of every 'but this is just dance pop I thought R&B was rhythm and blues' comments box bore.

I'm asking you what you mean by "structural" - I assume from your answer you're talking about arrangements.

On the rare occasions I get to listen to pop country radio these days I very rarely hear anything that sounds much like Randy Travis (or other great figures from country's history); pop country doesn't sound like that anymore. Country has literally always incorporated sonic and songcraft elements from other genres, it has always had people saying "that's not country music" and those people have generally been proved wrong over time.

Anyway Matt's right that this is a diversion on a single-artist appreciation thread, happy to continue elsewhere, maybe here: (vintage) country-disco

You make it sound like I don't listen to or like anything that came out after the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack in 1977. That's not true. I guess my main gripe has been and will continue to be with the industry itself, not the individual artists, and the fact that the cabal of hit songwriters and the style of song they write has become so condensed and insular that you can shop the same song to an artist in any format you want and you only need to tweak the accompaniment a little (and, in the case of Missy Lancaster, barely at all). I WISH THIS DIDN'T DRIVE ME BATSHIT CRAZY! I'd be a lot happier if it didn't.

That was to Matt, btw.

I'm gonna try to stay out of this until a few months down the road when I get triggered again. lol