What happened to country music?

DIXIE CHICKS MUST DIE.

Alt.country doesn't count, any more than Jurassic 5 counts as old- skool hip-hop. (So maybe it does.)

It seems to me, if anything, the problem is that Country is more a "standard" genre than ever, and is too aware of its own past. Also that its (until recent) lack of crossover appeal tends to make the music even more ghettoized and insular, in response, more defiantly basic and, well, crass in sound.

In a sense, nashville-machine country is the most forthright and earnest stuff out there. The emotions are explicit and untarred by literary bush-beating. The melodies are simple, and don't need fancy arrangements.

-Dwight Yoakam ('This Time' is an incredible album) -kd lang (her second and third albums) -Steve Earle (some good stuff can be found throughout his career) -Gary Allan (a fairly new guy who mixes a sort of rockabilly to his modern/pop stuff - 'Smoke Rings In The Dark') -The Mavericks (have done some solid stuff, who also mix rockabilly and other genres, great lead voice, the male "kd lang") -Mary Chapin Carpenter -Lyle Lovett

*all of those are not strict or standard or straight country, but*

Anyways, those are the ones that I enjoy that some might consider "country" that I feel are worth the effort to check out that have come around within the past 20 years. Which doesn't include Lambchop (whom I love much of their stuff) nor other more alt acts.

Shakey, wouldn't you say the Bristol Sessions had the same goal as say the Lomax's? Trying to save folk music from being eclipsed by popular music, which then accidentally injected certain folk ideas (such as Bluegrass) into pop music?

Chuck?

hmm that's an interesting suggestion, I can definitely see that as one of their main impacts - altho I'm not sure you can really pin down what the "goal" of the Bristol Sessions was. Certainly one of the main ones was that everyone involved wanted to make some money and get mass exposure.

this may help with the discussion

humansuit my point was that the earlist recorded country stuff like the Carter Family - stuff that is the founding bedrock of country music (and still covered and acknowledged and revered by folks like Lucinda Williams, and Carla Bozulich, and most entertainingly Amy Sedaris, to this day) - was pop music through and through. It was geared at a mass audience and voraciously integrated a wide variety of pre-existing genres, and A.P. Carter and everyone else involved wanted to make some fuckin money.

haha I just got the joke about "humansuit"

I R slow

OK, I'll take your word that that's what the Carter family did and I agree with that definition of 'pop' then.

But what I'm saying is that country isn't really dead, instead it has been supplanted by 'pop' in Nashville, where I would define pop as like 'light-pop' music, that is, cookie-cutter verse-chorus-verse where the 'hook' is the most notable thing about the song, so, like 'Achy-Breaky Heart' would be the prime example of that - no instrumental sophistication or experimentation, just, you know, a pop song. These pop songs, whether they come out of Nashville or LA, are basically the same. You just put a southern accent on them and dial up a certain guitar sound, but otherwise, they're the same.

Now, there may not be that much of a cleft between 'pop', as I have defined the term, and 'real country,' since again it is simply songs with verse-chorus-verse structure. But it's just a simple model that would suggest why others think country is dead - because they are really listening to Nashville pop, which isn't all that influenced by 'country' in actuality.

Man, whatever. I'm losing it here too late in the week for thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countrypolitan#Countrypolitan

humansuit I'm not disagreeing with your judgment of the quality of current mainstream country music - I can't remember the last thing I heard from that quarter that appealed to me at all - but I do think you have a skewed vision of the history of country music. You're pining for a past that doesn't really exist (as many alt.country folks do - there's a weird revisionist strain inherent in the "genre" that xhuxk loves taking aim at).

When I ask myself why modern mainstream country music doesn't appeal to me at all I usually arrive at the conclusion that its for the same reasons the majority of mainstream rock or hip-hop holds no interest for me: the shit is just boring and does not surprise me or speak to me - it isn't MEANT for me anyway, I'm outside the demographic. But that doesn't mean I think any of those artists have betrayed their heritage or anything, they've just taken it somewhere I'm no longer interested in visiting.

they are really listening to Nashville pop, which isn't all that influenced by 'country' in actuality. -humansuit

I think Brad Paisley and other current performers would disagree with this formulation. I think even No Depression mag folks and Steve Earle and others who may not like some of the constrictions of the Nashville songwriting establishment approach would disagree. As Chuck suggested, try regularly reading the Rolling Country thread...

Shakey, are you bored by Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert, Gretchen Wilson, Brooks & Dunn? They are all current mainstream country performers doing interesting, worthy stuff.

honestly I stopped paying attention a long time ago. Like, 15 years ago. If something comes across my path I'll give it a listen but the shit-to-gold ratio got so heavily tilted towards the latter at some point in the late 80s that I just can't be bothered anymore. What can I say, I've found other things to entertain me... Of the folks you mention the only ones I'm familiar with are Brooks & Dunn. Gretchen Wilson sounds familiar but I'm not sure I've heard a note.

I *have* heard xhuxk's onetime favorites Big and Rich and thought it was some of the worst shit ever.

(haha should say "tilted towards the FORMER" duh)

You're pining for a past that doesn't really exist

Well then I think the model has to be revised.

Could we simply say this? Where Nashville (and not all Nashville, mind you, which was not my intent to say curmudgeon) has taken country is much different from where 'Austin' etc. has taken country, and that the Austin folks are more atuned to what people who decry the death of country would call 'real country.' They just don't hear the Austin stuff as much, so they think country is dead.

I actually have a similar argument as yours about 'country is pop.' What I was trying to convey in my original thought is that rock is country. It might be blues, too, if blues is separate from country (is it?), but the original 'folk' music spawned both the country side and the rock side.

Here, maybe we could say that country is more 'folk' whereas rock is more 'blues.' True?

Rambling. Stopping.

When I ask myself why modern mainstream country music doesn't appeal to me at all I usually arrive at the conclusion that its for the same reasons the majority of mainstream rock or hip-hop holds no interest for me: the shit is just boring and does not surprise me or speak to me - it isn't MEANT for me anyway, I'm outside the demographic. But that doesn't mean I think any of those artists have betrayed their heritage or anything, they've just taken it somewhere I'm no longer interested in visiting.

This is such a mature and well-thought out perspective. I totally agree. But I'm wondering -- do you get bummed that mainstream music doesn't speak to you? Do you ever wish it could?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countrypolitan#Countrypolitan

And that's a really interesting link.

maybe we could say that country is more 'folk' whereas rock is more 'blues.' True?

I tend to think delta blues is itself folk, as much as bluegrass.

I'm onfetn found rambling to no end that rock wasn't exactly a genre, but a marketing term for a certain point in the R&B evolution. That term allowed other things not in the R&B lineage to get thrown on the fire.

Before the rock term got plugged, Boogie Woogie morphed into R&B while Western Swing ushered in Hillybilly Boogie. When Syd Nathan at King Records began suggesting his Black artists cover his "hillbilly" artists and vice versa, we see the road paving to the rock revolution.

It seems to me only when the Brit invasion happened did all this "it comes from blues proper" talk begin.

I see your point. Would, for example, Elvis be a perfect example of that cross-pollenation?

The problem with the whole Austin is "real," Nashville is not argument is that there are current mainstream songs that are just as "real" (whatever that means and it will just get us sidetracked with a discussion of authenticity and 'rockism'). No, not all of 'em. But the simplistic dismissal just does not cut it in 2007. I may hate Toby Keith's politics but he's written some songs that are as good or better than any alt act. You just have to pick and choose whether your're talking country, or rock, or rap, or blues or whatever.

do you get bummed that mainstream music doesn't speak to you? Do you ever wish it could?

I think the only thing that bums me out about it is that as I grow older I feel like I have a sharpened sensitivity to the way marketing divides generations in order to make money. I blame the baby boomers and they're whole bullshit "don't trust anyone over 30", rock-n-roll-is-for-the-kids attitude. From my cursory understanding of the history of recorded music, that was kinda a new development at the time - and one that made SO much money it became entrenched as a standard industry marketing tool. Before rock'n'roll, I don't get the impression that jazz, or country, or blues, or gospel, or big band/swing, or any genre were ever so bound up with the concept of generational conflict.

I do feel like music has become so compartmentalized that its difficult to be engaged by all these different strands of it - I mean, kids on my busride to work think its the weirdest shit ever that I listen to TI or E-40 or whoever (even though I've been listening to hip-hop since I was a kid!), its like there isn't MEANT to be any common ground anymore (ie, pop charts are for kids, mainstream country is for soccer moms, hip-hop is for angry teenagers, etc.) That bums me out.

Musically though, I'm hardly at a loss for stuff to listen to. If anything my personal obsessions are so easily gratified thanks to the modern ease of distribution that I almost have TOO MUCH music for me to properly absorb.

x-posts

Well, "the simplistic dismissal" is in this case is really just a categorization that divides the two apart, generally. It's a simple model that won't always work, granted. But to say that there is, in general, no difference between what is happening in 'alt.country' and what is happening in Nashville is equally simplicistic.

I see your point. Would, for example, Elvis be a perfect example of that cross-pollenation?

The example that dominated the market before Alan Freed et al is the song Ida Red; it seems as many country artists covered it as R&B artists.

I really think all the rock revisisionism undermined Bill Haley's unique roll. When Jackie Brenston/Ike Turner reworked Ida Red into Rocket 88 in 1951, it still sounded like so much of the R&B on the market at the time, but Bill Haley's cover of it that year was very unique in sound. As if, for once, a country artist put in the position of covering/adopting R&B was trying to ditch all country trappings.

Before Haley's version of Rocket 88, Hillbilly Boogie artist Hardrock Gunter recorded what I'd consider to be the absolute prototype for Rockabilly with "Birmingham Bounce" in 1950. Being 4 years before Haley's Rock Around the Clock and Elvis's That's Alright says a lot, and considering all its context of 1950, it's a tough song to pigeonhole. Hardrock's later songs are more traditional Hillbilly Boogie, so...

Elvis didn't really explode until RCA came knocking in 1956, so the cross polination was well underway by that point. Looking at the confusion over Dewey Phillips agenda/market in Memphis during the late 40s plays heavily. Phillips seemd to be simply duplicating much of WDIA's Black agenda, but being a hillbilly threw a monkey wrench in it all.

Pappa do you have a degree in this shit or what?

Read the Chuck Klosterman essay "Toby over Moby."

reading Klosterman is never advisable

From a message board (could not find actual essay):

sex drugs and cocoa puffs wrote:
However, there is at least one thing you can learn: The most wretched people in the world are those who tell you they like every kind of music "except country music." People who say that are boorish and pretentious at the same time. All it means is they've managed to figure out the most rudimentary rule of pop sociology; they know that hipsters gague the coolness of others by their espoused taste in sound, and they know that hipsters hate modern country music. And they hate it because it speaks to normal people in a tangible, rational manner. Hipsters hate it because they hate Midwesterners, and they hate Southerners, and they hate people with real jobs.

Wow, this guy sounds like just the pretentious asshole that he's trying to put down.

http://theburgg.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=3308

Um, yeah. I can't take seriously people who come to believe in their own silly fantasies. Stating categorically that people who don't like country music "hate Midwesterners" or people with real jobs is a little pathetic. Or it's just hot gas used to sell a few copies of an obscure book. Wait a minute - does this guy Chuck have a REAL job?!?!?

he used to.

haha wait I'm confusing my chucks there

anyway the key line in that load of tripe is this: speaks to normal people in a tangible, rational manner, which priveleges "normalcy" and "rationality" without staking out the terms of either.

Agreed Shakey.

great comment above, shakey (the one QN quoted).

to my ears, alt-country, for all its purported authenticity, sounds just as vapid and predictable as any top 100 country track. so it's a phony distinction to me.

and even if I go back to the 70s records (outlaw vs billy sherril) or the 60s (bakersfield vs chet atkins), the distinction is totally meaningless to me as a listener now. thankfully those albums sound better than ever and there's tons from the era I haven't heard. i don't lose any sleep over not digging Miranda Lambert.

to my ears, alt-country, for all its purported authenticity, sounds just as vapid and predictable as any top 100 country track. so it's a phony distinction to me.

Is this a function of "I like neither" or is this a function of "I really cannot distinguish between alt.country and Nashville."? Interesting.

I guess the main difference between today's country and alt.country is that the traditional countrymen tend to vote for the Republicans while the alt.country guys are more likely to vote for the Democrats.

But some alt.country fans have made great music when they have abandoned their country roots. Wilco, for instance.

traditional countrymen tend to vote for the Republicans

you are mistaken.

True. And he's far from alone here, jeezus.

Seriously -- if you want to speak in a halfway informed manner about "what happened to country music," it might help to listen to some of it. And again, the last three or so rolling country threads would make for a pretty good refresher course, as far as what and what not to check out. Country music now is thriving, for crissakes. (And if you don't really want to know about it, why are you asking?)

Those rolling country threads frequently also put Nashville country stuff in a decades-long historial context, for whatever it's worth. (But yeah, I guess they didn't exist in 2001, when this one started. But there's a whole lot more to learn there now than here.)

(Non-Nashville country, too, for that matter. Which, right, is in no way more "real," whatever that silly word means. And not only because there's never been an alt-country record that could actually be confused with Merle Haggard, either. But there hasn't.)

Also, I don't mean to be so cranky about this -- There are some interesting comments about historical context above, from Shakey, Pappa, etc. Right: Cross-pollination with other types of music and the tightrope between striving for commerciality and striving for authenticity (or some bizzer's idea thereof -- authenticity has as often as not been a marketing strategy in its own right) are not new in country; they've always been there. They are part of what country music is. So why would they suddenly be evil now? Sorry, I don't get that, never have. But again: Read those rolling threads. Because they go in to depth about all this stuff. With actual examples or new stuff, often heard in the context of old stuff mentioned above.

...actual examples of new stuff..., I mean.

Mainstream Country artists themselves address many of these concerns, with stuff like "Murder on Music Row"--I'm sure Brad Paisley bitches about a lot of the stuff he hears on the radio too. But it's not like Nashville has been totally blackballing throwback musicians. In fact, in the period we're discussing--the last 20 years--you had the whole New Traditionalist explosion. It didn't sound exactly like The Carter Family or Merle, but neither does current R&B (even whatever the Badu stuff was called) sound exactly like Louis Jordan or Ike & Tina. To maintain popularity, and to avoid becoming stagnant self parodies, genres have to cross-breed & update.

Fox has announced that Nashville, a new Laguna Beach-like docu-reality series that will follow a group of young people trying to make their mark in Nashville's music industry, will debut as part of the network's Fall 2007 primetime programming schedule.
Fox Entertainment president Peter Liguori, who announced the new show during a Thursday conference call in which the network unveiled its 2007-2008 primetime programming schedule, told reporters that Nashville -- created by Go Go Lucky Productions, the same production company behind MTV's Laguna Beach, The Hills, and 8th & Ocean reality shows -- came about as the result of the network's "interest in looking at an unscripted drama."
"I fell in love with the casting," said Liguori about Nashville. "When you see it, these kids are beautiful and they're talented and they have great back stories. I mean we have the proverbial coal-miner's daughter as someone who is talented. Their stories... each and everyone one of them has a great one. And honestly, they're going into something that is meaningful. They're going into Music City to land a record deal and I feel like their stories are very aspirational and really, really Americana."
Because Nashville revolves around a young cast trying to break into the music industry in "the biggest small town in America," Liguori said musical performances by the cast can be expected by viewers but will not be the driving force behind the series.
"Look the emphasis is going to be on the soap, not on music," he said. "These kids are talented... they're really good songwriters. But the songs and their performances are going to play to fuel drama. It's not going to be vice versa. The drama's not setting up the songs. So by far and away, I want to put the emphasis on an unscripted soap that happens to have a music foundation, not vice versa."

in theory, alt.country = neo soul = backpack rap -- proclamations of bringing back something that never existed

People who say that are boorish and pretentious at the same time. All it means is they've managed to figure out the most rudimentary rule of pop sociology; they know that hipsters gague the coolness of others by their espoused taste in sound, and they know that hipsters hate modern country music.

Hipsters don't care about Black peoples who don't care about Rednecks who don't care about Hipsters

I brought up this thread not really as an 'I hate modern country,' although I'm certainly not a big fan, but more as a discussion of music history, of which I don't know much but find interesting. I like the thread being alive - I just can't slog through all the rolling country stuff.