Country music has sure changed from 1985 to now - Billboard country album charts from Nov. 1985, now

It's hideous now......but Alabama, c'mon. And as much as enjoy Roseanne that LP was almost synth pop. Hate to say it, but by
85 the fat was already in the fire.

 

This. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

I was in the car yesterday, and "Mountain Music" came on the radio, and, whether you want to call Alabama country, rock with country a tinge, pop country, sellout country, whatever, that's a fantastic ****ing song.

The one constant in country music is self-appointed purist fans bitching and moaning about how the latest generation of country artists suck and are betraying the heritage of the music, but the genre itself keeps chugging along.

 

Kacey Musgraves is one of the hottest young artists in country, and certainly what I would call a distinctive voice:



What's so frustrating about the anti-country diatribes is how, without fail, they pick out the absolute nadir of the genre of the past fifteen years (Kenney Chesney's "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" and the like) and extrapolate that "all modern country" is like that. It's the same kind of cheap shot as citing Blink-182 and Nickelback as "proof" that all modern rock music is terrible.

 

This is good. I agree - thanks for sharing it.

 

I don't think it sucks, it is just changing with the times.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed it. As with modern rock music, there is a wide range of talent and different styles in modern mainstream country music. It's really not all terrible.

 

Alabama had their own sound - you knew immediately who you were hearing when they came on the radio. "Jukebox in my mind" is my favorite.

 

It has always changed with the times. I get that, because it's a roots/folk-oriented music, fans of the genre (and people who have little or no actual interest in the genre, but are biased towards a roots/purist view of music in general) think that it should never change, at all, but no genre of music is like that. Or the ones that are become dead museum pieces with no contemporary audience whatsoever.

But the most salient point in this discussion was Glenpwood's point that someone who grew up on 1965 country music would complain that the 1985 chart "wasn't country." And someone who grew up on 1945 country would doubtless complain that the 1965 chart, in the gap between Owen Bradley's "Nashville Sound" and the just-around-the-corner Countrypolitan movement, "wasn't country" compared to Hank Sr. In the early 60s, Owen Bradley, whom I think most would recognize as an important figure in the genre's history, stated "Now we've cut out the fiddle and steel guitar and added choruses to country music. But it can't stop there. It always has to keep developing to keep fresh." So spare me the nonsense that Alabama or Roseanne Cash or Taylor Swift murdered country music. It has always been changing, always been evolving, always had one eye on the pop marketplace.

 

I should add that on weeknights I listen to Eddie Stubbs on WSM in Nashville on my way home from work - the last hour of his show. The new stuff that he plays that I end up liking goes under what he calls the "Americana Files".

 

I disagree.

It's not the genre that's "chugging along." It's the LABEL, "country music." Increasingly, there is no "country" in the music. In the mainstream, the heritage of the genre is not only betrayed but also stabbed in the back and left to die while its name is stolen and attached to other, strange types of music.

 

The problem with the purist thing is that if these country artists are going to "sell out" and go rock/pop, aim their soundalike standards higher than freaking Nickelback. Dwight Yoakam's last album got some local alternative radio airplay here, but it had a really nice sound to it and one doesn't have to be a country or a rock fan or whatever to enjoy it. Compare it to how so many bands are trying to sound like Kid Rock and Nickelback, artists who are more popular with "Mix 102" audiences than they are with actual rock/indie fanbases.

 

Increasingly, there's no "country" in the country itself. For better or for worse, Taylor Swift didn't grow up dirt poor in a holler having to fetch water from a well like Loretta Lynn did. Much like the blues, classic country drew off the social/cultural capital of generations of rural poverty and isolation. In the 21st century, we don't live in an agricultural society with Grandpa picking a banjo on the back porch and singing bastardizations of folk ballads from the British isles. Yet the genre persists.

This is simply not true. There is far more respect in the modern country industry for the giants of the past than the typical "it all sucks today" mindset will acknowledge:



In that same broadcast, Loretta herself praised Miranda for being as country as it gets. All those who love to bitch and moan about how country doesn't sound country anymore really ought to check out Miranda's band Pistol Annies, and particularly tracks such as "Trailer for Rent" and "Lemon Drop."

 

I don't hear too many country artists trying to sound like Nickelback. The band in my avatar, Little Big Town, incorporate Buckingham/Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac harmonies into their sound. That's a soundalike influence that I can personally enjoy.

 

I listen to country music ranging from 1930s Jimmie Rodgers to 1980s George Strait and most everything in between. Through the "evolution," the music retained a country "backbone," if you will. From the mid 90s or so a catastrophe took place, not unlike the disappearance of the dinosaurs The music that followed wasn't evolution. It was like a new species. It had simply taken a name of a type of music that existed a decade or so before.

 

People used to complain about Buck Owens not being country enough. He even had to sign a pledge after recording either Memphis or the live Johnny B. Goode, I forget. Years later people didn't like that he covered Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Glen Campbell was complained about, though I suspect much of it was jealousy, since he was so popular in the late sixties. The Paul Hemphill book about country music in the late sixties has some great info about this.
Just having drums on country songs was controversial.

My great grandfather was probably cursing at the popular country songs of the sixties, missing the Carter Family. I dislike the country songs of today, wanting things to go back to the sixties. Time is cyclical.

 

Those examples of Taylor Swift sound exactly like all those little girl voice MYV songs of the 80s. There is nothing remotely country about them.

 

Absolutely right!

Those songs are nice. She has a lot of talent, IMO. But that is not country music. Wearing boots, a country dress, and playing a banjo or a guitar doesn't make the music country.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree on that point. I get that people dislike Garth Brooks or whoever, I'm not a huge Brooks fan myself, although I heard "The Thunder Rolls" on the radio the other day and kind of halfway enjoyed it.

But, as I have noted in this discussion already, I listen to contemporary country tracks such as Kacey Musgraves's "Merry Go Round" and "Blowing Smoke," Brad Paisley's "Life's Railway To Heaven," Pistol Annies' "Trailer For Rent" and "Lemon Drop," Taylor Swift's "Safe and Sound" and "Mean," Miranda Lambert's "Mama's Broken Heart" and "The House That Built Me" and "Me and Your Cigarettes," Ashley Monroe's "Like a Rose," The Band Perry's "Double Heart," Little Big Town's "Sober" and "Leaving In Your Eyes," The Dixie Chicks' "I Can Love You Better" or "Travellin' Soldier," and on and on and on, I hear the backbone of country music alive and well, although your mileage may vary.

I guess a lot of it comes down to whether one prefers to look at the glass as half full or half empty. There is a certain apocalyptic mindset to music fandom that seems to crave a moment where everything went wrong, whether that's a line in the sand in an artist's career, such as Exile On Main Street as the last great Stones album, with every subsequent album sucking, or whatever moment people prefer to pick as the moment where country went wrong, never to be the same again. Do I like every single country artist on the radio today? No. Do I like every single thing about modern country as a genre? No. But I sure am not going to shortchange myself by refusing to listen to real-deal, talented country artists such as Kacey Musgraves or Miranda Lambert simply because I drew some line in the sand in the early 90s.

 

Taylor has certainly made a full-on pop crossover on her latest album. But a song like "Tim McGraw" is firmly in the country tradition in its lyrical content, in my opinion.

 

Not sure the names of the bands, but the other week I was in a shop with a friend and they were playing the country station, and it all sounded almost identical to the stuff I've heard of Daughtry and Nickelback... very bland "rock" music. I don't mind the FM influence.. I heard it in some of Lady Antebellum's music. CMT has actually played Nickelback videos before... if you're going to be country and prove you're "with it" when it comes to rock music, aim higher than Nickelback, the band who are as hip to hate today as Toto were 30 years ago.