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

If something like this can hit #1 on country radio, and win Song of the Year at both the CMAs and the ACMs, the genre is all right in my book. I'm sure I'll be told what's wrong with the production or the lyrics or Miranda's drawl coach, but this song moves me as much as any classic of the genre. Tired of defending the genre, though, and will try to bow out and leave this one to the naysayers. Have fun.

 

I like this song. The lyrics are serious. Acoustic "Travis style" picking with steel guitar fills. I also really like her voice.

As I said, I wish you would run a thread with songs of this quality.

 

With this song, Norah Jones demonstrates true country music in ways that today's pseudo-country artists couldn't begin to understand.

 

You were defending a label, not a genre. Some of your examples (like Miranda's song above) were the exceptions. I lament that they're the exception when they should be the rule. If the genre existed in the mainstream, they would have been the rule. If you could have seen this cold, hard fact, you would have been a great champion of the cause.

Too bad!

 

Is she singing or talking?

 

Country music is but one genre of music under the popular music umbrella. We shouldn't be surprised when one form of popular music borrows from another, for we hear any number of genres when we go out in public. We shouldn't feel guilty if we love punk yet can't resist the hook of a twangy country record that we hear at the mall, the PA at work, or that someone else is playing in his car. It is only natural to gravitate toward a sound from another popular music genre. We can't expect to know the origin of the style of every guitar hook or lick in every record ever. Far less frequent would be pop music borrowing from classical music. When you hear that happening, you know that somebody is trying to impress you or think outside the box.

 

Do I just have bad luck when I turn on mainstream country radio? After driver 8 posted the good Miranda Lambert song above, I decided to turn on a country station. These were the two songs I was greeted with.

Jason Aldean: 1994



Florida Georgia Line: Cruise (apparently the #1 song in country)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PvebsWcpto

Every time I have done the same experiment over the last several years, I get hit with songs just like these. What percentage of modern country is like this? It seems like a very high percentage. And I don't think these are considered "novelty" songs by the artists.

 

That's not country, it's rap.

 

As I tried, seemingly in vain, to explain to Driver 8, the "good" stuff he was talking about are in the minority. They are the exception. What you heard on the radio is what "country" has boiled down to. There are no proper country songs to be heard on the radio these days. As Porter Wagoner would put it, that's "the cold, hard facts of life."

 

That is why I tried to get him to run a thread recommending quality material. I can not stand to listen to those stations to find the hidden gems.

 

Here's Kacey's take on modern country music:

The complete article can be found here:
http://www.savingcountrymusic.com/kacey-musgraves-on-country-do-i-love-what-its-turned-into-no

 

Living in Europe, I have only occasionally taken a little look at what's going on in country music, apart from the artists I like (from whom I regularly buy albums). This way, I have not continually observed the change in musical style from the 80s to today, as most of you on this board have. Instead, I only know about a few snapshots from different points in time.

In spite of this incomplete picture, something is fairly obvious to me: back in the day, Country was a lot about story songs. Now no more. Today, Country is a lot about attitude songs.

But the number of possible attitudes is fairly limited when compared to the number of stories that could be told.

Yet, there are as many attitude songs popular today as there used to be story songs. So it is no surprise that to people who have grown to like story songs, the current kind of Country music must be pretty boring and same-y because so many songs are about the same attitude.

During those years, the influence of marketing on the music business as a whole has grown considerably, and it's showing here: music videos, like commercials, are used to transport an attitude which the marketer wants people to associate with the product. Hence, there is no need for a story to make good marketing, and bringing across the attitude in the song is not only enough but vital to a successful marketing campaign.

That dawned on me today when I saw the press conference with Brantley Gilbert, his label head and people from the motor sport scene announcing that his likeness and album cover will be on a car at this year's Indianapolis 500 mile car race as a sponsor. Gilbert was all attitude and the other interviewees were just meh, but he mumbled his way through the interview whereas all the others, his labelhead, the driver of the car and the managers from the auto racing scene actually had something to say.

I guess this changing of the guard between story songs and attitude songs has happened in other genres, too, but it's just way more obvious in Country because Country used to be so much about story songs, maybe more than any other genre.