Is Country Music Out of Control?

I think Country's doing fine. Be careful not to confuse Country music as a genre with the music that charts and gets airplay. There's a lot of traditionally influenced stuff out there, it no longer has a stranglehold on the charts or the airwaves though.

If I might indulge in some wild speculation, I think a vacuum opened up thanks to shifts in musical styles that left a lot of listeners (those who weren't interested in rap, hip-hop, or grunge or their influences) out. For my people (white trash), Van Halen, Guns 'n Roses, and Def Leppard disappeared from the air/shelves and weren't replaced- certainly not by Tool or Linkin Park. And, it turns out, it's not that far from Garth and Shania to Rascal Flats and Big & Rich. Think of them as today's hair bands.

 

Exactly, Brad! Truer words were never written.

 

I have been to "white trash" bars in small-town Mississippi where the DJ will alternate between country and hip-hop tracks - and the audience goes equally wild for both. Hip-hop and country have a lot more in common than might appear at first glance - I'd go so far as to suggest that hip-hop could be re-named "City" to reflect the fact that it almost the mirror-image of "Country."

 

I think this was Garth Brooks' problem, which is why he tried the "Chris Gaines" project. That debacle finally brought him down to earth.

 

A well known honky tonk dive here, The Beacon Club, does sort of the same thing. First part of the night is traditional and new country (usually a cover band but sometimes a DJ) and by around 11 the DJ's playing hip hop and very current top 20. The dance floor is always full.

dan c

 

This is so staggeringly, obviously wrong that it's not really worthy of a response, but, if anything, the trend in recent years has been in the opposite direction, as Alan Jackson's single "Gone Country" wryly observes. This year alone has seen Bon Jovi aiming for the country charts and Michelle Branch abandoning her rock career for country stardom with The Wreckers.

 

Yep. "Lucille" peaked at #5 in June of '77, and "Coward Of The County" at #3 in January of '80 on the Billboard Hot 100. Both were million selling singles too.

 

Nobody seems to remember that "Chris Gaines" was a character Garth was going to play in a movie, and that album was supposed to be the music that the character made. He made a tactical error bringing it out before the movie was made, and the movie never ended up happening because people misunderstood and thought he was having some kind of identity crisis.

 

That movie was going to be called "The Pilgrim" I think (if I recall correctly). But if the music had been any good, he'd have had another success. That TV special he did singing those songs certainly didn't help. It didn't seem as if he were playing a character in that show (he looked like himself, in other words.)

 

Well, the problem was that Garth made himself look ridiculous with that wig.

 

That certainly didn't help...

 

The music was too soft.

 

There are a few "country" artists that I have enjoyed over the last ten years or so.

Dwight Yoakam - Dwight has made consistently good albums from the very beginning of his career. I believe that he has the best body of work in country music since the eighties.

Lyle Lovett - Obviously not your average "country performer", but he mixes in some country on his albums. Lyle has made many excellent albums, and has a great live show.

Nanci Griffith - I haven't liked her last couple of albums, but she made some nice albums over the years.

Gillian Welch - She is an excellent songwriter and I love her voice. She is consistently making terrific albums.

George Strait - I ignored him for many years, but his albums are actually quite good for the most part. A nice mix of country and Texas swing with a few silly novelties thrown in for fun.

Brad Paisley - a very good guitar picker who writes some very good songs, but he leans a little heavy toward the novelty for my tastes. He is quite good live.

I could never stand to listen to the Garth/Reba/Shania type stuff. It just seemed so insincere to me.

I think Martina McBride has a great voice, but she has made some strange choices of material to record. Sarah Evans is both lovely AND talented, but she also went into a direction that I don't like very much.

I am sure there is still a lot of excellent country music being recorded. It just rarely gets played on the radio. (Just like pop/rock radio)

 

My two cent's worth from the Big D. Popular/Contemporary Country seems to be stuck right now with a desire to remain relevant/Hip to a younger audience that's grown up with loud guitars and Rock&Roll as a sound that they've heard as much as their parents Trad Country records. It's the same with some of the newer Country Artist's too, I think. I caught a Gretchen Wilson performance on TV this weekend of her doing a cover of Barracuda by Heart. Paying homage to an influence or marketing dept. focus group decision I don't know, but it was a stretch for me. Then again, my tastes run to the Traditional side. Country's drawn from Rock in the past, though probably not as blatently as now but still it has. As I've seen mentioned in this thread, it's not a new thing. There will always be Traditionalists, and as Jamie and others have mentioned, there are current artist's doing great stuff in the tradition. There are also Americana artists that are just as "guilty" of putting out dreck and pandering to the style. I'm exposed to both "current popular" and "Americana" at work on a daily basis and there's good and bad on both stations I hear (The Wolf and The Range). The beauty of recorded music is we have a rich catalog of what we want to hear available to enjoy on our own time. Or we used to; I'm more concerned about bad re-issue's than the current state of any genre!

Just a side question for Jamie. I've been under the impression that Nashville was one of the last places that is actually using real musician's to do track's with no post "Pro-Tools" time/vocal fudging/clean up, but have seen a few post's here to the contrary. I'm sure there's a case by case thing, but generally?

 

The Lamb

http://www.planetgarth.com/chrisgaines/

Be sure and check out Chris's 5 previous albums. Fornucopia looks like a winner.

Sorry Doug.

 

I worked in country radio from 1989 to 1992, per format change. I'm not a fan of the music, but some artists really stood out at that time Verne, Garth, Clint . Mainly the on air requests were what was hot, but many gimmick catch phrase sonds were always popular. I liked playing Wilbury's when I could. Catch phrase country is what I dont care for, any song title that could be put on a shirt. When I fisrt heard Big and Rich, I thought it would be disliked by country fans, but I was wrong.

 

Out of control? I dunno... I'd say the problem was that it was under too much "corporate" control.

 

I worked in country radio in the 1970s and 1980s. My initial stint led me back to investigate country music of the 50s, which quickly became and still is far and away my favorite era...though I liked a great deal of the stuff I played when I was on the air, too (and of course there was schlock alongside the quality stuff...hell, that's true of any genre, in any era you could possibly name).

IMHO, there has never been a time in which popular country music has been as completely formulaic as it is today. There has never been a time in which the music has been so completely inorganic as it is today. Sure, there've always been producers and song peddlers in Nashville, but they coexisted with artists who wrote their own material and had an artistic vision for it. That seems to be in very short supply today.

Finally, there has never been a time when there has been so little distinction between artists as there is today. The songs just seem to be ground out like sausage for the most part, and the bottom line is that, with few exceptions, I don't BELIEVE the people who are singing them.

 

The more I hear them, the more I believe Rascall Flatts is simply a misplaced 80's melodic rock / AOR band.

I've said it before, but if you take away the country twang, and some keyboards and whammy bar, you have Survivor circa 1984. I'm starting to really like these guys.

 

Interesting thread. I got may start in radio back in 82 at a Country station in Raleigh North Carolina and was there for a year. After that I was in and out of Rock radio here in Miami until 2 years ago where I've spent the past 2 years on the air here at 99.9 KISS Country. Even though I own a CD store and sell Country, I never really listened to it until I got back into Country radio. Since I started working at KISS Country it's actually made me enjoy music all over again. I personally don't care for a lot of todays rock and had gotten somewhat tired of listening to all the Classic Rock over and over again.

Today's Country Music in my opinion is or should be todays "POP' music. The proof is in all of the Country Artists who have crossed over to the pop stations. Faith Hill, Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts, Shania Twain and others are just a few of the artists that you can hear on a lot of pop and ac stations. On the other side of the coin Bon Jovi just recently became the first rock act to ever have a number 1 on the Billboard Country charts with Jennifer Nettles of sugarland. Todays Country is NOT the country music of yesteryear as evidenced by todays Rockin Country. Look at Artists like Montgomer Gentry, Kenny Chesney, Van Zant, Toby Keith, Gretchen Wilson and tons more. Kenny Chesney is setting Boxoffice record just about everywhere he plays. Chesney and Rascal Flatts are 2 of the highest grossing concert acts in the US.

It's my observation that a lot of todays Country rocks as much as some stuff classified as pop or rock. Anyone who attends a Rascal Flatts show sees a Country act doing some great pop/country and then turn around and do a rock medley consisting of Bon Jovi/Boston/ACDC/Def Leppard songs and everyone in the crowd loves it. I don't see any problem with Country acts doing some rock covers in todays musical landscape because it fits and works.

Here in South Florida we hold our annual Chili Cookoff every January in a Park and this coming January will be the stations 23rd year. The past 2 years we've averaged 32 to 35,000 people. It's the largest radio station owned concert in South Florida far surpassing the attendance by any of the long running shows put on by a rock station here.

There will always be an ongoing discussion of why Country Music is good or bad with the latter being stated more often then not. Funny thing though, I always tell people to spend 15 minutes listening to KISS Country or let me recommend 15 minutes of todays country music. Almost every time after someone does that, they wind up telling me that they had no idea todays country music sounds the way it does.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion and that's what's great about this forum. If anyone is curious about todays country music, just go to my stations website and spend 15 minutes listening to today's country or while your at the website, listen to our HI DEF sister station which is Gretchen 99.9 which is Outlaw/Rockin country. The website is: http://www.wkis.com

SeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeYa, Bruce

 

We still have a large community of musicians who play live on everything. It's not like the pop world where the producer is also the programmer and songwriter. Here everything is played by a band of 5 to 9 players all at the same time during the tracking session. Overdubs can take place later but for the most part it's all done live. NY and LA were like this in the 70s and 80s but that's kind of over now.

Even thought these musicians here are some of the best in the world they still edit things inside of Pro Tools. It's still the sound of live musicians playing we may just take a fill in chorus one and fly it to chorus two. No biggie.

 

Not a big country music fan, but when I listen I enjoy the old school stuff over the modern, more cross-over type sound. Always been a Kasey Chambers fan. She's straight out of Oz & I do have all her albums. Barricades & Brickwalls is probably my favorite. More recently I've been getting into Deirks (sp) Bentley.

 

IMHO, Nickel Creek is the most brilliant country band out there today. They inject real soul into their material and play what they feel. They're not just some posers in 10-gallon hats and cowboy boots. Their lyrics aren't based around cliches, and the music is more complex than the typical country song on the radio. It's too bad they don't have much more than a cult following.