The appeal of New Country music?

In light of this thread I've read a bunch of articles on Pacific Standard, and it's really light weight stuff making some pretty ludicrous broad claims.

They say "pop" lyrics are "as violent" as those in hip-hop, but they seem to correlate "violence" simply with sex, sexism, "traditional" gender roles, or sexual objectification. None of those things classify as "violence" to me, and sex has played into popular music since the 1950's (at least).

Whereas, I could rattle off a dozen hip-hop songs off the top of my head that explicitly reference or threaten actual violent acts like physical assault, rape, and murder. I can't recall any "pop" songs that do that, then again hip-hop is the most popular genre of music on the planet so maybe that classifies as "pop" these days.

 

These researchers are brilliant. Revealing things no one would ever have known otherwise. They should do a study on why water is 'more wet' than dust.

In this study the definition of violence includes 'microagressions.' So if a pop stars stance, looks, or lyrics contains microaggressions it is deemed violent. So Madonna's appropriation of drag culture was oppressive act.

 

Wow. "© 2019 The Social Justice Foundation".

Isn't copywriting a construct of something or other.

 

It’s a limitation of trying to use sociology in real time, and the site plays too fast and loose with clickbait titles, looking for the “Man Bites Dog” trend instead of analyzing the research cited in depth.

They do have an interesting article on how country and rap are two sides of the same coin in many ways, especially in how they are the two genres most likely to complete the sentence, “I like all music but ______.”

I don’t care for much hip hop or rap, though my son has exposed me to some that I do enjoy. The violent songs in heavy rotation in my music library are all country.

 

Haven't followed your posts. Nice avatar. Anyway, it was just a starting point, that's all. I didn't mention the stuff that shuts a thread down.

 

I had the same curiosity, so I found the original research. It is an interesting read, and it reinforces my take that Pacific Standard is crafting clickbait. All they mean is that violent imagery of some kind is used, with “Hollaback Girl” given as an example. Presumably, “Another One Bites the Dust” would have qualified if it was released in 2006-2016, the time period studied. It looks like the researchers were sampling all genres and comparing them for certain lyrical content.

I wonder what a sociologist will make of looking back on country music in the last decade and realizing the radio artist with the most violent lyrical content has been, by a wide margin, Carrie Underwood.

 

Most folks just listen to what they hear in the media. There was a resurgent interest in Bluegrass following the release of the film Oh Brother Where Art Thou in 2000. People heard it and got into it. Wouldn't have happened without the film. One never knows when these cultural markers will suddenly appear and shake things up a bit. Of course it barely effected the ultra pop country airwaves, but did reverberate around the country music scene as a whole.

 

You will not be surprised to find out that it's just a stage name.

 

O Brother was HUGE, and it was the country music video outlets, particularly CMT, that really goosed its success with genre fans. Radio stayed away from it, as well as from the acts that were lifted up in its wake and sold big numbers, like Alison Krauss and Nickel Creek. Patty Loveless put out a roots album that outsold her previous country album, even though the earlier set had two radio hits and the roots set had none. Dolly Parton had a nice little comeback too, and picked up a pair of Grammys for her troubles. Then the Dixie Chicks came back with a roots album without drums, and sold six million copies of it, thanks to country radio being willing to play it.

It was a fascinating and brief time when country radio could be completely bypassed by country video, and consumers voted with their wallets. There are echoes of it in the Americana scene right now, but no way to get their stuff to listeners in as mass market a way as CMT made possible.

 

The tautologies in your argumentation are simply breathtaking.

 

She was mentioned earlier in the thread, so I’ll observe that there will never be another person more destined by their birth name to carve the path that they did than Madonna.

 

Yep. One sentence buried in the middle of the article. Just as a refresher, here are the two headlines:

• "Country Hits Increasingly Objectify Women and Glorify Whiteness"
• "Pop Music Lyrics Are More Violent Than Those in Hip-Hop"

Read both articles. The second article is nowhere close to being a similar article to the first. If there were such an article, that publication would be the first to be outraged by it.

 

Nice enuff, but not particularly country.

 

I think they’re clickbaity, as I’ve said multiple times in this thread. But perhaps they also give their readers enough credit to be able to read an article from start to finish, especially one that’s only a handful of paragraphs long. I was able to do it in two minutes.

 

My wife and I have heard some wonderful live bluegrass now and then (since we moved to DC in 2011), while traveling around northern Virginia, West Virginia, and western Maryland -- and a little bit here in DC as well. Not often, maybe once or twice a year (at most).

There used to be a non-commercial radio station here in DC (until just very recently) that was 24/7 bluegrass as well. We didn't listen to it a lot, but occasionally on weekends.

And FWIW, I would certainly classify all of these various country-related musics as being way more in line with what I think of (now) as "Americana" -- and certainly nothing even remotely similar to what is marketed as "Country Music" i.e. what pop-country radio plays, and the pop-country music channel on our cable box.

In other words -- at least in terms of modern nomenclature -- "Country Music" has morphed into something at least dominated by a pop sensibility, and attitudes eluded to by the article that spawned this whole thread. And "Americana" seems to include virtually none of the negatives I associate with ('current') "Country Music".

Now maybe some 'current country' is "less bad" than the "worst of the worse" (as is often the case). Maybe some is even a LOT "less bad". Still, there's a ton of guilt by association, to my mind.

If I were a modern country artist today, I certainly wouldn't want to be associated with the 'bro country' nonsense, which seems to have practically spoiled an entire genre of music, far as I'm concerned. At least as far as what most newbies and neophytes are gonna think of when they think of "country" nowadays (meaning for the last 20 years).

Don't make it right, but ask anyone under 40 who doesn't know anything about country music, and that's probably the impression they're gonna have, a lot more often than not.

 

Two minutes? Wow. You're much smarter than me.

 

before this thread gets shut down as a racial argument -

modern country is almost exclusively white, or 100% except for Darius Rucker (thats a JOKE people, an attempt at humor - can I make one here anymore?)

so its easy pickings for social justice warriors to point at it as being racist and then equate racism with this term "whiteness".

However.

Rap is not exclusive in its culture or ethnicity. Plenty of white bois rap and record, plenty of all cultures and ethnic varieties. I've got a collection of Ukranian rap. Its truly a worldwide phenom.

I guess a lot of people still associate rap and hip hop with black culture, they may still be the majority of creators, but I honestly dont know. Lots of people are rapping.

So thats why the website people cannot, nor anyone else, point to rap as an example of "blackness".

 

I love academic inquiry. Are there any serious academic inquiries discussed so far in this thread?

 

I thought it was fantastic too. But I’d never classify it as Country Music. To me that performance was high octane R&B.

 

Yup. Way more Americana, of some sort.

 

I never suggested it was pure country music. Country-tinged, perhaps. Not sure I'd call it R&B either, though. It was a crazy amalgam of country, R&B, and free-jazz -- more like it.

 

Come on that's not Country Music, some fantastic things out there and you'll find it tends to subverts Country memes in a positive way.

Too many, but Ashley Monroe mines old Country on her Like A Rose album.

 

I’m gonna go spin my copy of Paul’s Boutique. Thanks for reminding me.

 

As someone who's been a country music fan for forty years or more, I can't separate the term Country from the trad stuff. And I know about Alt Country 'cos I've played that stuff myself. Americana is a term I don't quite know how to place. It's very vague to me.

 

I get it, but you basically make my argument for me. If what you say is true (that country is almost exclusively white), and it is widely accepted and known, then why would you call it out for "glorifying whiteness"? It's like calling out reggae music for "glorifying Jamaicans".

The truth is, the occasional white act aside, rap and hip hop are still predominately black and there's no way in hell any liberal "news" site would dare write an article calling out rap for glorifying blackness. White leftists writing about bad white people is virtue signaling at its finest.