What does it mean, Country Music, and why does it all sound the same
July 20, 2023 9:52 AM Subscribe
In the New Yorker:
Country music's Culture Wars and the remaking of Nashville. All about Music Row vs. what they're now labeling Americana, and more. Is Nashville Music Row anything other than "bro country, slick, hollow songs about trucks and beer, sung by interchangeable white hunks"?
(archive link)
From the article:
Slate swam in these same waters, back in 2015: America’s ongoing struggle to come to terms with Southern white, working-class identity.
(archive link)
From the article:
The genre [of Country Music] had started, in the early twentieth century, as a multiethnic product of the rural South, merging the sounds of the Irish fiddle, the Mexican guitar, and the African banjo. Then, in the early twenties, Nashville radio producers split that music into twin brands: race records, marketed to Black listeners (which became rhythm and blues and, later, rock and roll), and 'hillbilly music,' which became country-and-Western.My parents reminded me of how I recognized some differences, early on -- as a small boy in the early 1960s, I classified the Country music we'd hear on the radio while driving into Types A and B: one, the slower, hillbilly twang (plus the strings-heavy ballads popular then, like Ray Charles' Modern Sounds in C&W Music), which I disliked, and the more up-tempo sounds of bluegrass and even the new Bakersfield sound (ancient history a few years later, by the time we were viewing Buck Owens on 'Hee-Haw'). Nowadays the divide is apparently between mainstream Country and anything else, called Americana (a term I associate with The Band and pre-Jazz old-time stuff I characterize as R.Crumb music).
Slate swam in these same waters, back in 2015: America’s ongoing struggle to come to terms with Southern white, working-class identity.
Forgot the girls in short shorts part of bro country. It's the Eagles, but way, way shittier and shallow with 100 times the posturing.
(I'm decidedly on the Americana side of the fence)
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:07 AM on July 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
(I'm decidedly on the Americana side of the fence)
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:07 AM on July 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
"sung by interchangeable white hu[s]ks"
posted by riverlife at 10:11 AM on July 20, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by riverlife at 10:11 AM on July 20, 2023 [19 favorites]
Where do you place the 'women singing about how much they hate their men/already shot or divorced their men' genre of country?
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 10:20 AM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 10:20 AM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
This was a really great article, thanks for sharing it. I have been hanging around on the Americana side of the fence, but not really sure what the territory looked like around it, and this gave me a good sense of what it looks like.
posted by PussKillian at 10:25 AM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by PussKillian at 10:25 AM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Fuck Southern White Identity. And I lived as a white guy in the South. It's encoded racism all the way down. Listen to this summer's new hit, "Try that in a Small Town." Which I refuse to link.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:31 AM on July 20, 2023 [40 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:31 AM on July 20, 2023 [40 favorites]
this summer's new hit, "Try that in a Small Town."
That song is like Dead Milkmen's "Tiny Town" but sincere
posted by credulous at 10:36 AM on July 20, 2023 [20 favorites]
That song is like Dead Milkmen's "Tiny Town" but sincere
posted by credulous at 10:36 AM on July 20, 2023 [20 favorites]
Dirt road, a cold beer // Blue jeans, a red pickup // Rural noun, simple adjective
See also, How to be country! by Steve Travis--err Terreberry.
posted by dirigibleman at 10:40 AM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
See also, How to be country! by Steve Travis--err Terreberry.
posted by dirigibleman at 10:40 AM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
@shannonrwatts: @Jason_Aldean - who was on-stage during the mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert in 2017 that killed 60 people and wounded over 400 more - has recorded a song called “Try That In A Small Town” about how he and his friends will shoot you if you try to take their guns.posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:42 AM on July 20, 2023 [23 favorites]
Yeah the small town song is song is gross as well as the national republican’s parties anti-urban bias (aka as racism).
For those into the “Americana” side of things I recomend digging deep into the Old Crow Medicine Show Catalogue. Their 2022 album has a ston about removing the stars and bars from the Mississippi flag and the environmental destruction of strip minning coal in Appalachia
posted by CostcoCultist at 10:49 AM on July 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
For those into the “Americana” side of things I recomend digging deep into the Old Crow Medicine Show Catalogue. Their 2022 album has a ston about removing the stars and bars from the Mississippi flag and the environmental destruction of strip minning coal in Appalachia
posted by CostcoCultist at 10:49 AM on July 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
HypotheticalWoman: "Where do you place the 'women singing about how much they hate their men/already shot or divorced their men' genre of country?"
Murder ballad.
posted by adamrice at 11:00 AM on July 20, 2023 [18 favorites]
Murder ballad.
posted by adamrice at 11:00 AM on July 20, 2023 [18 favorites]
I never really know how to classify one of my favorite bands, Carbon Leaf. They're front porch rock and roll with a celtic bend, is the best I can sum them up. Americana would also work, I guess. They've only had one minor hit, but they've been a non-stop touring band for maybe 20 years now, and I wish more people knew about them because they're super talented and write great songs.
Much of my favorite music leans more toward "Americana" as a very broad umbrella term. Indigo Girls would also fit neatly in there, most of the "women with guitars" era that I love is in there. Brandi Carlyle is a daughter of that generation and she's firmly in that camp.
posted by hippybear at 11:01 AM on July 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
Much of my favorite music leans more toward "Americana" as a very broad umbrella term. Indigo Girls would also fit neatly in there, most of the "women with guitars" era that I love is in there. Brandi Carlyle is a daughter of that generation and she's firmly in that camp.
posted by hippybear at 11:01 AM on July 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
Country rockabilly palate cleanser from The Starkweathers: Burn The Flag
posted by riverlife at 11:02 AM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by riverlife at 11:02 AM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Listen to this summer's new hit, "Try that in a Small Town."
posted by Rykey at 11:03 AM on July 20, 2023 [47 favorites]
Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalkHaving grown up in a semi-rural area, I can attest that except for the flag bit, those other transgressions are totally in line with small-town crime. Sorry Jason.
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya like
Cuss out a cop, spit in his face
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you're tough
Well, try that in a small town
posted by Rykey at 11:03 AM on July 20, 2023 [47 favorites]
I think it’s basically asserting that as the victim of a mass shooting he would really prefer that only he gets to be the mass shooter, a common Republican attitude.
posted by Artw at 11:07 AM on July 20, 2023 [42 favorites]
posted by Artw at 11:07 AM on July 20, 2023 [42 favorites]
Jason_Aldean - who was on-stage during the mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert in 2017 that killed 60 people and wounded over 400 more - has recorded a song called “Try That In A Small Town” about how he and his friends will shoot you if you try to take their guns.
If I were Fat Mike I'd be fucking pissed!
posted by East14thTaco at 11:08 AM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
If I were Fat Mike I'd be fucking pissed!
posted by East14thTaco at 11:08 AM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Having grown up in a semi-rural area, I can attest that except for the flag bit, those other transgressions are totally in line with small-town crime.
Hell, I've lived in the big bad city most of my life and I've never even seen a good old fashioned flag burning.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:13 AM on July 20, 2023 [14 favorites]
Hell, I've lived in the big bad city most of my life and I've never even seen a good old fashioned flag burning.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:13 AM on July 20, 2023 [14 favorites]
The timing here is great. I’ve been listening to several of the artists mentioned, especially Isbell and Childers, and their music is so damn good.
Recently, I put on a couple of tunes and was given looks of disgust and an ask to change the music from friends who are, like me, very left. I took some time to patiently explain how their music and focus was on carving a very different path from the Aldean / Nashville machine sound, but that wasn’t really welcomed.
I may send this article as a follow-up.
If you haven’t seen it, I’d also recommend you watch Harlan County USA for perspective on real class consciousness that does serve as a historical backdrop for many parts of Appalachia.
I’m tired of the “let’s talk to these Trump voters” narrative that is returning in some of my media circles. We need more “here are people who have a liberal / left ideology in rural America” stories to highlight there are opportunities to connect with people who have been systematically taken advantage of by large corporations, red state legislatures that are ineffective and local corruption that isn’t reported on by national media.
posted by glaucon at 11:15 AM on July 20, 2023 [39 favorites]
Recently, I put on a couple of tunes and was given looks of disgust and an ask to change the music from friends who are, like me, very left. I took some time to patiently explain how their music and focus was on carving a very different path from the Aldean / Nashville machine sound, but that wasn’t really welcomed.
I may send this article as a follow-up.
If you haven’t seen it, I’d also recommend you watch Harlan County USA for perspective on real class consciousness that does serve as a historical backdrop for many parts of Appalachia.
I’m tired of the “let’s talk to these Trump voters” narrative that is returning in some of my media circles. We need more “here are people who have a liberal / left ideology in rural America” stories to highlight there are opportunities to connect with people who have been systematically taken advantage of by large corporations, red state legislatures that are ineffective and local corruption that isn’t reported on by national media.
posted by glaucon at 11:15 AM on July 20, 2023 [39 favorites]
My teenage daughter has been getting into country music semi-ironically lately, and we have fun playing Country Lyrics Bingo in the car.
Dirt road!
Large vehicle!
Small town!
Randomly appearing country accent!
Pre-industrial chore or property maintenance!
posted by gottabefunky at 11:18 AM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
Dirt road!
Large vehicle!
Small town!
Randomly appearing country accent!
Pre-industrial chore or property maintenance!
posted by gottabefunky at 11:18 AM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
Re: bro country, I can't help but think of the delightfully snobbish Bob Newhart quote "I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.
Just saw Tami Neilson (rootsy country singer from New Zealand) and she was stellar...
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 11:18 AM on July 20, 2023 [34 favorites]
Just saw Tami Neilson (rootsy country singer from New Zealand) and she was stellar...
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 11:18 AM on July 20, 2023 [34 favorites]
A couple of my older kids like country music. I don't mind Country as a genre, but I do object to the shitty people who are the fellow travelers of many of these musicians, and I simply hate the overtly racist performers.
My kids don't seem to be troubled as much as I am by this. Maybe they can separate the art from the artist -- or the slur from the song -- but I want to see the worst ones Find Out.
The "Ninebullets Radio" podcast was all-Americana show, and I heard so many great things that blew my mind -- but the creator decided to hang it up a while back and there's no new shows any more. :7( Here's a link to threads about the episodes on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/altcountry/search?q=ninebullets&restrict_sr=on
posted by wenestvedt at 11:19 AM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
My kids don't seem to be troubled as much as I am by this. Maybe they can separate the art from the artist -- or the slur from the song -- but I want to see the worst ones Find Out.
The "Ninebullets Radio" podcast was all-Americana show, and I heard so many great things that blew my mind -- but the creator decided to hang it up a while back and there's no new shows any more. :7( Here's a link to threads about the episodes on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/altcountry/search?q=ninebullets&restrict_sr=on
posted by wenestvedt at 11:19 AM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
One of the better country albums of the 1980s is by an Englishman.
posted by chavenet at 11:25 AM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 11:25 AM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Is Nashville Music Row anything other than "bro country, slick, hollow songs about trucks and beer, sung by interchangeable white hunks"?
No. The answer is no.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 11:26 AM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
No. The answer is no.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 11:26 AM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
I now cannot find it but a parody/response to Try That in a Small Town came across my feeds yesterday, from the Big City perspective that basically went, "Carry a gun around, yelling about your rights/ go ahead and try that in a small town/ because in the Big City we're too busy and traffic's bad and we don't give a fuck what you're on about."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:27 AM on July 20, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:27 AM on July 20, 2023 [15 favorites]
Where do you place the 'women singing about how much they hate their men/already shot or divorced their men' genre of country?
Like adamrice said, that (or at least the latter case of that) falls nicely into the long tradition of murder ballads, except generally inverting the typical gender roles of older murder ballads. Carrie Underwood has had at least a couple good ones in that vein, which I appreciate when I end up putting on pop country now and then for being a nice callback to older less sanitized traditional country in between trucks-and-beers-and-smalltown-girls schlock with the perfunctory "and God bless our troops" references in the bridge.
When I was a snot-nosed kid I went through a "country sucks" phase mostly uninformed by anything other than a vague sense that it was corny and anti-rock. Thirty years of listening to and playing all kinds of music and getting to understand more about the cultural history of a lot of American music in particular, I think a lot of country is really great and some of it especially historically is pretty problematic and some of that overlaps, and that really the pop country industry specifically is what sucks. And it sucks real hard.
posted by cortex at 11:29 AM on July 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
Like adamrice said, that (or at least the latter case of that) falls nicely into the long tradition of murder ballads, except generally inverting the typical gender roles of older murder ballads. Carrie Underwood has had at least a couple good ones in that vein, which I appreciate when I end up putting on pop country now and then for being a nice callback to older less sanitized traditional country in between trucks-and-beers-and-smalltown-girls schlock with the perfunctory "and God bless our troops" references in the bridge.
When I was a snot-nosed kid I went through a "country sucks" phase mostly uninformed by anything other than a vague sense that it was corny and anti-rock. Thirty years of listening to and playing all kinds of music and getting to understand more about the cultural history of a lot of American music in particular, I think a lot of country is really great and some of it especially historically is pretty problematic and some of that overlaps, and that really the pop country industry specifically is what sucks. And it sucks real hard.
posted by cortex at 11:29 AM on July 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
Where do you place the 'women singing about how much they hate their men/already shot or divorced their men' genre of country?
They are pop/contemporary stations because women country singers don't get airplay.
posted by muddgirl at 11:30 AM on July 20, 2023 [14 favorites]
They are pop/contemporary stations because women country singers don't get airplay.
posted by muddgirl at 11:30 AM on July 20, 2023 [14 favorites]
One of the stupidest things about Aldean's song is that he grew up in Macon, the 3rd largest city in Georgia.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 11:31 AM on July 20, 2023 [23 favorites]
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 11:31 AM on July 20, 2023 [23 favorites]
One of the better country albums of the 1980s is by an Englishman.
Elvis is the perfect staging ground for this conversation, for I far prefer the brooding Americana of King of America over Almost Blue ... which can't quite shake its affectation enough for me, despite Mr. McManus's reverent sincerity. (Fast forward a bit and you'll get to his next great Americana album, The Delivery Man, which is the most brazen affirmation of his songcraft of the last two decades).
posted by mykescipark at 11:32 AM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Elvis is the perfect staging ground for this conversation, for I far prefer the brooding Americana of King of America over Almost Blue ... which can't quite shake its affectation enough for me, despite Mr. McManus's reverent sincerity. (Fast forward a bit and you'll get to his next great Americana album, The Delivery Man, which is the most brazen affirmation of his songcraft of the last two decades).
posted by mykescipark at 11:32 AM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Reminds me of the old joke "Why was country music better before 9/11? Well, it's hard to sing with a boot in your mouth."
posted by entropone at 11:38 AM on July 20, 2023 [20 favorites]
posted by entropone at 11:38 AM on July 20, 2023 [20 favorites]
Oh he's from Macon? The place where I witnessed a parking lot shootout in the 90s?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:39 AM on July 20, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:39 AM on July 20, 2023 [12 favorites]
I never really know how to classify one of my favorite bands, Carbon Leaf. They're front porch rock and roll with a celtic bend, is the best I can sum them up.
My sister got me into Carbon Leaf. I always put them somewhere in a folk category (although they've gotten more poppy as they've gone on), but that may have been because I learned about Great Big Sea at the same time.
One of my favorites is a duo named Honey Honey, and I think about them as pretty straight-up Americana...I think. I don't know where I'd put them if not there.
posted by PussKillian at 11:46 AM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
My sister got me into Carbon Leaf. I always put them somewhere in a folk category (although they've gotten more poppy as they've gone on), but that may have been because I learned about Great Big Sea at the same time.
One of my favorites is a duo named Honey Honey, and I think about them as pretty straight-up Americana...I think. I don't know where I'd put them if not there.
posted by PussKillian at 11:46 AM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
I hadn't even heard of this Aldean guy until I read this Variety review of that small town song. He sounds like a piece of work.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:47 AM on July 20, 2023
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:47 AM on July 20, 2023
Things to Try In A Small Town (with apologies to McSweeney's)
1. The philharmonic.
2. Public transportation.
3. Top-flight medical care.
4. University extension courses.
5. Food from a culture you've never experienced before.
6. Pizza that doesn't suck.
7. Asking for directions without being interrogated for who you are and why you're going somewhere.
8. Complaining about how the lousy the abundant municipal services are that you get in exchange for paying taxes.
9. The clean air
10. Being different than everyone else
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:47 AM on July 20, 2023 [30 favorites]
1. The philharmonic.
2. Public transportation.
3. Top-flight medical care.
4. University extension courses.
5. Food from a culture you've never experienced before.
6. Pizza that doesn't suck.
7. Asking for directions without being interrogated for who you are and why you're going somewhere.
8. Complaining about how the lousy the abundant municipal services are that you get in exchange for paying taxes.
9. The clean air
10. Being different than everyone else
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:47 AM on July 20, 2023 [30 favorites]
I don’t care for country (probably comes from growing up as an outsider in Alabama in the 90s) but damn if there aren’t a couple of white dudes (give or take) doing it right: Orville Peck, Trixie Mattel, Sturgill Simpson (the latter I can’t believe isn’t mentioned at least in passing as a counter example).
posted by supercres at 11:48 AM on July 20, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by supercres at 11:48 AM on July 20, 2023 [15 favorites]
I hadn't even heard of this Aldean guy
Me neither, but seeing that picture, he looks like the kind of guy Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson would have beat up in the parking lot.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:57 AM on July 20, 2023 [18 favorites]
Me neither, but seeing that picture, he looks like the kind of guy Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson would have beat up in the parking lot.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:57 AM on July 20, 2023 [18 favorites]
"Where do you place the 'women singing about how much they hate their men/already shot or divorced their men' genre of country?"
Obligatory Goodbye Earl by the Dixie Chicks. Their 2003 denunciation of Bush and the drive to an Iraq invasion that would happen the next week, resulting in massive country audience backlash and blacklisting by thousands of country radio station that devastated their sales, remains more punk than anything almost any punk band ever did.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:59 AM on July 20, 2023 [28 favorites]
Obligatory Goodbye Earl by the Dixie Chicks. Their 2003 denunciation of Bush and the drive to an Iraq invasion that would happen the next week, resulting in massive country audience backlash and blacklisting by thousands of country radio station that devastated their sales, remains more punk than anything almost any punk band ever did.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:59 AM on July 20, 2023 [28 favorites]
After listening to the song, I think Aldean might mean a Sundown Town instead of small town.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:59 AM on July 20, 2023 [34 favorites]
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:59 AM on July 20, 2023 [34 favorites]
Far as I can tell country music is an in-group signifier. If you listen to it, you're a Certain Kind of person, and it's important to relate that fact publicly to others in that group. Otherwise you will get Some Shit.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:00 PM on July 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:00 PM on July 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
When I did comedy, I had a country music character.
I can count on my fingers,
I can count on my toes,
but I cannot count on your love.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:01 PM on July 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
I can count on my fingers,
I can count on my toes,
but I cannot count on your love.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:01 PM on July 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
Aldean's song isn't particularly deep or creative in any way. But it somehow needed four songwriters to come up with it. I've heard that there's four other uncredited songwriters who helped massage it.
That one little detail makes this whole thing even wilder to contemplate. This isn't just one racist country singer acting alone in writing/recording/performing an openly racist song; The song is merely a product of an industrial process overseen by no less than 8 professional songwriters and producers, none of whom stopped at any point to put down their songwriting pencils/pull off their recording booth headphones and say "whoa that's pretty fucked up and racist, let's not do this."
At a certain point, we have to consider that modern commercial country music is little more than a white nationalist pop machine.
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:02 PM on July 20, 2023 [35 favorites]
That one little detail makes this whole thing even wilder to contemplate. This isn't just one racist country singer acting alone in writing/recording/performing an openly racist song; The song is merely a product of an industrial process overseen by no less than 8 professional songwriters and producers, none of whom stopped at any point to put down their songwriting pencils/pull off their recording booth headphones and say "whoa that's pretty fucked up and racist, let's not do this."
At a certain point, we have to consider that modern commercial country music is little more than a white nationalist pop machine.
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:02 PM on July 20, 2023 [35 favorites]
Hell, I've lived in the big bad city most of my life and I've never even seen a good old fashioned flag burning.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
posted by Panjandrum at 12:02 PM on July 20, 2023 [29 favorites]
Be the change you want to see in the world.
posted by Panjandrum at 12:02 PM on July 20, 2023 [29 favorites]
I've heard that there's four other uncredited songwriters who helped massage it.
According to the Variety article I linked to above, the credited writers are - Kurt Allison, Tully Kennedy, Kelley Lovelace and Neil Thrasher.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:06 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
According to the Variety article I linked to above, the credited writers are - Kurt Allison, Tully Kennedy, Kelley Lovelace and Neil Thrasher.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:06 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
At a certain point, we have to consider that modern commercial country music is little more than a white nationalist pop machine.
I was thinking about turbofolk the other day, the kitschy folk music of Serbian Nationalists, and how the aesthetic of American fascism has wound up taking a very similar trajectory.
posted by Artw at 12:08 PM on July 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
I was thinking about turbofolk the other day, the kitschy folk music of Serbian Nationalists, and how the aesthetic of American fascism has wound up taking a very similar trajectory.
posted by Artw at 12:08 PM on July 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
Obligatory Goodbye Earl by the Dixie Chicks.
They're not even the Dixie Chicks anymore, just The Chicks, because they did the right thing and chose not to continue to honor the legacies of enslavers and traitors.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 12:18 PM on July 20, 2023 [41 favorites]
They're not even the Dixie Chicks anymore, just The Chicks, because they did the right thing and chose not to continue to honor the legacies of enslavers and traitors.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 12:18 PM on July 20, 2023 [41 favorites]
I was thinking about turbofolk the other day, the kitschy folk music of Serbian Nationalists, and how the aesthetic of American fascism has wound up taking a very similar trajectory.
I was vaguely aware of this genre, although I didn't know what it was called. Now I'm kind of sad it's nazi music, because how fucking cool is that genre name?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:24 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was vaguely aware of this genre, although I didn't know what it was called. Now I'm kind of sad it's nazi music, because how fucking cool is that genre name?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:24 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
We need more “here are people who have a liberal / left ideology in rural America” stories
The Starkweathers have you covered (countering my previous comment re flag desecration).
posted by Rykey at 12:30 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
The Starkweathers have you covered (countering my previous comment re flag desecration).
posted by Rykey at 12:30 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
i like country music(doesn't matter what country) and i like western music but i don't care for Country and Western music.
posted by wmo at 12:33 PM on July 20, 2023
posted by wmo at 12:33 PM on July 20, 2023
Mod note: One comment deleted. Name calling goes against our Content Policy.
posted by loup (staff) at 12:36 PM on July 20, 2023
posted by loup (staff) at 12:36 PM on July 20, 2023
"i like country music(doesn't matter what country) and i like western music but i don't care for Country and Western music."
"Country and Western music" isn't one thing — it's two: "country" music, and "western" music. (see the joke in the blues brothers that's not really a joke where the bar owner where they play behind chicken wire tells Jake and Elwood that they like both kinds of music there: country and western.)
“Western“ is stuff like Bob Wills, which is fantastic, and completely unrelated to modern "country music."
posted by jonathanhughes at 12:40 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
"Country and Western music" isn't one thing — it's two: "country" music, and "western" music. (see the joke in the blues brothers that's not really a joke where the bar owner where they play behind chicken wire tells Jake and Elwood that they like both kinds of music there: country and western.)
“Western“ is stuff like Bob Wills, which is fantastic, and completely unrelated to modern "country music."
posted by jonathanhughes at 12:40 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Where do you place the 'women singing about how much they hate their men/already shot or divorced their men' genre of country?
Back in 2014, zeusian fog made a wonderful post titled Feminism & Country Music, a Primer.
I was shocked that it didn’t make the sidebar.
posted by jamjam at 12:41 PM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
Back in 2014, zeusian fog made a wonderful post titled Feminism & Country Music, a Primer.
I was shocked that it didn’t make the sidebar.
posted by jamjam at 12:41 PM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
“Western“ is stuff like Bob Wills, which is fantastic, and completely unrelated to modern "country music"
Yeah I for one really miss the cowboy music. Still hear Gene Autry at Christmastime, however; and Roy Rogers in 'The Big Lebowski' is kinda spine-tingling.
posted by Rash at 12:54 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Yeah I for one really miss the cowboy music. Still hear Gene Autry at Christmastime, however; and Roy Rogers in 'The Big Lebowski' is kinda spine-tingling.
posted by Rash at 12:54 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
“Country music” applies to a lot of things, and one of them is a bunch of music that’s great just as one of them is a locus of aesthetics that overlaps with thin blue line flags, people growing up in cities then desiring to base their personality around a pick up truck and black rifle coffee.
posted by Artw at 1:07 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Artw at 1:07 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I have many problems with the small-town / rural-life boosterism prevalent in a lot of commercial country but the most immediate is that I find a great deal of it unbearably cringe-inducing in the implied insecurity it clearly assumes from its audience. It doesn't come across, to me at least, as speaking convincingly about the virtues of the places and practices described. Far from it, in some cases - a lot of it reeks of "if I say this often enough I'll begin to believe it" and not much more.
In some ways I find it similar to modern Christian "Praise Music", which I personally find overwhelmingly insipid, inauthentic, and unconvincing. The history of music has countless songs that beautifully and movingly describe spiritual matters and then.. there's an entire genre of "Our God is a mighty god, mighty, mighty, awesome, mighty.." The factory-extruded bullshit is usually so awful that (for me, at least, clearly someone likes this stuff for what it is) it diminishes the very subject it sets out to praise.
The same is true for commercial country music's celebration of (a highly-selective and not necessarily representative set of) small-town values. I live in a town with 8,000 in the town itself with maybe another 5-6,000 on the outskirts. If you totaled up every living soul you probably would be hard pressed to find 20,000 people within 50 miles of me (except when the summer tourists are here.) I'm not sure if that's a small town or not - we're a weird case, being, among other things, a commercial and transportation hub for a very sparsely populated region - but it's a lot smaller than any of the places Jason Aldean has lived in his life. (I will, however, grant that we don't have a lot of tractors.) In any case.. the songs I hear on country music stations mostly just make me embarrassed. I'm pretty sure it's something lacking in the songs because I'm quite aware that a well-written song about the special connection one can feel to a small place is capable of moving me to tears.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:13 PM on July 20, 2023 [20 favorites]
In some ways I find it similar to modern Christian "Praise Music", which I personally find overwhelmingly insipid, inauthentic, and unconvincing. The history of music has countless songs that beautifully and movingly describe spiritual matters and then.. there's an entire genre of "Our God is a mighty god, mighty, mighty, awesome, mighty.." The factory-extruded bullshit is usually so awful that (for me, at least, clearly someone likes this stuff for what it is) it diminishes the very subject it sets out to praise.
The same is true for commercial country music's celebration of (a highly-selective and not necessarily representative set of) small-town values. I live in a town with 8,000 in the town itself with maybe another 5-6,000 on the outskirts. If you totaled up every living soul you probably would be hard pressed to find 20,000 people within 50 miles of me (except when the summer tourists are here.) I'm not sure if that's a small town or not - we're a weird case, being, among other things, a commercial and transportation hub for a very sparsely populated region - but it's a lot smaller than any of the places Jason Aldean has lived in his life. (I will, however, grant that we don't have a lot of tractors.) In any case.. the songs I hear on country music stations mostly just make me embarrassed. I'm pretty sure it's something lacking in the songs because I'm quite aware that a well-written song about the special connection one can feel to a small place is capable of moving me to tears.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:13 PM on July 20, 2023 [20 favorites]
Elvis is the perfect staging ground for this conversation, for I far prefer the brooding Americana of King of America over Almost Blue ... which can't quite shake its affectation enough for me, despite Mr. McManus's reverent sincerity.
Hard agree. King of America is the album I have probably listened to most in my life.
But "Almost Blue" is a gateway to some of the very best, every song EC covered leads to an original artist for whom their whole catalog is worthy.
posted by chavenet at 1:16 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hard agree. King of America is the album I have probably listened to most in my life.
But "Almost Blue" is a gateway to some of the very best, every song EC covered leads to an original artist for whom their whole catalog is worthy.
posted by chavenet at 1:16 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
To be fair to the Praise Music thing, they're literally recreating what they've been told God will require of them in heaven, which is bowing down before him repeating constantly how amazing he is.
I think this is a really weird vision of the afterlife, but it's literally what is there in the prophesy scriptures. So they're just "creating on earth what will be in heaven" with these songs.
posted by hippybear at 1:18 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think this is a really weird vision of the afterlife, but it's literally what is there in the prophesy scriptures. So they're just "creating on earth what will be in heaven" with these songs.
posted by hippybear at 1:18 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
I heard that "small town" song and said aloud, "You know what you CAN do in a small town? Call yourself a 'pastor' and rape teenage girls and it'll be their fault!"
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 1:24 PM on July 20, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 1:24 PM on July 20, 2023 [15 favorites]
Garrett Bucks (founder of The Barnraisers Project) uses his Substack to clue Aldean in on Things You Can Try In A Small Town.
posted by soundguy99 at 1:39 PM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by soundguy99 at 1:39 PM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
I grew up in a very small town, and now live in a larger small town. Even as a kid it seemed to me that country music was dual purpose propaganda - stir up nostalgia in adults about those two cookouts they actually enjoyed when they were younger, and convince kids that staying is better than leaving the instant you turn eighteen.
posted by Vigilant at 1:41 PM on July 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by Vigilant at 1:41 PM on July 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
I would like to heartily recommend these Americana-or-adjacent musical acts that are either women-led or (in two cases) led by a wife and husband duo:
Brandi Carlile
Lucinda Williams
Neko Case
Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway
Larkin Poe
Tedeschi Trucks Band
Amanda Shires
Big Richard
and last but not least, one of my favorite musical acts out there right now, please do yourself a favor and check out:
Shovels & Rope
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 1:52 PM on July 20, 2023 [29 favorites]
Brandi Carlile
Lucinda Williams
Neko Case
Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway
Larkin Poe
Tedeschi Trucks Band
Amanda Shires
Big Richard
and last but not least, one of my favorite musical acts out there right now, please do yourself a favor and check out:
Shovels & Rope
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 1:52 PM on July 20, 2023 [29 favorites]
A linkfest for those who would like more context/Americana alternatives:
The Black vanguard in white utopias: Country music speaks to white sentimentality, but Black women pioneer ‘and continue to pioneer’ By Tressie McMillan Cottom (Andscape)
A much better Jason, singing about bigotry and racism as part of small-town life (musical interlude): Cast Iron Skillet
Because Jason Isbell Is Tired Of Country’s Love Affair With White Nostalgia. “I think it’s possible to acknowledge that you have benefited from a system that’s unequal without feeling shame or even guilt from it.” Elamin Abdelmahmoud, for Buzzfeed
Meet the Black Female Artists Reshaping Country Music. Get to know the work of Reyna Roberts, Adia Victoria, Brittney Spencer, DeLila Black and more. Marcus K. Dowling, Nashville Scene
Modern Sounds at the Mother Church (musical interlude, from me)
And a really excellent podcast with discussion between Isbell and the amazing Adia Victoria (Fanfare, from me): Call & Response: Jason Isbell: To Love (Is To Criticize) (S2, Ep. 2)
My son--raised as he was on Guy Clark and Steve Earle--is working bro country concerts and is appalled by the music purporting to describe and prescribe his experience as a young white man in rural America. This gives me hope.
As Adia Victoria says... South Gotta Change.
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:53 PM on July 20, 2023 [18 favorites]
The Black vanguard in white utopias: Country music speaks to white sentimentality, but Black women pioneer ‘and continue to pioneer’ By Tressie McMillan Cottom (Andscape)
A much better Jason, singing about bigotry and racism as part of small-town life (musical interlude): Cast Iron Skillet
Because Jason Isbell Is Tired Of Country’s Love Affair With White Nostalgia. “I think it’s possible to acknowledge that you have benefited from a system that’s unequal without feeling shame or even guilt from it.” Elamin Abdelmahmoud, for Buzzfeed
Meet the Black Female Artists Reshaping Country Music. Get to know the work of Reyna Roberts, Adia Victoria, Brittney Spencer, DeLila Black and more. Marcus K. Dowling, Nashville Scene
Modern Sounds at the Mother Church (musical interlude, from me)
And a really excellent podcast with discussion between Isbell and the amazing Adia Victoria (Fanfare, from me): Call & Response: Jason Isbell: To Love (Is To Criticize) (S2, Ep. 2)
My son--raised as he was on Guy Clark and Steve Earle--is working bro country concerts and is appalled by the music purporting to describe and prescribe his experience as a young white man in rural America. This gives me hope.
As Adia Victoria says... South Gotta Change.
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:53 PM on July 20, 2023 [18 favorites]
Have to wonder what fellow "small towner" Artist Formerly Known as Johnny Cougar thinks of Aldean and his ilk.
posted by gtrwolf at 2:01 PM on July 20, 2023
posted by gtrwolf at 2:01 PM on July 20, 2023
Also, I can't believe all these jokes about stereotypical country lyrics and no one's mentioned You Never Even Called Me by My Name by David Allan Coe:
Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prisonposted by star gentle uterus at 2:18 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got run over by a damned old train
I have many problems with the small-town / rural-life boosterism prevalent in a lot of commercial country but the most immediate is that I find a great deal of it unbearably cringe-inducing in the implied insecurity it clearly assumes from its audience. It doesn't come across, to me at least, as speaking convincingly about the virtues of the places and practices described. Far from it, in some cases - a lot of it reeks of "if I say this often enough I'll begin to believe it" and not much more.
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:13 PM on 7/20
Right on. It seems a lot of that isn’t even written for small town America. It’s so right leaning people in suburbs in red and purple states can pretend they are rural small town America.
posted by glaucon at 2:20 PM on July 20, 2023 [23 favorites]
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:13 PM on 7/20
Right on. It seems a lot of that isn’t even written for small town America. It’s so right leaning people in suburbs in red and purple states can pretend they are rural small town America.
posted by glaucon at 2:20 PM on July 20, 2023 [23 favorites]
Have to wonder what fellow "small towner" Artist Formerly Known as Johnny Cougar thinks of Aldean and his ilk.
I'm not 100% sure, but I vaguely recall a portion of a John Mellencamp documentary (Trouble in Mind maybe?) where the crew went to (maybe?) Waylon Jennings's home town, and found it a sad hulk of a failed downtown, and sad that the locals didn't celebrate their own home very much.
I think this stuff is par for the course in pop country music. Even pop-darling Taylor Swift had to go re-record some of her older lyrics to be less offensive, well some of them. She left in the veiled threats of vigilante death, because those are still fine.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:22 PM on July 20, 2023
It’s so right leaning people in suburbs in red and purple states can pretend they are rural small town America.
Came to say this...this is as good a summary as I could've come up with.
posted by gimonca at 2:30 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Came to say this...this is as good a summary as I could've come up with.
posted by gimonca at 2:30 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Taylor Swift is re-recording her albums in order to have masters that she has control over rather than her record company. I'm sure any lyrical revisions are secondary to this money-driven project.
posted by hippybear at 2:32 PM on July 20, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 2:32 PM on July 20, 2023 [12 favorites]
Adding to slappy_pinchbottom's excellent list:
Ray Wylie Hubbard/ Snake Farm
James McMurtry (who performed in a dress in Tennessee)/ Choctaw Bingo
The Mavericks/Ven Hacia Mi
Margo Price/Change of Heart
Sturgill Simpson/Tiny Desk Concert
Tyler Childers/The Old Country Church and Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven
Darrell Scott/You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive
Charley Crockett/Tiny Desk Concert
Plus all of the artists mentioned in the articles I linked above!
Star gentle uterus, I know Coe's version best, but I recently learned that John Prine (rest in peace) wrote it with Steve Goodman! My kid was working a bad bro country show and we played texting bingo with trucks, Mama, trains, and prison (also dirt, boots, girls, and beer).
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:35 PM on July 20, 2023 [13 favorites]
Ray Wylie Hubbard/ Snake Farm
James McMurtry (who performed in a dress in Tennessee)/ Choctaw Bingo
The Mavericks/Ven Hacia Mi
Margo Price/Change of Heart
Sturgill Simpson/Tiny Desk Concert
Tyler Childers/The Old Country Church and Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven
Darrell Scott/You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive
Charley Crockett/Tiny Desk Concert
Plus all of the artists mentioned in the articles I linked above!
Star gentle uterus, I know Coe's version best, but I recently learned that John Prine (rest in peace) wrote it with Steve Goodman! My kid was working a bad bro country show and we played texting bingo with trucks, Mama, trains, and prison (also dirt, boots, girls, and beer).
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:35 PM on July 20, 2023 [13 favorites]
It's funny to think that this is yet another piece of the very, very long through line of "rural vs urban" debate in American politics. All part of the "Who's a real American" question that's colored everything in American history.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:38 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:38 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
According to the Variety article I linked to above, the credited writers are - Kurt Allison, Tully Kennedy, Kelley Lovelace and Neil Thrasher.
Having a name like Neil Thrasher but choosing to work in country music seems like a missed opportunity in nominative determinism.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:48 PM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
Having a name like Neil Thrasher but choosing to work in country music seems like a missed opportunity in nominative determinism.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:48 PM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
All he does is ding a ding dang a dang a long dang bong bing bong wah wah wah wah.
posted by Artw at 2:52 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 2:52 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
I hadn't even heard of this Aldean guy
I just heard of him because he had a heat stroke during a concert in Hartford last week and had to quit mid-show (he's since announced a replacement date). Good Southern fella apparently can't handle the heat up here in the north. *ahem*
posted by dlugoczaj at 3:01 PM on July 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
I just heard of him because he had a heat stroke during a concert in Hartford last week and had to quit mid-show (he's since announced a replacement date). Good Southern fella apparently can't handle the heat up here in the north. *ahem*
posted by dlugoczaj at 3:01 PM on July 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
Having a name like Neil Thrasher but choosing to work in country music seems like a missed opportunity in nominative determinism.
Modern country is just '80s hair metal with a twang, so I'm not convinced the opportunity was missed.
posted by clawsoon at 3:08 PM on July 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
Modern country is just '80s hair metal with a twang, so I'm not convinced the opportunity was missed.
posted by clawsoon at 3:08 PM on July 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
BTW, his wife, who is 29 to his 41 and the affair partner that he left a wife of eleven years and two children for, is quite the peach herself:
Brittany Aldean’s Response to Getting Called Out for Transphobic Comments? T-Shirts With Barbie Fonts and Right-Wing Slogans
Brittany Aldean Defends Her Transphobic Comments on ‘Tucker Carlson’: ‘I’m Advocating for Children’
Jason Aldean's Publicity Firm Parts Ways with Him Following Wife Brittany's Transphobic Comments
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 3:12 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
Brittany Aldean’s Response to Getting Called Out for Transphobic Comments? T-Shirts With Barbie Fonts and Right-Wing Slogans
Brittany Aldean Defends Her Transphobic Comments on ‘Tucker Carlson’: ‘I’m Advocating for Children’
Jason Aldean's Publicity Firm Parts Ways with Him Following Wife Brittany's Transphobic Comments
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 3:12 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
Mentioned that many veterans of the early 90's grunge era went to work in Nashville. ... Meanwhile, country's audience includes many Gen X'ers. Seems like a natural progression.
I've maintained since I was a teenager, so since the Eighties, that Country radio's popular sound is current radio sound minus twenty years.
I mean, country rap? That's been a thing. I think there was a tiny bit of time when gated drums were popular in country songs. I've been hearing more sequencers and arpegiattors [sp?] when I listen to country music, and also sampling.
I do fully expect popular country radio to turn fully into EDM at some point in the next 5 years.
posted by hippybear at 3:15 PM on July 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
I've maintained since I was a teenager, so since the Eighties, that Country radio's popular sound is current radio sound minus twenty years.
I mean, country rap? That's been a thing. I think there was a tiny bit of time when gated drums were popular in country songs. I've been hearing more sequencers and arpegiattors [sp?] when I listen to country music, and also sampling.
I do fully expect popular country radio to turn fully into EDM at some point in the next 5 years.
posted by hippybear at 3:15 PM on July 20, 2023 [10 favorites]
And thinking about that...
Literally all it would take would be one really hot EDM/Country tune that catches the public ear along with a line dance that could be taught easily at bars, and if it combined in the popular imagination, the entire chart could flip within six months.
posted by hippybear at 3:19 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Literally all it would take would be one really hot EDM/Country tune that catches the public ear along with a line dance that could be taught easily at bars, and if it combined in the popular imagination, the entire chart could flip within six months.
posted by hippybear at 3:19 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
anti-urban bias (aka as racism).
You are going to want to sit down and get your smelling salts ready before you click on this link and find out about my dude RVSHVD. In fact, watch his videos on mute just so you can listen to him afterwards for the full effect.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 3:25 PM on July 20, 2023
You are going to want to sit down and get your smelling salts ready before you click on this link and find out about my dude RVSHVD. In fact, watch his videos on mute just so you can listen to him afterwards for the full effect.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 3:25 PM on July 20, 2023
I do fully expect popular country radio to turn fully into EDM at some point in the next 5 years.
Expect instead of a bass drop, they'll have a pedal steel drop.
posted by clawsoon at 3:31 PM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Expect instead of a bass drop, they'll have a pedal steel drop.
posted by clawsoon at 3:31 PM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
I never really know how to classify one of my favorite bands, Carbon Leaf. They're front porch rock and roll with a celtic bend, is the best I can sum them up.
I usually file them as Alt Country. And you might like The Connells.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:32 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
I usually file them as Alt Country. And you might like The Connells.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:32 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
I've maintained since I was a teenager, so since the Eighties, that Country radio's popular sound is current radio sound minus twenty years.
This is so bang on. It describes EXACTLY why I dislike pop Country so much musically. I think maybe I'd add to it and say that it's the most edgeless sound from 20 years ago.
posted by sauril at 3:35 PM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is so bang on. It describes EXACTLY why I dislike pop Country so much musically. I think maybe I'd add to it and say that it's the most edgeless sound from 20 years ago.
posted by sauril at 3:35 PM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
If we're plugging alt country/Americana we like, imma plug Sierra Ferrell.
posted by clawsoon at 3:36 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 3:36 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm definitely on the Americana side, from Bluegrass to Uncle Tupelo & Wilco, Billy Strings, and Molly Tuttle. Also the 14 year old mandolin prodigy Wyatt Ellis.
I really hate the redneck racist variety like "small town".
posted by mike3k at 3:37 PM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
I really hate the redneck racist variety like "small town".
posted by mike3k at 3:37 PM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
I believe I may have the distinction of introducing Metafilter to hick hop, back in 2015.
Nobody liked it.
posted by clawsoon at 3:39 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Nobody liked it.
posted by clawsoon at 3:39 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
That’s at least one Old Town Road ago though.
posted by Artw at 3:42 PM on July 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Artw at 3:42 PM on July 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
Taylor Swift is re-recording her albums in order to have masters that she has control over rather than her record company. I'm sure any lyrical revisions are secondary to this money-driven project.
Tay Tay's versions are about something more important than just the money.
posted by chavenet at 4:00 PM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
Tay Tay's versions are about something more important than just the money.
posted by chavenet at 4:00 PM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
They are pop/contemporary stations because women country singers don't get airplay.
The determination to push women out of country music that keeps coming up is maybe the most telling part of the article. Taylor Swift could've been the next big country star, but they hate women so much that they'd rather push her out than have all that money.
posted by clawsoon at 4:09 PM on July 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
The determination to push women out of country music that keeps coming up is maybe the most telling part of the article. Taylor Swift could've been the next big country star, but they hate women so much that they'd rather push her out than have all that money.
posted by clawsoon at 4:09 PM on July 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
Baffled by people using Elvis Costello as The English rebuttal to racism in Country music. Was Eric Clapton unavailable as first choice?
posted by haileris23 at 4:22 PM on July 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by haileris23 at 4:22 PM on July 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
Taylor Swift could've been the next big country star, but they hate women so much that they'd rather push her out than have all that money.
I’m pretty sure anything on Folklore could make the category if it wanted to. On the other hand she figured out she had an alt right following in 2017 and told them all to shove it, so is probably out of the club forever.
posted by Artw at 5:01 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’m pretty sure anything on Folklore could make the category if it wanted to. On the other hand she figured out she had an alt right following in 2017 and told them all to shove it, so is probably out of the club forever.
posted by Artw at 5:01 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also, I can't believe all these jokes about stereotypical country lyrics and no one's mentioned You Never Even Called Me by My Name by David Allan Coe
Just your periodic reminder that David Allen Coe wrote some horribly racist shit way beyond what we are talking about here and it is a great thing that nobody else has brought him up.
posted by Quonab at 5:05 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Just your periodic reminder that David Allen Coe wrote some horribly racist shit way beyond what we are talking about here and it is a great thing that nobody else has brought him up.
posted by Quonab at 5:05 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Pop country music is really at a tough crossroads. If you take racism, sexism and conservatism out, it stops being itself -- it really is that generic otherwise -- in this way it really mirrors the right's crisis.
They really might as well say "eat the bugs and listen to Dua Lipa". Streaming's cruelty (go ahead, call it globalism) really does exert a flattening pressure, such that differences between vast cultural histories distill down to one company's sampled kick drum versus another.
From a strictly musical perspective, American popular country music and American rap are seductively similar. Both encourage us coastal adrenochrome-drinkers to suspend our basic understanding of how things work (McDonald's is bad food, why would Sony be good music) because culture, because lived experience, because trucks and sunset and a beer, because white flight, because [insert your favorite thought killer]
As a musician myself I was blackpilled long ago on how this all works. I do my best not to yuck people's yum in public, but everything is awful. We let the market in and it will never stop eating. The fact that people can click on "Country" and drink a little "ism" for nostalgia's sake is basically unimportant -- nothing anybody clicks on affects anything. It's just a big maw, eating and eating and eating.
For that reason, the culture wars are crueler than I think Emily Nussbaum intends. Smart coastal whites are comfortable recasting Ice Cube's rapping about killing people and abusing women as important and meaningful in context. We love bell hooks for calling him "Brother Cube". Aldean enjoys no such privilege; once you're educated in America you compartmentalize and you put Aldean, McDonald's and your shitty family in the same little box and you move to the hypernormal place where that somehow isn't you. "I identify as a non-Aldean stan" -- see why it's so important that we sanctify "identity"?
I feel exactly the same way about popular country music's racism as I do about ChatGPT's racism: it's telling us about us, be brave and pay attention.
posted by matjus at 5:22 PM on July 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
They really might as well say "eat the bugs and listen to Dua Lipa". Streaming's cruelty (go ahead, call it globalism) really does exert a flattening pressure, such that differences between vast cultural histories distill down to one company's sampled kick drum versus another.
From a strictly musical perspective, American popular country music and American rap are seductively similar. Both encourage us coastal adrenochrome-drinkers to suspend our basic understanding of how things work (McDonald's is bad food, why would Sony be good music) because culture, because lived experience, because trucks and sunset and a beer, because white flight, because [insert your favorite thought killer]
As a musician myself I was blackpilled long ago on how this all works. I do my best not to yuck people's yum in public, but everything is awful. We let the market in and it will never stop eating. The fact that people can click on "Country" and drink a little "ism" for nostalgia's sake is basically unimportant -- nothing anybody clicks on affects anything. It's just a big maw, eating and eating and eating.
For that reason, the culture wars are crueler than I think Emily Nussbaum intends. Smart coastal whites are comfortable recasting Ice Cube's rapping about killing people and abusing women as important and meaningful in context. We love bell hooks for calling him "Brother Cube". Aldean enjoys no such privilege; once you're educated in America you compartmentalize and you put Aldean, McDonald's and your shitty family in the same little box and you move to the hypernormal place where that somehow isn't you. "I identify as a non-Aldean stan" -- see why it's so important that we sanctify "identity"?
I feel exactly the same way about popular country music's racism as I do about ChatGPT's racism: it's telling us about us, be brave and pay attention.
posted by matjus at 5:22 PM on July 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
It's funny. I got into country through a mix of country-adjacent music in the 90s, like Lambchop, The Handsome Family, Jim White (whose documentary Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus is worth seeking out), Uncle Tupelo, the Jayhawks, Calexico, all of whom seemed to be part of a loose thing called Americana, at least in that 90s European sense of the word that was more about country than folk. Probably hipster bands, if those had existed then. I've discovered a lot of newer artists in more recent years, and many of them owe something to the early country musicians rather than country as it is today. It seems like the most interesting parts of any genre are where it blends into other things or reinvents things.
posted by pipeski at 5:40 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by pipeski at 5:40 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
I have many problems with the small-town / rural-life boosterism prevalent in a lot of commercial country but the most immediate is that I find a great deal of it unbearably cringe-inducing in the implied insecurity it clearly assumes from its audience. It doesn't come across, to me at least, as speaking convincingly about the virtues of the places and practices described. Far from it, in some cases - a lot of it reeks of "if I say this often enough I'll begin to believe it" and not much more.
this is how kitsch works - i know that in northern michigan all the touristy crap about lumberjacks and log cabins were long, long after all orignial growth forests were cut down to make sandy wastelands that are now 2nd growth forests
you sanctify and idealize with great nostalgia what you or the world has already killed off
your typical country music fan had parents or grandparents who were farmers or small town people - hell, all 4 of my grandparents grew up on a farm, it's not just a southern thing - now, not many are left - maybe they work for industrial ag, or work in a factory, but that old world all the songs sing about died a lot time ago
always remember that a substantial proportion of the american people want to be lied to - just ask the orange haired guy - and that try that in a small town song is so full of lies - does he really think that cops don't get talked back to in a small town? - that people don't get robbed?
i feel like writing a song in response about all the things people have tried in a small town and failed to - you know, like finding people who understood them, getting a decent paying job, overcoming a family's or a neighorhood's reputation ...
i should, i grew up in a small town enclave of a small city and it'a a lot closer to real small town experience than anything aldean knows about - he's just pandering to his audience
and
been to the mountain by margo price sounds a bit like country, but it's really the best garage rock song ever writen about peyote - someone invent a time machine so we can sell the 13th floor elevators on covering it
posted by pyramid termite at 5:58 PM on July 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
My brother and his wife moved to East Nashville pre-pandemic. Neither of them is involved in the music industry in any way, although my brother was a musician in his youth and still plays; his wife immediately got to know everyone including a lot of up and coming Americana musicians. I went to visit them for a weekend and was amazed at the music pouring out of everywhere, there was just so much talent. I'm not a Country Music fan and I had never heard of Americana before, but I heard a lot of great Americana stuff. We went to Broadway on a Sunday morning for the brunch scene and stumbled on a brilliant duo who had moved to Nashville from Australia only a month earlier. I also saw more gender queer people in East Nashville than I have ever seen in Brooklyn (admittedly I probably do not hang out in the right places). I met one kid who has since moved to NYC and is transitioning who told me they thought that most people in the Pop Country Music industry are gay. On the way to the airport we stopped at a big vintage record store (Nashville people probably know what I'm talking about) for a record release party and had tome to hear my favorite song of the weekend.
posted by maggiemaggie at 5:59 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by maggiemaggie at 5:59 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
Obligatory reminder that Key and Peele saw all this coming a (country) mile away.
posted by armeowda at 6:09 PM on July 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by armeowda at 6:09 PM on July 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
Please spare a moment for the modern country stylings of Harlan and Brantley, Memphis Kansas Breeze.
Pickup Truck Birthday Party
Truck School Dance
Human Skin Truck Baby
All parts of the new country canon.
posted by Shepherd at 6:13 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Pickup Truck Birthday Party
Truck School Dance
Human Skin Truck Baby
All parts of the new country canon.
posted by Shepherd at 6:13 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
American popular country music and American rap are seductively similar.
I think you are conflating way too many issues, like for example Ice Cube is a PG movie actor now - 95% of that gangster stuff was fake, as in Arnold Schwarzenegger fantasy fake. Do we pillory him for killing too many revolutionaries in his movies? No, we recognize it as fake as it was - a persona. People can sing about uncomfortable things, just like they can write books about them and make movies about them.
But to some extent you are correct. Gangster rap and pop country are each very narrowly defined genres (gotta be killing people and dealing drugs if you are a gangster rapper), we've all discussed what you have to be to be pop country. But gangster rap is not all encompassing of rap played on the radio, whereas pop country is mostly all encompassing of the country music played on the radio.
So people in this thread have offered ways out that 'save' country music as an artifact- broaden the playlists. The Tracy Chapman song Fast Car there was just a thread about was a guitar and a sad story, just like Willie Nelson's Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. Country could be a full genre if it's benefactors wanted it to. I could give you a list of 100 Americana/alternative/independent country songs put out in the past 2 years. But I'm not in charge of pop country radio playlists, and I doubt you are either.
Also given what people have posted about Aldean's wife, I'm not sold that he is playing a character, like Ice Cube was. Time will tell. But that's a real difference too.
posted by The_Vegetables at 6:16 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think you are conflating way too many issues, like for example Ice Cube is a PG movie actor now - 95% of that gangster stuff was fake, as in Arnold Schwarzenegger fantasy fake. Do we pillory him for killing too many revolutionaries in his movies? No, we recognize it as fake as it was - a persona. People can sing about uncomfortable things, just like they can write books about them and make movies about them.
But to some extent you are correct. Gangster rap and pop country are each very narrowly defined genres (gotta be killing people and dealing drugs if you are a gangster rapper), we've all discussed what you have to be to be pop country. But gangster rap is not all encompassing of rap played on the radio, whereas pop country is mostly all encompassing of the country music played on the radio.
So people in this thread have offered ways out that 'save' country music as an artifact- broaden the playlists. The Tracy Chapman song Fast Car there was just a thread about was a guitar and a sad story, just like Willie Nelson's Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. Country could be a full genre if it's benefactors wanted it to. I could give you a list of 100 Americana/alternative/independent country songs put out in the past 2 years. But I'm not in charge of pop country radio playlists, and I doubt you are either.
Also given what people have posted about Aldean's wife, I'm not sold that he is playing a character, like Ice Cube was. Time will tell. But that's a real difference too.
posted by The_Vegetables at 6:16 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
I cannot emphasize how excellent the whole episode of Comedy Bang! Bang! in which Memphis Kansas Breeze debut their musical stylings is. Primo slow-burn stupid idea CBB stuff.
posted by cortex at 6:37 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by cortex at 6:37 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's funny. I got into country through a mix of country-adjacent music in the 90s, like Lambchop, The Handsome Family, Jim White (whose documentary Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus is worth seeking out), Uncle Tupelo, the Jayhawks, Calexico, all of whom seemed to be part of a loose thing called Americana, at least in that 90s European sense of the word that was more about country than folk. Probably hipster bands, if those had existed then..
Hipsters in the current sense of the word most definitely existed in the 1990s. The word is a lot older (example of what probably reintroduced the word to a lot of people in that era) but it was in the 1990s that I heard it being applied to (and used ironically by) people who often liked those same bands you listed off.
The still-present ironic facial hair came later, for better or worse.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:40 PM on July 20, 2023
Hipsters in the current sense of the word most definitely existed in the 1990s. The word is a lot older (example of what probably reintroduced the word to a lot of people in that era) but it was in the 1990s that I heard it being applied to (and used ironically by) people who often liked those same bands you listed off.
The still-present ironic facial hair came later, for better or worse.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:40 PM on July 20, 2023
One more: Paul Cauthen, Country as Fuck
Okay, two: Robbie Fulks, Fuck This Town
Commentary on the Country Industrial Complex.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:53 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Okay, two: Robbie Fulks, Fuck This Town
Commentary on the Country Industrial Complex.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:53 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm old enough to remember when Country and Rock were two distinct things - cowboys vs hippies.
Then somewhere in the '90's? Country swerved into Rock's lane so that by the time I heard Shania Twain I didn't realize at first that she was a "Country" artist.
Anybody mention KD Lang yet?
Ooh, Dwight Yoakum. Man I gotta make a mix of Dwight and George Strait.
posted by mmrtnt at 7:01 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Then somewhere in the '90's? Country swerved into Rock's lane so that by the time I heard Shania Twain I didn't realize at first that she was a "Country" artist.
Anybody mention KD Lang yet?
Ooh, Dwight Yoakum. Man I gotta make a mix of Dwight and George Strait.
posted by mmrtnt at 7:01 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also - thanks Rash for the post and everyone else for the music suggestions!
posted by mmrtnt at 7:06 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mmrtnt at 7:06 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
@The_Vegetables -- definitely. When you concoct pop, it's never the "authentic" thing writers make it out to be. It's weird to me to get in the weeds with thinkpieces that take it at its word -- if you've ever sat in a studio with a large artist and team, you quickly figure out you're making TV dinners.
posted by matjus at 7:13 PM on July 20, 2023
posted by matjus at 7:13 PM on July 20, 2023
In some ways I find it similar to modern Christian "Praise Music"
Rock and roll is the Borg of music - both Country and Christians fought it initially and now both use it.
posted by mmrtnt at 7:16 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
Rock and roll is the Borg of music - both Country and Christians fought it initially and now both use it.
posted by mmrtnt at 7:16 PM on July 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
skip a rope by henson cargill
it's unimaginable that this would be played on today's country music stations
it was *1 in 1967
posted by pyramid termite at 7:23 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
it's unimaginable that this would be played on today's country music stations
it was *1 in 1967
posted by pyramid termite at 7:23 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is why I only listen to hostile electronic music where the overriding ideology is that one day the stars too will die.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:23 PM on July 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:23 PM on July 20, 2023 [6 favorites]
you need hawkwind, damn it
posted by pyramid termite at 7:24 PM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by pyramid termite at 7:24 PM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Another vote for the Jayhawks, if anyone hadn't heard them.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:51 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by wenestvedt at 7:51 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Where I first heard 'hipster' -- some classic Americana from the Jim Kweskin Jug Band.
posted by Rash at 9:24 PM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Rash at 9:24 PM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
this is how kitsch works - i know that in northern michigan all the touristy crap about lumberjacks and log cabins were long, long after all orignial growth forests were cut down to make sandy wastelands that are now 2nd growth forestsSomewhere out there I really hope there's a scholar of camp who is, at this very moment in time, doing work to compare and contrast the very-different-in-some-ways / fundamentally-similar-in-other-ways performance of exaggerated identity engaged in by drag artists on the one hand and some country entertainers on the other, as well as our society's differing reaction to each.
Because I suspect there are some interesting comparisons to be drawn there but also that I am not knowledgeable enough about either field to be the one to draw them.
posted by Nerd of the North at 9:31 PM on July 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
Rock and roll is the Borg of music - both Country and Christians fought it initially and now both use it.
Best poem I’ve read in years
posted by armeowda at 10:20 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Best poem I’ve read in years
posted by armeowda at 10:20 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
skip a rope by henson cargill
it's unimaginable that this would be played on today's country music stations
it was *1 in 1967
I had forgotten that song ever existed, pyramid termite.
I am struggling to come to terms with how dark and brilliant its minimalism feels to me now.
posted by jamjam at 10:44 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
it's unimaginable that this would be played on today's country music stations
it was *1 in 1967
I had forgotten that song ever existed, pyramid termite.
I am struggling to come to terms with how dark and brilliant its minimalism feels to me now.
posted by jamjam at 10:44 PM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Rock and roll is the Borg of music - both Country and Christians fought it initially and now both use it.
They fought the law and the
Law cold won
posted by chavenet at 1:12 AM on July 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
They fought the law and the
Law cold won
posted by chavenet at 1:12 AM on July 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
skip a rope by henson cargill
it's unimaginable that this would be played on today's country music stations
it was *1 in 1967
My local community radio station played this a couple of days ago. I had totally forgotten about it until then.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:54 AM on July 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
it's unimaginable that this would be played on today's country music stations
it was *1 in 1967
My local community radio station played this a couple of days ago. I had totally forgotten about it until then.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:54 AM on July 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is very interesting* to read from the other side of the world - I like country and I'm kind of aware that the country I like is alt-country or Americana or something, but really I don't have to deal with it. If I'm not finding new music online I get it from PBS or RRR here in Melbourne and alt- is all there is for me. It IS country. (I mean, shit, check out the picture of a guy with a beaten up hat and a guitar sitting on a chair in a paddock on RRR's current front page). Then sometimes Americana becomes a bit Australianified and has a baby with pub rock and I'm really happy. To be fair though, I can't pretend the 18 year olds are into this.
My son's favourite artist since he was two (four now) is what he calls "old John Prine", because he's not real keen on the younger John Prine. But old John Prine and music he made in the last few years before he died, is really, really my son's happy comfortable place and increasingly mine too because I listen to it so much. It's awesome, it could be the fucking Wiggles instead. So if you said "Nashville" and "country" to me I'd be like "oh yeah, John Prine". Apparently not so much.
I don't know what I have for you really, but an alternative reality is possible, at least through distance and not paying attention properly.
*Interesting because I don't have to deal with it.
posted by deadwax at 4:30 AM on July 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
My son's favourite artist since he was two (four now) is what he calls "old John Prine", because he's not real keen on the younger John Prine. But old John Prine and music he made in the last few years before he died, is really, really my son's happy comfortable place and increasingly mine too because I listen to it so much. It's awesome, it could be the fucking Wiggles instead. So if you said "Nashville" and "country" to me I'd be like "oh yeah, John Prine". Apparently not so much.
I don't know what I have for you really, but an alternative reality is possible, at least through distance and not paying attention properly.
*Interesting because I don't have to deal with it.
posted by deadwax at 4:30 AM on July 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
One of the stupidest things about Aldean's song is that he grew up in Macon, the 3rd largest city in Georgia.
Another stupid thing is how many people don't seem to get that the vast majority of "people"* involved in producing such schlock and selling it back to the yokels — the ones who hold the leashes of Music Row — reside in New York and Los Angeles.
* Corporations are people, right?
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 5:36 AM on July 21, 2023 [5 favorites]
Another stupid thing is how many people don't seem to get that the vast majority of "people"* involved in producing such schlock and selling it back to the yokels — the ones who hold the leashes of Music Row — reside in New York and Los Angeles.
* Corporations are people, right?
posted by Press Butt.on to Check at 5:36 AM on July 21, 2023 [5 favorites]
My SiriusXM radio carries several country stations. Many of them are borderline unlistenable, by my personal standards.
But one is straight-up bluegrass, for those who enjoy instrumental prowess. One is (or at least was, I haven't checked recently) the Bakersfield sound, for the country-rock-ish variant that proliferated there. One is Outlaw Country, celebrating the fuck-the-Nashville-Sound vibe, with Mojo Nixon doing the drive-time show as The Loon in the Afternoon.
In short, country can be a land of contrasts when it wants to be.
posted by delfin at 6:15 AM on July 21, 2023 [4 favorites]
But one is straight-up bluegrass, for those who enjoy instrumental prowess. One is (or at least was, I haven't checked recently) the Bakersfield sound, for the country-rock-ish variant that proliferated there. One is Outlaw Country, celebrating the fuck-the-Nashville-Sound vibe, with Mojo Nixon doing the drive-time show as The Loon in the Afternoon.
In short, country can be a land of contrasts when it wants to be.
posted by delfin at 6:15 AM on July 21, 2023 [4 favorites]
I love Mojo Nixon!!
(Well, I did when I was 14, anyway....)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:23 AM on July 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
(Well, I did when I was 14, anyway....)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:23 AM on July 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Part of modern conservatism -- and not really even modern at all, given our extremely checkered national history -- is a highly xenophobic drive. It's the notion that people of a certain culture are Americans, inherently superior, and that that superiority must be defended and trumpeted at all costs. It's why Jim Jordan bleats out Tweets on the regular about what "Real America" likes and dislikes. It's why that excretion by Aldean exists, complete with its "the OTHER wants to murder us in our beds, just look at 'em" video that's the Camp of the Saints with twangy guitar.
Cultivating and reinforcing that notion on the regular, that Real Americans grow corn and carry guns and drive pickup trucks and play cornhole and pray and raise hell and hate what The Other is doing to Their America and anyone else is an intruder, is not just profitable -- it's a mandatory component of keeping that movement going full blast.
posted by delfin at 6:25 AM on July 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Cultivating and reinforcing that notion on the regular, that Real Americans grow corn and carry guns and drive pickup trucks and play cornhole and pray and raise hell and hate what The Other is doing to Their America and anyone else is an intruder, is not just profitable -- it's a mandatory component of keeping that movement going full blast.
posted by delfin at 6:25 AM on July 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Well, reading this thread has been interesting, entertaining and edifying.
posted by y2karl at 6:46 AM on July 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by y2karl at 6:46 AM on July 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
If we're continuing to recommend other country acts as palate cleansers / alternatives to what those upstream have delightfully called "extruded country product," I'll throw some Canadian country onto the pile:
- William Prince. Voice like a warm blanket. Start with "Earthly Days"
- NQ Arbuckle. Jangly melancholy. Start with "Last Supper in a Cheap Town"
- Ellliott Brood. Electric guitars, banjos, ukuleles, and even banjoleles. Start with "Mountain Meadows"
- The Corb Lund Band. More songs about horses - and mountain lions - than your typical Nashhville fare. Start with "Counterfeit Blues"
- Whitehorse. Somewhere between country and rock. Start with "I'm Not Crying, You're Crying"
- Kathleen Edwards. A solid crooner. Start with "Total Freedom"
posted by The Outsider at 7:04 AM on July 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
- William Prince. Voice like a warm blanket. Start with "Earthly Days"
- NQ Arbuckle. Jangly melancholy. Start with "Last Supper in a Cheap Town"
- Ellliott Brood. Electric guitars, banjos, ukuleles, and even banjoleles. Start with "Mountain Meadows"
- The Corb Lund Band. More songs about horses - and mountain lions - than your typical Nashhville fare. Start with "Counterfeit Blues"
- Whitehorse. Somewhere between country and rock. Start with "I'm Not Crying, You're Crying"
- Kathleen Edwards. A solid crooner. Start with "Total Freedom"
posted by The Outsider at 7:04 AM on July 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
ctrl-F'd and didn't see Nick Shoulders or Willi Carlisle recommendations and I had to fix that
posted by jason_steakums at 7:16 AM on July 21, 2023
posted by jason_steakums at 7:16 AM on July 21, 2023
It's the notion that people of a certain culture are Americans, inherently superior, and that that superiority must be defended and trumpeted at all costs.
Yes, delfin, exactly: this song, its video, the surrounding outrage, all of it does the cultural work of promoting white supremacy, and giving permission to act in its defense.
Jeff Sharlet had an excellent Twitter thread about this. That’s why despite disliking bro country, I try to stay aware of the water it’s carrying.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:32 AM on July 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yes, delfin, exactly: this song, its video, the surrounding outrage, all of it does the cultural work of promoting white supremacy, and giving permission to act in its defense.
Jeff Sharlet had an excellent Twitter thread about this. That’s why despite disliking bro country, I try to stay aware of the water it’s carrying.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:32 AM on July 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
I like bluegrass a bunch. Music by people who are made out of dirt and stubborn. Passing through West Virginia one day I chanced upon the Critton Hollow String Band and, well, you should look 'em up.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:41 AM on July 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:41 AM on July 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
that Country radio's popular sound is current radio sound minus twenty years.
I find the cross-pollination stuff very interesting. Like Shane Smith and The Saint's Fire in the Ocean song directly uses Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends prominent drum beat - it could be a sample. And the Shane Smith song is Americana/alt-country. It just missed that 20 years ago cycle.
Another 20 year cycle album: Billy Bragg and Wilco remade a bunch of Woody Guthrie songs in 1999, and last year, the Dropkick Murphys just remade a bunch of Woody Guthrie songs, celebrating unions and solidarity and so many other things that pop country denies. Is it punk music? Americana? It's a mix! But it fits, because Shipping Up to Boston was also written by Woody Guthrie.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:54 AM on July 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
I find the cross-pollination stuff very interesting. Like Shane Smith and The Saint's Fire in the Ocean song directly uses Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends prominent drum beat - it could be a sample. And the Shane Smith song is Americana/alt-country. It just missed that 20 years ago cycle.
Another 20 year cycle album: Billy Bragg and Wilco remade a bunch of Woody Guthrie songs in 1999, and last year, the Dropkick Murphys just remade a bunch of Woody Guthrie songs, celebrating unions and solidarity and so many other things that pop country denies. Is it punk music? Americana? It's a mix! But it fits, because Shipping Up to Boston was also written by Woody Guthrie.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:54 AM on July 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
A quality parody of Small Town has emerged already.
Adeem the Artist - Sundown Town
posted by delfin at 7:57 AM on July 21, 2023 [7 favorites]
Adeem the Artist - Sundown Town
posted by delfin at 7:57 AM on July 21, 2023 [7 favorites]
Spot on.
Well, that leaves me somewhat less depressed by the news today.
posted by y2karl at 8:45 AM on July 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Well, that leaves me somewhat less depressed by the news today.
posted by y2karl at 8:45 AM on July 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Before this Summer of Tumult, I would get up on Sunday to listen to InDigitNess Voice
Indigitness Voice on Sundays from 7 to 8am [Mountain Time] is hosted by Richard Two-Elk and his children, Alix and Kodid. InDigitNess Voice features traditional and contemporary music while focusing on the current issues, people, news and events of the Native America communities.Alix has been doing most of the hosting lately. Most of the contemporary music music uses Country and Western instruments and harmonies. A sampling of songs I put in my Everyday Playlist after hearing them on this program:
- “Trees”—Bonnie Couchie, 2009
- “Keepers of the Earth”—Whisperhawk, 02 July 2020
- “Moon”—Koli Kohler, 17 September 2020
For a recent out-and-out country song that shows what the form's still capable of, try Emily Scott Robinson's If Trouble Comes a-Lookin'.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:17 AM on July 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Paul Slade at 9:17 AM on July 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Emily Nussbaum's Spotify: Country Music's Culture Wars Playlist
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:40 AM on July 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:40 AM on July 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
RonButNotStupid: “‘Try That In A Small Town’”
Click if you desire a very thorough debunking of the racist nonsense music video
“I may be petty, but my THOROUGH and petty! 😂 Here is my dissertation debunking Jason Aldean’s claims about his 🎶🎥 propaganda.”—@destineenstark, TikTok, 19 July 2023
“Wait til you hear about how i found out most of the footage is 10+ years old and not even from the U.S.!”—Id., 20 July 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 8:20 PM on July 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
Very late to this thread, and mostly just to remark that no one has mentioned Jelly Roll.
Currently serving as my antidote to Aldean's bullshit.
posted by spitbull at 9:46 AM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
Currently serving as my antidote to Aldean's bullshit.
posted by spitbull at 9:46 AM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's really good to have Nussbaum back in The New Yorker. Her TV column there was one of my first stops in any issue that carried it.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:19 AM on July 24, 2023
posted by Paul Slade at 3:19 AM on July 24, 2023
Oh hey and there's a new Nick Shoulders song out too! Country inspired by #landback, labor organizing and I suspect David Graeber judging by some of the wording of the postscript is my kind of country.
posted by jason_steakums at 2:26 PM on July 29, 2023
posted by jason_steakums at 2:26 PM on July 29, 2023
Sam Sanders has an excellent episode of his podcast, Into It, on this topic: Country Music’s Race Problem.
“What is up right now with country music and race? There’s the controversy over Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” Morgan Wallen topping the charts despite previously being canceled for saying the n-word, and Luke Combs’ country cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car – which is doing better than the original. Sam talks with writer, sociologist, and country fan Tressie McMillan Cottom. Tressie unpacks why mainstream country music is so, so white, how Black artists built the genre, and the gulf between the vibrant city of Nashville and the regressive politics of the “Nashville” music industry.”
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:01 AM on July 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
“What is up right now with country music and race? There’s the controversy over Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” Morgan Wallen topping the charts despite previously being canceled for saying the n-word, and Luke Combs’ country cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car – which is doing better than the original. Sam talks with writer, sociologist, and country fan Tressie McMillan Cottom. Tressie unpacks why mainstream country music is so, so white, how Black artists built the genre, and the gulf between the vibrant city of Nashville and the regressive politics of the “Nashville” music industry.”
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:01 AM on July 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
“It Doesn't Matter If Jason Aldean Is From a Small Town,” Noah Berlatsky, Everything is Horrible, 31 July 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 7:36 AM on August 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 7:36 AM on August 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
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posted by evadery at 10:05 AM on July 20, 2023 [14 favorites]