I have listened to all kinds of music through my lifetime, and lately that has included a lot of modern country/western on the local stations just to give it try. I have noticed that there is a lot of mocking of “city folk” and their “city folk ways” going on. What’s going on here? Through my years of listening pop and/or rock and all the variations in-between I never noticed any mocking of “country folk” and their “country folk ways”, no badmouthing of cowboys, no putting down of country women…nothing that even remotely resembles what I hear in some CW songs today.
Country music does mock country folk and ways at times. I don’t pay that much attention to the genre but there’s a lot of comical songs and the targets don’t seem concentrated on city folk, at least in my minimal sampling.
Not that I’d be a big country music fan anyway but the weird “We country mice are soooo much better than those city mice and only we know what it’s like to [love your family/love your partner/have simple fun/etc]” vibe I get when I listen to some is a big part of why I don’t make any attempt to become better acquainted with the genre.
That’s nice…but I didn’t say they mock only city folk. I said they mock city folk on a regular basis and that I can’t find an equivalent mocking on the opposite side of the music spectrum.
Tension between rural and urban folk has a pretty long history in the United States (and possibly civilization). Shay’s Rebellion had a big piece of that, with landed farmers in Western Massachusetts pissed off at the Eastern banker/mercantile class, if I’m recalling my undergrad history classes correctly.
But I suspect that Trump-era hostility from rural Republicans toward urban Democrats is creating a nice market that Nashville is only too willing to pander to.
That’s a fine observation, but you didn’t include the self deprecation part which sounded to me like you thought the target of mockery was just city folk. If that’s not what you meant that’s fine, and you are correct that there is a lot of mockery in country music, but my limited experience tells me it’s spread around quite a bit.
Now there is some mockery out there in rock like the Byrds - So you want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.. Also some weird guy named Al.
The people in the city call me country,
Because of how I walk and talk and smile.
I don’t mind them laughin’ in the city,
But the country folks all think I’m citified.
– Roger Miller, Where have all the average people gone?
This. It really turns me off to C&W. And the other mockery being described is a self-deprecating sort of non-mockery. The anti-urban mockery has a deep mean streak running through it that you don’t see in the humorous kind of mocking.
I’m listening to modern country right now on the radio. That song by the Byrds is from 1967, over fifty years ago…and it doesn’t really mock country, does it?
This thread isn’t about music mockery in general.
Simple. It’s part of the culture.
Many, indeed I’d venture to say most, people born and raised in rural areas have an innate fear and distrust of cities. Where that comes from I have no idea, but I’ve lived in enough rural areas to have learned long ago that it’s so widespread that you could bank on it.
I live in a rural town. A couple of times a week I have to walk to a Dr. appointment, and my route passes the local Republican Party headquarters. The only non-Trump sign in the window is a huge poster with two pictures: on the top half is a crappy picture of a smog choked skyline, like Los Angeles Ca. 1980. The bottom half is a beautiful clear picture of a virgin forest. The top caption says “Are we going to let people from here…” and the bottom half caption is “Tell people from here how to live?” The implication, obviously, that city dwellers have no business dictating anything to rural residents. It’s shit like that that further exacerbate the already-extant cultural divide and distrust of cities and those who live in cities. It is, quite frankly, preaching to the choir.
My wife listens to country music. Someone once joked that every country music album will have the following: at least one song praising Jesus / God / going to church or, post-9/11, how great America is, one song about “hell raising” or getting into trouble, and at least one song about loving their mama / spouse / kids / importance of family. There’s almost always a song about small-town living and some sort of rural lifestyle: farming, ranching, working in a mill or a lumberyard, being a truck driver. This isn’t strictly accurate but frankly it’s pretty damn close. In other words, they know their audience and do what they can to appease them because that’s where the money is. Bashing big cities, city folk, and the like are part of the same formula.
Civilization, yes. E.g. Aesop’s fable about The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.
I understand, and I’m agreeing with you that mockery is part of country music, along with more comedy in general than pop and rock. I’m just pointing out that mockery is not unheard of in other genres, though you are right that I can’t think of a non-country song mocking country life. There is plenty of mockery of country folk and ways in other facets of modern culture though. And I don’t think Weird Al is done either. Rock music certainly has a lot more drug references than country save for beer. I wouldn’t expect all genres of music to have equivalent themes. You are making an interesting point, but there is a broader context to it.
Very old story about the Agricultural Mouse and the Hunter Gatherer mouse.
I don’t know why you insist on bringing up Yankovic over and over again-he is a single songwriter, not an entire genre. Try to focus in(despite your attempts to broaden the context to ghod knows what extent) to the mockery of city folk in country western music(NOT mockery in general) without their being much(if any) reciprocity on the other side when it comes to music.
Most of the country music image is manufactured and propagated by big-city music producers anyway. It’s an act. Like wearing a cowboy hat and boots when you go to your job, in a mall in a rural area, that is exactly like the jobs in malls in suburban and city areas.
The vast majority of the people in rural areas have much more in common with the majority of people in city areas than they would like to admit.
It’s play acting, but people are suckers for it, and certain political factions know this, so they exploit it.
What are you looking for? Do you think this mockery is reveals some kind of animosity between the country mouse and the city mouse? Why then would the country mouse also mock himself? Or is it perhaps something about the country style, I don’t know what it’s called but it’s often more story-telling in nature than other forms of music, mockery of country folk just doesn’t seem to fit in rock songs.
Maybe you can tell me a case where the older form of country ballads mocks city life?
I would add, too, that really good country music doesn’t need to pander by using commercial cliches, but rather speaks to the human condition, such that it appeals to urban as well as rural population.
However, like most commercially generated music, (including hip hop), the vast majority is just homogeneous swill.
Well, it’s hard to write country songs about meth labs and rampant opioid addiction in rural America and have it sell as well.
Here you go: Dust In a Baggie.