Not at all. I’d be thrilled for them, because it would mean they could make a better living performing music, and it would expose them to new audiences, and there would be more quality music in the mainstream.
I’d still like her just as much (and I’m not one of the rabid Tori fans who thinks she is a fairy princess). I don’t think it would make much sense to have her on American Idol whether she was more popular or not, but if she was more successful, again, I would be happy for her, and I’d take some smug pride in knowing that more people finally “wised up” and like what I’ve liked all along.
I find it incredible that in a thread this size about conntry music (well, sometime) that nobody has mentioned shania twain as being a phony.
also, before the dixie chicks’ career was saved by their attack on the president, i saw an interview with them (i was misled that they were some primo babes, and i wanted to take a look). They said something about 'jamming to some GOOD (emphasis theirs) music" before having to do a concert, by Snoop or somebody in a similar vein.
The other words in your post didn’t have anything to do with what I was saying.
The problem with guessing is that these guesses seem more to be about what one thinks of an artist’s music than the actual artist. Take handsomeharry’s suggestion. Shania Twain is phony? What, man, she doesn’t really feel like a woman? Or then he suggests that the Dixie Twins are phony because they are ugly and because they (gasp! shock horror!) listen to music outside their genre.
Saints preserve us! The Dixie Chicks listen to rap, that horrible jungle music! Don’t they know that true country artists have a diet of nothing but Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton 24/7?
If this is the sort of basis on which guesses at “phony” or “corrupt” artists are made, then they aren’t even worth the time it took to write the post.
I’ll never tell anyone who hates the current crop of country stars to start loving them. If you love pure, raw, old-fashioned country, then somebody like Garth Brooks is BOUND to irritate you, since his music sounds as much like mainstream pop/top 40 as it does like old-fashioned hillbilly folk music.
But even though I don’t much like him myself, remember something: the life and the world a country boy growing up in the 1970’s was VERY different from the life and world a country boy knew in the 1930’s. Garth Brooks and Woodie Guthrie are both authentic country boys from Oklahoma, but Garth’s OKlahoma wasn’t Woodie’s. A country kid in Garth’s era grew up with Hank Williams and Merle Haggard, but he ALSO had MTV, and a mall down the road. He was exposed to Billy Joel and Boston and James Taylor and Journey and the Eagles as well as the pure country acts some people prefer. And ALL of those things went into Garth’s music.
By all means, reject Garth’s music if you don’t like it. But don’t say he’s being a phony because his music isn’t pure. He’s being true to ALL his many influences. If anything, Garth would be a phony if he acted like a pure roots-country artist with no ties to modern pop culture.
I just want to say that Godfrey Daniels has the handle on it right there. Particularly if he adds Chip Taylor, Steve Fromholz, Lacy J. Dalton, and, yes, Willie. I saw him live last year, and he was anything BUT embalmed. He flat out cooked. (No offense to Myler Keogh, who may have caught him on an off night.)
As an aside, I find it amusing that Alan Jackson would relese “Gone Country,” whose partial lyrics are:
I’m sorry, but are you suggesting that singers are not musicians? That would be a statement of the most staggering ignorance, akin to saying that painters are not artists. I assure you there are many schools of music at fine universities that would disagree with you.
I don’t believe that Britney Spears is any more of an artist than someone who sings Kareoke, no matter how good. Good singing ability is not art, it’s talent. Song writing or composing would raise her to the status of artist, but as she doesn’t do those (as far as I know, I could be wrong, and will gladly apologize if pointed out), I don’t believe she is an artist.
And in the context of discussing music and Mrs. Spears-Federline, I didn’t think it was necessary to include painters or sculpters.