# I have officially lost all tolerance for country music. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 24, 2011, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495 "2011-02-24T20:36:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Quasimodem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Quasimodem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quasimodem)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/81 "2011-02-25T08:13:58Z")
They try, but with the exception of maybe Lyle Lovett, and of course, Asleep At The Wheel and Willie, I’m not there. The so-called “new country” is just a classic rock’n roll wanna be. I absolutely _hate_ their name dropping just to make a rhyme or another line in the damn song. But that’s just me: I’m 61 and I love the old-style Hank Williams, Buck Owens, Conway and Junior Samples! Junior Samples!!! BR-549, y’all! Q ---
**Author:** ![Double\_Foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85e7bf/32.png) [@Double\_Foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Double_Foolscap)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/82 "2011-02-25T09:57:31Z")
That song’s by Brad Paisley? I’m sad now ☹ Oh well, there has to be one duff song in an album. If you country fans looked at my iPod, you’d probably be equal parts horrified and gratified. I’ve given up trying to work out what country music is, the same way I’ve given up trying to work out what rock and metal music are. I’ll just stick with what I like, and roll my eyes (internally) when people ask why I like “country” music. It’s worse in the UK, as people seem to zero in on one song that they hate, and decide _all_ country is like that. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/83 "2011-02-25T11:01:20Z")
George Strait & Alan Jackson with [Murder On Music Row](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Vrur_ewM). At one of those award shows that probably featured mostly crap… Somebody upthread mentioned Ralph Emory. Let’s hear what [Jason & The Scorchers](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGhvnDoovlQ) had to say about him. Earlier version [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzBeV7l8bnY). ---
**Author:** ![Eutychus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Eutychus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eutychus)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/84 "2011-02-25T11:35:12Z")
> [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](#): > > Give me bluegrass, Patsy Cline, Hank Sr., Johnnie Cash, Jimmy Dean, Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson. According to my Dad, Bluegrass is the ONLY kind of country music. But, it does say a bit about the state of bluegrass music as well when the best selling bluegrass album is by … Steve Martin. Don’t get me wrong … it’s a great album! But where are the new bluegrass artists coming from? ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/85 "2011-02-25T11:46:16Z")
You might be surprised, **spark240** , how many southerners this cultural bigot counts as close friends. I’ll grant you though, that none of them wishes the Confederacy won the Civil War. I wouldn’t want to be friends with any Germans who wish the Allies had won WW2 either. And a very important point: I didn’t say the my song parody bombed. I said nobody figured out it was a joke. ---
**Author:** ![Ca3799](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9f8e36/32.png) [@Ca3799](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ca3799)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/86 "2011-02-25T11:51:41Z")
I really dislike the country songs that take some old, tired, cliche and then just repeat it far too many times. For example, The Judds (I know it’s an older one but I don’t listen to much country) “Why Not Me”. I think they say ‘why not me’ about 47 times in that one song. Ugh. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/87 "2011-02-25T11:52:09Z")
Axis, not Allies. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/88 "2011-02-25T12:54:06Z")
> [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](#): > > Give me bluegrass, Patsy Cline, Hank Sr., Johnnie Cash, Jimmy Dean, Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson. Texas Tornados, 16 Horsepower, Loretta Lynn, Dixie Chicks (God I love Sin Wagon. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQlHpT\_-IV4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQlHpT_-IV4) ), Flatt & Scruggs, Hank III… (Don’t talk to me bout Jr.) Someone give me ten modern CDs to buy, would you? And tell me why I want 'em. Edit: Oh, yeah. Drive By Truckers and Toby Keith. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/89 "2011-02-25T14:49:20Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > The Confederacy was not akin to the Third Reich Bullshit. As I was corrected in another thread, the Civil War happened because Lincoln was elected. Not because he was an abolitionist, but because he represented the possibility the North outlawing slavery by simply out voting the south. So in other words Southerners choose to have the blood on their hands of 618,000 war dead to preserve the right of plantation slavers to keep people as if they were property, mutilating, abusing, and raping them at will. Now a plantation isn’t as bad a concentration camp, but they are both degrees of the same thing. Further bigotry against Blacks was propagated into living memory in the name of “southern tradition”, which to this day insists on flying the flag of traitors responsible for 618,000 American deaths, and flew for bigotry. So yeah, I don’t find Southern Culture very compelling. Take a look at a sample of the [bigotry](http://www.tallahassee.com/legacy/special/boycott/dimes.html) southern culture had during the Civil Rights movement. Apparently integrated schools were actually a terrifying thing to them. Apparently Xenophobia against anything different that they thought the prospect of integrated schools was just like daily groin shots. This is same Xenophobia country music seems to promote. Ether you’re a good old boy from the south, or trash. However rather than promote bigotry against modern southerners for the sins of their forebears I’ll include this quote from my link. > [@](#): > > The seat-assignment ordinance, which allowed de facto segregation, apparently was never specifically repealed. But it was considered wiped from the books when the private bus company was sold to the city in 1973. > > Today, the Tallahassee mayor, city manager and police chief are black, and more than two dozen blacks have been elected to office in Leon County. Today, 70 percent of the city’s more than 130 bus drivers are minorities. So southerners as a people aren’t hateful when they learn to accept people who are different. Which country music does not generally do. There’s a lot of good people in the south, as in most places. They don’t deserve the same brush modern country music does. ---
**Author:** ![heatmiserfl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/df705f/32.png) [@heatmiserfl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heatmiserfl)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/90 "2011-02-25T14:55:03Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > I _understood_ **F.U.**'s point, I just think he’s wrong. And so are you. The Confederacy was not akin to the Third Reich That’s right. Slave owners would never gas their slaves. Slaves were expensive! (unless, of course they ran away too often) I don’t really like country but I’ve always liked Willie, Dwight Y and Lyle L. Of course, everyone loves Patsy Cline. She’s not really even country. She’s just Patsy Cline. And Lyle? I don’t know what he is either. He’s just Lyle. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/91 "2011-02-25T14:55:14Z")
cultural biases aside, is there really that much distance, thematically, between Chopin’s _Military Polonaise_ or Shostakovitch’s _Lenningrad Symphony_, and the typical Country Pop post-9/11 “Don’t Mess with Texas, Y’all Towelheads?” ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/92 "2011-02-25T15:12:13Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > More to the point of this discussion, the song is neither intended nor received (by people who like Hank Williams, Jr.) as having racist or hateful connotations. . That’s right. It’s a song about the tarriff. ---
**Author:** ![Wheelz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wheelz/32/5718_2.png) [@Wheelz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheelz)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/93 "2011-02-25T15:25:59Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > cultural biases aside, is there really that much distance, thematically, between Chopin’s _Military Polonaise_ or Shostakovitch’s _Lenningrad Symphony_, and the typical Country Pop post-9/11 “Don’t Mess with Texas, Y’all Towelheads?” Posts like this are why I love this place. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/94 "2011-02-25T15:34:37Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > I didn’t say the my song parody bombed. I said nobody figured out it was a joke. I’d say if it was meant to be a joke and wasn’t understood as a joke, that’s a bomb. Whatever. I don’t think this is the thread for another full go round at the general Civil War and slavery material. I’ve done it before, I’ll likely do it again, but not presently. There’s other things to say about country music, good and bad. “If the South Woulda Won” by Hank Williams, Jr., is not hurting anyone and doesn’t mean to. If you can’t see that, it’s you, your ideology that’s in your eyes, not ours. I don’t know what else I can say. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/95 "2011-02-25T15:36:52Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > cultural biases aside, is there really that much distance, thematically, between Chopin’s _Military Polonaise_ or Shostakovitch’s _Lenningrad Symphony_, and the typical Country Pop post-9/11 “Don’t Mess with Texas, Y’all Towelheads?” I guess not. I hate that crap as much as you do. All y’all. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/96 "2011-02-25T15:37:01Z")
> [@Dag\_Otto](#): > > Why do you hate America? Do you have any idea how dumb that sounds? And, yes, I know you think you’re being ironic. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/97 "2011-02-25T16:01:19Z")
“Ninety per cent of everything is crap.” – **Theodore Sturgeon** ---
**Author:** ![SeldomSeen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@SeldomSeen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeldomSeen)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/98 "2011-02-25T16:04:09Z")
> [@missred](#): > > Most of today’s top 40 country is aimed at suburban conservatives in the Bible belt wanting to have their version of badass and Jesus all wrapped up in one genre. > > BTW, I love most of Brad Paisley’s music (fantastic guitarist), but hate that particular song too. You’ve nailed it. Country music went south (bad pun) 20 years ago or more. I never listen to the Nashville crap any more. I still have an abiding affinity for the genre however, and there’s actually quite a lot of good stuff out there still…it’s just moved to minor labels and to some extent to other genres. Alt. country, contemporary folk, Americana. You have artists like John Prine, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, Ry Cooder. And a good many senior artists are making the best music of their careers. Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Ian Tyson, Johnny Cash just before his passing…fantastic music that hardly ever gets airplay although some of it hardly fits the definition of "country. Interesting that Brad Paisley is getting so much mention here, both positive and negative. As I said, I never listen to mainstream country, but my teenage son does. Not long ago I overheard him playing a Brad Paisley song that ALMOST restored my faith in country music - at least for awhile: [Brad Paisley & Allison Krause - Whiskey Lullaby](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gV3g9LCvPc) This one, I think, has all the attributes of a genuine country classic…and I mean that in a good way. Of course, teaming up with Allison Krause gave it an edge of respectability, she has a solid record of artistic accomplishment. _“She placed the bottle to her head and pulled the trigger/ She finally drank away his memory.”_ That’s country. The lyrics & the tune have a touch of class. Maybe there’s hope for Nashville yet. SS ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/99 "2011-02-25T16:08:59Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Most so-called “country” music I hear nowadays is just mediocre pop-rock that happens to feature a “southern” accent and has lyrics about “country” related things. If you took away the singer, leaving just the instrumentals, there would really be nothing distinctively “country” about it. > > We’ve come to the point where “country” really describes the _packaging_ of the music, and not really the music itself. Sadly, you are entirely right. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495/100 "2011-02-25T16:09:56Z")
> [@NDP](#): > > I’m at a loss on this as well. How often is cancer referred to in country songs? Off the top of my head, the only songs I can think of that directly mention cancer are some old ones by Lou Reed and Harry Nilssen and they’re _definitely_ not country singers. My problem is I can’t relate to the artist’s suggestion that cancer is something we’d all be trying to sing about, if not for the repressive, anti-country forces who censor us. Cancer? Really? He could have at least picked something political like guns, sex, or weed. But maybe I’m missing something important. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-officially-lost-all-tolerance-for-country-music/572495.md?page=6)