Thank you!
Well, as for the rest of the topic, I have always been a fan of country music; I like the older stuff like Charlie Pride, George Jones, and Conway Twitty because of the sad, melancholy songs they sang and the bouncy rythms that they were accompanied by. I also like the stuff that Eddie Arnold did in the sixties; not so much the ditty-esque crooner music that he did earlier on. Not to mention, I’m a big fan of the steel guitar.
As for newer country, I’m not a huge** fan, but I do think it gets a bad wrap. Rascal Flatts is my favorite modern act, and I think they are more country than country music purists give them credit for.
Of course, I don’t listen to country music only. As a foreign language enthusiast and learner, I like a lot of music in other languages, especially reggaeton.
I don’t like country and western music. Of the old stuff, I have a lot of respect for Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton. Randy Travis is OK. But I don’t seek it out.
And if Nashville’s “country” pop is a lot of crap, well, I guess that’s Sturgeon’s Law.
In the last decade, there’s been some stuff out of Nashville that pisses me off. Lots of songs that insist that yes they really are country, even if the lyrics are vapid and devoid of story. Boring, and protesting too much. Blake Shelton is a notable offender.
Granted Johnny Cash is in the Country Music Hall of Fame and is widely seen as a country singer, but his Imdb profile has this:
“Although he could bear it, he disliked being defined as a ‘country’ artist, feeling that his music wasn’t really genre-defined and noting that he often stood well outside of the Nashville mainstream (particularly towards the end of his career). Technically, his music contains elements of rock ‘n’ roll, folk music, bluegrass, blues and gospel as well as country-style music.”
Berm strum strum, berm strum strum
spoken
Bahdoom doom doom…
first verse
Berm strum strum, berm strum strum
Strum strum (chord change) strum strum…
chorus
I have noticed that Johnny Cash’s music was very out of the ordinary for the country genre in terms of accompaniment. His most popular songs are accompanied by little more than an ordinary guitar; no fiddle, no steel guitar, no dobro, no banjo, no mandolin. In fact, the only song I have ever heard from Johnny Cash that used one of the above instruments was “Steel Guitar Rag.” Other than that, it was just his thumpitty-thump, rumble-bumble guitar picking. This is one thing that separated him from artists like George Jones and Conway Twitty.
“Country” aspects of that performance:
[ul]
[li]The song was written by Willie Nelson[/li][li]About 8 seconds of Bolton’s guitar solo[/li][li]Eddie’s hat[/li][/ul]
I love me some Supersuckers, and they do a lot of country stuff, but this link ain’t it.
If I had to guess, I’d imagine that the singer is suggesting that some country songs willingly addresses cancer as a theme (Tim McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying;” Rascal Flatts’ “Skin”) and, he believes, other genres do not.
I don’t know how true this is, though. I think those same country fans that nod self-righteously at this sentiment would sneer at opera, but Mimi has been expiring from consumption onstage for more than a hundred years. Granted, not literally cancer, but…
Living in the rural South, my country music exposure is high. I was half listening to some of the latest bro-country in the grocery store the other day when I realized why so much of it sounds so familiar.
It’s no surprise that modern country of this sort owes as much to rock and pop as real country, but it’s way more specific than that. It’s Bon Jovi. Take the later, crappier tracks from Bon Jovi, add a hat and a few Telecaster licks, and you have bro-country. I don’t think there’s a bigger single influence on country radio today.
I also share the OP’s hatred for the superior attitude on display in modern radio country. Everybody hates on hipsters and NPR liberal types because they supposedly think they’re better than everybody else, but I know plenty of both and not many of them think that way, and even fewer would ever say so. When every other Decemberists song is explicitly about how people who live in Portland and wear chunky glasses are just superior people, then we’ll talk.
In this thread alone, there’s plenty of the dismissive, superior attitude against country music and country folk displayed. On this board, there’s plenty more. The music preferred by liberal NPR hipsters itself may not communicate the disdain, but the “flyover” people are not imagining it.
Jes’ like ol’ Doc Holliday! If that don’t make Law Bo-Hee-Mi country, I don’t know what would! Ol’ Joe Green’s Opry is jes’ GRAND. They ought to put him up on that stage in Nashville with Minnie, and Patsy, and Little Jimmy Dickens!
You know where we hear Johnny Cash in our market? On the hard rock station. I don’t just mean his recent covers of popular music. I heard Ring of Fire the other day. My kid knew all the words. I was surprised.
Oh, I like country music just fine. Just not much of anything commercial in the last 30 years or so for the reasons listed in this thread. But honestly I’d rather listen to something like bluegrass instead.
Townes Van Zandt.
“Country” music.
Nevermind anyone’s hangups about labels and niches.
Haven’t read through the whole thread but I’ll still add my two cents:
Glad to hear that so many posters share my assessment of what is labeled “country” these days. It’s mostly just crappy, formula rock with a twang. Unlistenable.
The last “country” album I bought was “The List” by Rosanne Cash. Great album. If you don’t know, Johnny gave Rosanne a list of 100 songs and told her to learn them. She made a selection from that list and recorded them.
And I will always say that there is nothing more soothing than a great Patsy Cline song.
In addition to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Cash was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And he and Hank Williams are the only two to be inducted into both of those and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. I would never dis the Man in Black. (Well, maybe I would for his gospel period in the 1980s.)
(my bold) I don’t think that really helps. 
What if you are a fan of pop music? By definition, it seems like you’d get all the “good stuff” on the radio.
Ha! I know this was a joke but it’s actually the truth. In the neverending quest for the next big “collaboration” hit, there have been some truly horrendous rap/country hybrids in the recent past (I’m thinking of that Nelly/Some Country Group song about cruising with the top down in their Chevy pickup). 
[slight nitpick] Hootie & The Blowfish was never anything other than a Top-40 pop music band, through and through.
(my bold) Um, what? Do you love the song or do you hate it? 
At the time, I was tempted to post defending my brother*, but damn that was some straight up crazy.
- not really, but a deranged person would not get the joke.
Hank 3 says:
And:
I liked country up to the end of the Shania Twain and Dixie Chick days, then every song became this awful tearjerker or “living in the country is great” crap. I hear the same story over and over, a singer or group gets discovered and signed to a Nashville record label and instead of being allowed to release their own material they have to put out standard pablum. Shania Twain and Jamey Johnson are two artists that happened to, their first albums that didn’t have their material were not good, and their second albums were great.
But outside the Nashville labels there is still plenty of old and new outlaw, hellbilly, and alternative country out there, you just don’t hear it on the radio. Start with an open mind and Hank 3 on YouTube and go from there. Try Jamey Johnson, Lucinda Williams, Hasil Adkins, Joe Buck, Wayne Hancock, and Those Poor Bastards.