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
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.
George Strait & Alan Jackson with Murder On Music Row. At one of those award shows that probably featured mostly crap…
Somebody upthread mentioned Ralph Emory. Let’s hear what Jason & The Scorchers had to say about him. Earlier version here.
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?
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.
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.
Axis, not Allies.
Texas Tornados, 16 Horsepower, Loretta Lynn, Dixie Chicks (God I love Sin Wagon. 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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?”
That’s right. It’s a song about the tarriff.
Posts like this are why I love this place.
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.
I guess not. I hate that crap as much as you do. All y’all.
Do you have any idea how dumb that sounds? And, yes, I know you think you’re being ironic.
“Ninety per cent of everything is crap.” – Theodore Sturgeon
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
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
Sadly, you are entirely right.
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.