Is country music getting more glurgey?

Cafe Society
1

Driving across the country this past week, I passed through many a radio wasteland, where the only stations that would make their way to the car receiver are … well, just country.

Old country music themes included pickup trucks, railroads, prison, eighteen wheelers, the West, and so on. However, the country music I heard had themes of patriotism, Christianity, and the family. Most songs sounded like slightly rewritten glurge stories. the sort middle-aged administrative assistants send to everybody they know.

So … is popular country music really getting “glurgier?” If so, why?

2

Even though I’m primarily into jazz and rock and their offshoots, I love old country music, stuff like Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline, twangy honky tonk ballads and sexy torch songs. It is a real shame that mainstream country acts have strayed so far from their roots.

I work at an office in north central Florida, essentially the Deep South, where most of the secretaries are small-town Southern women. They all listen to country music, but to them it’s all about meatheads in giant hats, divas in belly shirts, and anthems to family values and jingoism. They love Garth and Toby and Shania and the Chicks, and when I asked them, they thought Kenny Rogers was the “chicken-place owner,” and they couldn’t name a single Johnny Cash song.

I am currently getting into alternative country music (sometimes referred to as “y’allternative”), and interestingly enough, much of it draws influence from the old stuff, the classics. Neko Case is a gorgeous girl singer who conjures up Patsy Cline, Ryan Adams is country music’s sensitive and soulful answer to Morrissey, and the Sadies are an instrumental band that owe their sound to Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western soundtracks and their style to Quentin Tarantino’s gangster movies.

In addition, there is Western swing, which was a natural progression for me since I love swing and big band music. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys popularized this in the ‘40s, but today we have Asleep At the Wheel carrying on the tradition. Even Lyle Lovett and Willie Nelson have recorded with swingin’ big bands.

Mike Ness, former singer of punk band Social Distortion, mixes country influences with rock, punk, and folk music for a rootsy retro sound some call “cowpunk.” And of course there is sweet, sweet rockabilly and its angry cousin, psychobilly. There is plenty of good music out there in the country vein, but you’ll be hard-pressed to hear it on country music radio or CMT, or to find “country fans” who appreciate it.

3

Yep.

I used to think I hated “country” music.

I have lived in Texas all my life, but I don’t think I even heard a real country song until I was about 17, courtesy of this station. This little excerpt from their website sums up the problem nicely:

And they are right. It is all about the money, I think. Labels try to make their songs appeal to the masses so they create songs that touch on sentiments of most people, like the resurgence of patriotism that happened after 9/11.

Today’s so-called “country music” is virtually indistinguishable from anything your hear on pop radio stations, which in most cases is probably owned by the same company.

It is just sad.

4

Yes, it is, and very much so. Quite possibly, it’s largely the working of Clear Channel. I’d guess that 1998 or so is the last year that real traditional country had a good foothold.

5

I’d say the trend goes further back, but I agree. I saw an article in the NY Times Magazine last year talking about how the O Brother Where Are THou? soundtrack had sold 4 million copies despite virtually no airplay on mainstream commercial radio. It pointed out that the key demographic group for country radio was middle class working mothers in their 30s. That was who the stations programmed for, and aimed their advertising at. Programmers and station managers weren’t going to allow anything played that might alienate that audience. The article also said that country may be the popular music format in the US in terms of number of stations playing it, but that the percentage of stations losing money was also huge. Sounds like oversaturation to me.

So this is why country music is full of identical “hat acts”, country divas with heavy pop leanings, and bland groups like Lonestar and Dimond Rio.

Where are the cheating songs? Songs about getting drunk and the hangovers, not just going out to the bar? Where are the novelty tunes, not just Cletus T. Judd parodies or the hat act of the moment singing a boring chours in between bits from the stand up routines of Jeffy Foxworthy or Bill Engval?Where are the story songs like “Carroll County Accident” or “A Week In A Country Jail”? Where are the songs about eccentric characters like “Amos Moses” or “Marie Laveau”?

Instead we get Brooks and Dunn warbling whatever faceless crap they call a song this week, I can’t tell any of their songs apart anymore. Tim McGraw trying to sing through his cheek to sound sincere. Shania Twain and her husband doing to country music what he helped do to metal and rock: make it sound like Bryan Adams. Toby Keith trying to piss pure testosterone on every overbearing tune.

6

Country music today is essentially what The Eagles were playing back in the mid '70’s.

7

This is exactly why I stopped listening to country music in the mid-nineties. It’s all turned into sappy crap about how much the singer loved his father and I can’t stand it anymore.

8

Yes, present day country music is in a sad state. There’s still a few people that represent but it’s mostly evolved into a beast known as "the country music business. That of course sucks it dry of it’s heart and soul. I find the notion of multi-millionaires singing packaged and overproduced songs about what it means to be country repellant. Bluegrass is a little easier on the country sensibilities these days.

9

Without a doubt. Some if it goes so far as to actually be based on real, genuine glurge. Somebody (Randy Travis? John Michael Montgomery?) has a song that’s based on the story about the little girl who hides behind the house while her parents kill each other and later sees Jesus. Someone else (Joe Nichols?) has a song based on the glurge about passing on good fortune (woman with flat tire, helped by nice guy who doesn’t want her money, so she gives it as an extra big tip to a pregnant waitress who turns out to be married to original nice guy, so he gets it anyway).

I second/third/fourth/whatever the suggestion to stay away from mainstream country in favour of more alt.country/no depression stuff. Neko Case is my favourite artist, in all her various bands, but most especially solo and belting out Furnace Room Lullaby. I’m seeing the New Pornographers, one of the various that leans more to power pop than country, in July, and I’m sure it’s going to be a kick ass show.

About the only really mainstream country I can handle these days are Alan Jackson, Brad Paisley and the Chicks (who are surprisingly traditional, despite their tremendous popular appeal). I listen to about 15 minutes of country radio a day in between hitting the snooze button and that’s more than enough.

10

I’ve never been a country fan, and only listen to country stations when there’s a special like the two-day coverage of Chet Atkins’s funeral with a retrospective of his career and influence. Thus, I have very little to contribute to this topic except to say that the “old stuff” was better than 90% of the new stuff.

Johnny Cash
George Jones
Eddy Arnold
Ray Price
Ferlin Husky
Faron Young

That period when country and folk were swapping artists, songs and licks was okay.

The portion of country that merged with jazz (dubbed Dawg Grass) was/is acceptable to my tastes.

And the era that produced Roger Miller, Ray Stevens, Jerry Reed, Glen Campbell, John Hartford, and maybe a dozen others who were just as strong in the “pop” sector, was the last era I really dug enough to listen to.

Nowadays, unless it’s on some special like that tribute to Willie Nelson the other night, I just stay away from it.

11

Yeah, I think a lot of country sucks lately, but I still think Randy Travis, Alan Jackson and George Strait and Toby Keith are awesome.

There’s a Saturday evening radio show called “Country Gold” that my husband and I listen to every weekend. They play the classic country songs. It’s such a good show. I am a really big fan of the classics.

12

I’m a big fan of “alternative country”, though I’m not sure what I think of the term. How can acts like BR5-49 and Junior Brown be “alternative”? Resurrect Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, and Gram Parsons, play them a BR5-49 record and a Shania Twain record, and ask them to tell you which one is “country”. They’d probably all guess wrong, turn on the local Clear Channel country crap station, listen for about five minutes, and beg you to kill them again.

(This phenomenon is not exclusive to country–I can’t imagine a much more straight-ahead rock band than Pearl Jam, yet they will forever be labeled as “alternative”.)

Personally, I blame Garth Brooks, which is odd, because I like Garth. However, he was the first big mega-star of country music who was more pop than country, and all the Hat Acts since have owed less to Hank, Waylon, Willie, and Johnny and more to Garth and the Eagles. (I think a similar case can be made with women and Reba McEntire.)

I generally have nothing against progress in music, but sometimes progress moves in crappy directions.

(Oh, and the guy who did that “Have You Forgotten?” song, whose name I neither know nor care to know, is high on my Up Against the Wall when the Revolution Comes list, right behind Lee Greenwood.)

Dr. J

13

That would be Darryl Worley.

14

And that would be about as glurge as glurge can get.

15

I don’t know what glurge is
but I know it when I hear it.

“Don’t take the Girl”

16

Hie thee to Bloodshot Records and Blind Nello for some real country.

17

Steve Earle (one of the original “alt-country rockers”) once said, “If Hank Williams were alive today, he couldn’t get a record deal in Nashville.” Too true and so sad.

18

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the people responsible for the mediocre “country” music of today the same people responsible for the bad pop music of the 1970’s?

19

You mean consumers, Gov’nor?

20

I live in Nashville, I agree most of what passes for country music is watered down pop and is utter crap. What I’ve seen lately is a bunch of people who move here who couldn’t make it in L.A. or NY so they go ‘country’… what is even sadder than that is that after a few years of not making it in country they join a mega-church and try to go contemporary christian. ;>