And Faith Hill IIRC.
Total speculation here, but that’s probably when the pop-ification of country really hit home.
Country skewed rightward long before 9/11.
1999 is about the time my interest in music started waning. I never gave it much thought until recently.
Could have been my perception at the time. I was a teenager and the only country I listened to was the more pop-oriented stuff like from Shania Twain and The Chicks, and also older artists like Johnny Cash.
‘Going in distinctly more’ and ‘skewing toward’ aren’t mutually exclusive at all.
That was around the when the older country “outlaws” like nelsons jennings hank jr ect influence waned and the record companies used it to regain control of the songwriting and a lot of the songs came from Scooter Brauns group and the like in fact if I remember reading somewhere 80 percent of the songs back then were written by the same dozen or so people so it all started to sound the same … like rock in the 70s did until punk came along
This. Pop music from 1999 through the present day all sounds the same to me. That was the year when, at least as I remember it, the style dominated by artists like Alanis Morissette, Paula Cole, Lisa Loeb, Natalie Imbruglia, (a 3 year period lasting from ‘96 through ‘98) and so on gave way to the Backstreet Boys, NSync, Brittney Spears, Jessica Simpson, and so on. Prior to that, it seems like musical styles changed every few years.
Since 1999? Nothing, at least nothing that my ear can detect. Sure, the names changed, NSync gave way to One Direction and then a solo Harry Styles, Jessica Simpson gave way to Arianna Grande and Miley Cyrus, and so on, but the style stayed the same.
I blame the internet for fracturing the listening audience into smaller groups. Once that happened, the large mass of people all agreeing that any new attempts to become the new dominant style no longer existed. As such, attempts fizzled out rather than gaining traction with the public at large, which was now fractured rather than having a few large blocks.
Presumably the same thing happened to country music.
There are country songs with patriotic themes long pre-dating 1999, including “Ragged Old Flag” (Johnny Cash), “America” (Waylon Jennings) and “Remember the Alamo” (recorded by numerous folk and country artists, including Willie Nelson).
To me, country is just as unlistenable now as it ever was. The hits by male singers are maundering, unmelodic but lower in twang; songs by female singers have “improved” in the sense that you can almost imagine some of them being relatively young (in the olden days I pictured them from their voices as all being in their forties, having endured many years of excess smoking and drinking).
I turned to country music in the early 90s because (1) my very Southern wife was a big fan and (2) I found it to be “the last refuge of melody and story” on radio. Post-1996, it all went to hell in the proverbial handbasket.
I can’t believe Haggard wrote Okie From Muskogee unironically. I always thought it was tongue in cheek. It’s written like a satire, at least, even if it wasn’t.
I think it was. It’s just that many of its listeners didn’t pick up on it.
This is about what happened with me. I was complaining to a friend that the pop oldies stations I was listening to just played the same songs over and over, and I didn’t care for what was playing on the contemporary music stations. He recommended the local country station, with the comment that “current country music is where decent rock music went and hid.” Since I had been (and still am) a fan of older country music anyway, I tried it and liked it.
Haggard’s explanation of what the song is about is a little confusing:
“When I was in prison, I knew what it was like to have freedom taken away. Freedom is everything. During Vietnam, there were all kinds of protests. Here were these [servicemen] going over there and dying for a cause—we don’t even know what it was really all about. And here are these young kids, that were free, bitching about it. There’s something wrong with that and with [disparaging] those poor guys.”
So Haggard says the song is about supporting the troops in Vietnam.
But what does that have to do with freedom? The protesters that Haggard was unhappy with were all in favor of freedom. They wanted to be free themselves (including being free to protest the war). They wanted the American troops to come home and be demobilized, which would have meant freedom for them. And they wanted the Vietnamese people to be free to work out their own problems without outside interference.
To be fair, Haggard would later say his views had changed.
I watch the Ken Burns PBS series on country music, UNTIL they got to the 1980s. At that point, I completely lost interest because the accompanying music was so dang bland.
Maybelle Carter is probably the greatest female guitarist who ever lived.
Finally got indoor plumbing?
Your dog comes back to life, your truck starts, you get out of jail, your wife comes back home and all your money comes back to you. Made for boring songs.
Y2K … … 
This is also my experience, also adding on the homogenization of the R&B charts happened roughly the same time as pop and country. I was heavily into many genres of music over that time, and a regular concert goer, and it felt like an avalanche of unsalted mashed potatoes landed on the industry across nearly all genres. I was fortunately in an area with several overlapping college radio stations (and Napster!) so I could chase new music and genres separately from Billboard offerings.
I’m coming around to this as the answer.
Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, etc. There is still good country music but you won’t hear it on your FM dial. The shit you hear on your typical country radio station is just that, shit. Bro country is a new term for me but it fits.
What he said 