Contemporary country is pure BS

My wife is watching whatever Country Music Award show of the week is on right now. Another celebration of studio-created garbage country music.

There's so much to criticize, but these posing artists crack me up.

If rap has studio gangsters, what are these tanned, glossed up by their record company assholes wearing a T-shirt and a trucker's hat called? Studio hillbillies? Don't country fans see right through this formulaic, manufactured shit?

These guys aren't even as country as I am. The next $5 case of beer they drink will be their first.

Speaking of the artists, how do country fans differentiate? I've seen three, mid-20 to mid-30s male singers so far and I'll be damned if they didn't all do the same song. OK they didn't, but they might as well have. Some came in trucker hats, some came in black cowboy hats, all came in blue jeans.

I don't even think these artists are real. They're plastic toys. Flip switch to "up-tempo" or "ballad".

Every country song is damn near the same. Three verses and chorus, the last chorus generally without musical accompanyment to make it stand out. Add a dash of steel guitar, slide guitar or fiddle for country cred, but mostly, rely on the kind of pop music conventions used in top 40 and rock.

Make sure to have faux-work-a-day, I-drink-my-beer-down-at-the-honky tonk type lyric, or, Christian 101 sentimentalism, or, I love my country girl lyric.

Either way they're as probably written by a professional songwriter in a mansion in Nashville's West End who hasn't seen in a church in their life and who prefers to go down to Nashville's Hustler Hollywood to bathe their country girl in black latex and a ball gag. OK I went too far with that, but you get the drift.

Also, for the male country artists, it's standard to make sure to include a Texas-sized helping of mugging to the camera to the female fans are fooled into thinking he's seems down-to-earth and authentic. Kenny Chesney accepted of course.

Don't get me started on Reba McIntyre, whose mere presence breaks me into hives. Or George Strait, the most crushingly boring superstar in any medium ever. Contemporary country music sucks, sucks, sucks.

What the world needs now is for George Jones to get drunk off his ass, ride his lawnmower on to the stage, start shooting a six-shooter into the ceiling, followed by a successful wooing Carrie Underwood into the sack based solely on his ability to bite a Pabst can in half.

 

And I'd listen to whatever song he wrote about it.

 

They don't see through it anymore than fans of pop music see through that genre's formulaic, manufactured shit. The entire popular music industry's existence (regardless of genre) depends on people who have no taste in music.

Your point about songs written by detached professionals is spot-on, too. There's a ton of good country and alt-country music out there, but it's all by artists who are actually, well, artists. Men and women who write their own songs. Who put in the time and effort to make the songs their own. If you have to rely on someone else to write "your" songs, you suck.

 

Can't find the lyrics for this one, but it echos the sentiments of those who hate modern country

 

That's the bitch of it. There's a LOT of good country music out there. Thank God for satellite radio that it actually has a forum now.

None of it is being celebrated on this show, though methinks Allison Krauss will appear at some point to give the show cred.

And I hate to repeat this mantra, but what is the appeal of George Strait? He's the Jim Nantz of music. Safe, boring, wooden.

 

Bubbs, I used to be into country big time in the early 90s, but the songwriting seems to have taken a backseat to styling in what is important in Nashville these days. Too many gimmick songs, songs that don't say anything ("Got up, put the coffee on, sent the kids off to school...") and an overall lack of musicianship is what's turned me off.
I still have a few faves though, Tricia Yearwood, Brad Paisley, Vince Gill, and the Dixie Chicks, but I agree, too many of the songs aren't very believable coming from the six-pack abbed or spray-tanned songsters.

 

Shania Twain killed the genre.

 

Strait? 56 number one hits. More than any other artist in any other genre. The guy's been throwing up top hits for about 30 years now.

 

She killed a lot of kittens along the way.

 

Reba McEntire during her opening monologue, referring back to her first CMA awards show in 1986:

"Back then, Roger Clemens wasn't interested in country music!"

 

I don't get George Strait either.