Country Music

i used to like it, now I hate because it sounds nothing close to the classic, anything from Alabama, and no, no she doesn't

 

It's among my least favorite genres of music, mostly because of how limited its scope of subject matter is. Country music seems to only be about four topics (which in my experience are only slightly different than Wizard suggested, but close enough I say we still agree): alcohol (not just beer. Sometimes it's whiskey! Or if it's a lady singing it, fruit-flavored wine!), trucks, heartbreak (but every genre has that), and country lifestyle itself. It is so self-referential I have to wonder if its entire modern existence is a self-parody. I mean when you have a hit song called "this is country music", that's got to be a symptom of something. Okay, yeah, we metal-heads have turned metal into an adjective ("you played guitar so fast and so long your fingers started bleeding all over the frets and you kept on playing? That is so metal!" For another example, watch any episode at all of Metalocalypse), but we use that as a externally useful descriptor of our subculture, not a central load-bearing self-supporting non-structure on which our subculture is built.

To help supplement my point about it being a limited genre, check out this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o

 

the hate! the stereotypes! the anti-country music is overwhelming!!!
Plz guys...

I love country music. I say that in a very not-surface level way. Country music, to me, had a golden era of music. Songs were not always about beer, girls, trucks, and moonlight nights. There are actually a ton of very heartfelt songs, fun songs, meaningful songs of country music that are out there. I absolutely love the stories told in the lyrics of many of these songs. Others are incredibly meaningful and convey a beautiful message. You just have to find songs from the right time period, my favorites are from around the early 2000's to about 2010. Following that, country music took a huge swing to the bad. Songs became predominantly about the stereotypes- beer girls and trucks. They sold though, so more and more artists keep coming out with this crap and people somehow buy it. I draw a very distinct line between the good country and the bad... sadly its mostly bad country you'll hear on the radio, and thus i can't hardly listen to country radio anymore because it sucks butt. Please know there is good meaningful country music out there, and I'd love to hook you up with a few good songs if you want

 

I have a soft spot for 80's and 90's country, actually--had Alabama on repeat very often, but their 7 minute long live version of Tennessee River is still awesome all these years later.

 

Right, you got me. I forgot to mention earlier...

And you lost me. I was about to say that I forgot to mention that I also acknowledge there was a really good timeframe of country music, it's just that you and I are disagreeing on which timeframe that was. In my opinion (and yours is still perfectly valid), the peak of country music was around the peak of Johnny Cash and during the era of his lingering influence on the music. I'm no scholar of the genre, but it seems like shortly after that, country seemed to try to change itself to fit in with other successful genres. First it was a change toward blues (which are pretty close already, like rock and metal maybe are), and more recently toward rock and recent pop. Part of the reason I think this is a bad thing is the contradiction of the situation: country music is/was (I don't know which is more accurate) about independence, deciding one's own life and lifestyle uninfluenced of modern changes, hence how it's so often about country lifestyle. But okay, look: [addressing=country music as if it's a person] you want(ed?) to be all about being self-sufficient and independent, and then you go and change yourself to be more like the more financially successful music types. Isn't that abandoning your principles? It's like you wanted to trade your tractor for an Escalade and almost went through with it, but opted instead for a shiny tractor with gold trim. You're still abandoning some of your principles here (callus-handed hard-work and not caring about posh city-folk life), and I think that's enough to show a negative change in your image and identity.[/addressing]

TL;DR I think there was also a golden age, just a different one, and I think its a bad thing that the genre changed. Give me a non-pop-influenced artist who writes musically technical songs about being released from prison and trying to live a good, simple, non-criminal life on the outside; or that hard work brings its own non-financial rewards (so you're not making money to spend on beer and tractors, just good work ethic for its own sake), and I'll give some of that a try.

I realize there's a similar values/attitude change with metal, only its shift is more geographical than chronological, but that's why I mostly listen to non-American metal and prefer older country to newer. Not trying to be metal-supremacist here or anything, every genre is dynamic.

 

@[member="Zero Sifr"]

No doubt Johnny Cash had some great music. My personal golden era is still the same, though. As for a change in country, no doubt it changed in the way you describe. I just draw another distinct change right around 2010, when the lyrics of songs just became empty. The catchphrases of country music started showing up in practically every song, the emotional stories disappeared, and were replaced with stories of parties and the like. The meaning in the songs were just drained. Even if the style didn't change a whole lot, the core of the songs certainly did.