Let's be honest, David Allan Coe nailed it years and years ago. Country music, save for a few rare instances and stars (Lynn and Cash come right to mind), rarely sing about subjects with a lot of depth. edit: always call him Cole, but it is Coe. Just cannot get my brain to remember that.
Add the phrase: modern 'country' to the title and I'm with you 100%. This new stuff is terrible. It's not country. At. All. My biggest contention is that there's so many cowboy hats & boots today, but I guarantee that 90% of these fakes have never stepped in their first pile of cow shit. Or owned a truck. It's techno-country for the ADD generation, if I may borrow a phrase from Hat. But I'll fight a man that says George Jones is awful. The guy lived his songs. And they are awesome.
A little harsh, but no music in any genre today is as good as it was 20+ years ago. It's all about entertainment today, because you have to keep people paying attention. I listened to classic rock for years, because I loved the music, and most of all the guitar solos. I just recently switched to listening to country, because it's much more palletable than the other shit playing today. The stuff they call R&B today, is a smack in the face to all the artists of Motown and all the other true R&B singers long gone.
You call it "techno-country", but is there another kind of music being made that also qualifies as "country"? I actually do like some older country music, but if all the stuff being released -- or has been released over the past decade -- that now falls under the umbrella of the term "country music" is terrible, then country music is terrible. There's no turning back.
That's just dumb. Music didn't start sucking; you just got old. I actually think 2013 was a FANTASTIC year for music. I know, because I listen to new stuff. The only people who say new music sucks are the ones who don't listen to it. And, yes sir, I'll get off your lawn immediately.
And with modern satellite and internet radio, it is very easy cloister yourself in your favorite era of music (early 80's being mine, specifically the best year of music ever, 1983).
Don't really get that either. There's good music out there. I also might be in the minority, but I've found a lot of the "mainstream" songs this year have been a lot more listenable than in previous years. I could barely listen to the radio at all last year.
I agree. There were several pop songs this year that I thought were excellent. Blurred Lines being an obvious example. #beautiful by Mariah Carey being another. I don't listen to the radio -- like at all -- so I don't really pay a ton of attention to what's popular and what's not. I just try to find what's good, and if that happens to be the popular stuff, then that's great. Good music shouldn't be inaccessible. Hipsters are *******s.* *I certainly like some of the music that hipsters like, but I still think they're *******s, and missing the point.
Calling country music of today "country" is sort of similar to calling the pop music of today "rock'n'roll" While there probably is more divergence in the latter, it is still a fair comparison. In fact - in American music (not counting the British rock bands which really dominated) country and rock are not much different. - I think guys like Hank Williams Sr., Marty Robbins, and others have more in common with shit like Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys and Grateful Dead then they do with Big and Rich and whatever pop country artists are big nowadays. With the fractured music scenes of the last 30 years they call old school country music (or more specifically its direct descendants) "roots" music or Americana or something else like that.
Florida-Georgia line is basically taking Scott Stapp, throwing a couple hoop earrings in, a leather bracelet, chain wallet, having him sing about dirt roads and river sides and calling it country. The video is spot on. In fact, i'm stunned Scott Stapp hasn't "gone country", yet.
The sound coming out of Texas-Oklahoma is more in line with what I think country should be. Here is a link to some bands from that area. Hell, a lot of this sounds more like folk music but at least they're about the music and less glitter. http://www.txrdr.com/ It's Nashville that has ****ed up country music all these years.
This. The "things were better in the good old days" idea has been around for ages for anything imaginable. That doesn't make it true.
