Country music holds a sacred place in my heart. Being raised on it, identifying with it, rebelling against it (when I was going to be a rock & roll star) and rediscovering it, country music has been the rampart of my musical legacy. Listening to a group of players around a campfire and listening to my dad play the harmonica along with those guys brings back some of the most memorable moments of my youth. I knew I wanted to be able to do that as well. Unfortunately, my path has strayed hither and yon from those halcyon events. I will venture away from those old tunes for some time, but then I will hear one in the grocery store or as I change channels on the radio in the car or see one of the umpteen infomercials with the iconic TIME/LIFE stamp on it as they have assembled the best compilation of songs you have ever heard. If you don’t think so, they’ll give you your money back! But these tunes are now classics and have been replaced with the drivel of boyband-like groups, kids barely shaving (yeah, boys AND girls) and the annoying repition of the same melody and subject matter from song to song.
If I hear one more song on country radio about some girl shakin’ her stuff in the bed of his truck while he plays his guitar and drinks beer, I’m going on a roadtrip to wrap that guitar around his neck. Let’s hear another pandered tune about how empowered some girl is because she got cheated on. “YEAH! GIRL POWER! I’m gonna write ANOTHER song about how my boyfriend is a piece of trash…I’ll fix him! I’ll stack him up with all the others that have treated me so badly.” Hey Honey…know what the common denominator is in all of your damaged relationships? YOU! Speaking of pandering, how many songs are gonna be written for a specific fundraiser? Are they helping bullied kids, homeless people, the disenfranchised? Sure and that’s great, but it feels like pandering to the audience so they will receive adoration. The true feeling of altruism is suspect and downright icky! The latest is Hunter Hayes, who may be a multi-instrumentalist but cannot write or sing…so the pandering is there to help us overlook his shortcomings as performer. Not to mention he looks like a pug trying to pass a peach pit when he sings. He struggles so hard to project his voice that he appears to be going into convulsions. You have Lonestar, that died an unmerciful death when their lead sing left. Country music? They were singing about crayons and sippy cups, for Pete’s sake! Waylon is rolling over in his grave! Then we have the ultimate insult, Rascal Flatts. The boy band headed up by a nasal-driven narcissist that had the audacity to change his last name to LeVox or Latin for The Voice. One more over produced boy band act that has no more business in country music than N-Sync.
Next up, we have the hard charging rebels, the tattoed bad boys that drag the bill of their ball caps so low you can’t see their eyes or they have sunglasses on…all the time. All of their music sounds the same from one to the next, driven by a tuned down distorted guitar, because they are edgy and outlaw. They are so interchangeable that I can’t even list you their names. I was hopeful for Blake Shelton but he hasn’t put out anything original since he formed his behind to the end seat on The Voice. Thank God for his wife, Miranda Lambert. She knows how to write and stay country. What scares me is these “outlaws” can’t even put out any good Southern Rock. The radio airplay is ridiculously void of talent. They just have the A & R people pick their music or have them “write” with someone to develop another clone song and they move about Music Row, as such as it has become and the creativity is gone. It appears the integrity of Music Row has evaporated and the quality of the product is secondary to filling the pockets of record executives.
With the advent of this new found direction by Nashville, we see they are beginning to leak country rap artists into the mix. This is a deliberate step of advancing “artists” that only rap and do not sing, in an effort to woo younger listeners to country radio. CRap, as I call it, is not new but it was a very minute feature to country music. Spoken word tunes and interludes and songs were always integrated into the music. One of country’s biggest hits, “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” by The Charlie Daniels Band is essentially a rap tune, but it was one tune out of all the tunes CDB released. Starting a few years ago with cowboy troy of the Music Mafia crew, more recently Colt Ford who has been “tutoring” Jason Aldean and currently Big Smo with his own reality t.v. series, the idiocy of CRap is permeating an institution of tradition.
Country music has always had its share of characters, suspect lyrics and subject matter, but it still stood for basic morals and ethics. This is the music of the hillbilly, the redneck, the cowboy and the barfly; but it still stood for doing the right thing and trying to uphold the heart of music. Today’s role models across the entertainment board are examples of bad behavior, low moral standards and the acceptance of less than best effort; however, traditional country music has been represented by singers like Merle Haggard, “The Working Man;” Hank Williams wrote “I Saw the Light” and George Jones loved her ‘til he died when “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Music of the everyday, with the struggles and triumphs of the people that make this country operate. I miss the days of grand aspiration, when our youth looked forward to growing up and working toward impactful goals, beyond making it to the next level in Grand Theft Auto and expecting to be given a $50,000 a year job directly out of school. Nashville, please bring back the missing genre of Adult Contemporary Music, I don’t need to share it with the kids.
