Having ignored traditional FM radio for the better part of 10 years, I’m typically behind the times on what sells as “popular” music these days. I typically don’t know who the “big” acts in metal, alternative, top 40 or country are and I am fine with that. I like what I like and find it through friends, music blogs and sometimes TV ads. Sadly, I came across what is currently being pedaled as “country” music and…
WOW is it bad!
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love me some country. I like the legends. I enjoy George Jones, Buck Owens, Roger Miller, Merle Haggard, Little Jimmie Dickens, Waylon Jennings…I like some of the 80’s/90’s stuff like Dwight Yoakam, Keith Whitley, Alan Jackson and Mark Chestnut. I can even stomach some Zac Brown Band from time to time.
What I cannot tolerate is this so-called Bro-Country trend. My goodness, it is embarrassingly bad. If you don’t know what or who I am talking about, do yourself a favor and keep your bro-country virginity. Nothing to see here…. If you do know what i am talking about (and you find it as appalling as I do) then you can understand my writing this as therapy in an effort to expunge it from my memory.
From what I can tell, this whole thing got started with “Big & Rich” and was further propagated down the overpopulated road of mediocrity by the likes of “Florida Georgia Line”, “Luke Bryan” and “Jason Aldean” (just to name a few). Unfortunately, with sales figures like these “artists” are getting, you can bet that the country music industry machine has the mold complete and will keep cranking ’em out as long as people are buying. With its auto tuned lyrics, club beats and regurgitated lyrics about trucks, elicit sex and cold bear, it’s better served as a soundtrack to the movie “Idiocracy” than legit music.
Hat tip to President Camacho.
Folks, this is not country music. Genre aside, this is not even good music. I am all for a guilty pleasure now and then (e.g. for me, the more recent hit “Blurred Lines” and the more vintage “Groove is in the Heart”) however those songs fit into the genre for which they were intended. It appears that post modernity has now even bull dozed it’s way into music, stripping any and all absolute truth away from words associated with things as benign as musical genre’s.
From what I have read, there is a line being drawn in the sand between traditional country artists and the industry created “Bro-Country” artists. From what I gather, traditional country artists are building their very own Maginot Line. The rift may be real, but the Traditional Country artists are impotent because they are not in the power position. The “Bro-Country” artists are here, for now anyway, because that is what the instant gratification seeking population wants, buys, and supports. The industry executives and their puppet artists are lining their pockets with the money being thrown at them by baby boomers and millennials alike. Until the population stops buying, we’re stuck with a pop/hip hop/rock/everything including the kitchen sink version of country.
Luckily for me, I’ll head back to my fortress of solitude where country is country, trucks are used to haul freight and auto-tune is reserved for hip hop artists and bad pop songs. I’ll continue to ignore the industry trends and do my best to erase every memory of FGL’s “Cruise” and Luke Bryan’s “That’s my kind of night” that have been seared into my brain.