is country music an 'act'? -

[MrFloppy]

i was thinking about country music today, which i respect but is sometimes a lolcow in and of itself, and i remembered hearing many times from people that it is more or less an act, and all of the people who actually make the popular country music don't really act like their stage personas when conversing in real life, or live the lifestyles that they sing about. is anyone here into country and can weigh in on this?

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

[youtube]tzW2ybYFboQ[/youtube]

Personally, I'd say yes. But that's kind of the case with all music with maybe the exception of some rap and fringe heavy metal groups.

 

[MrFloppy]

haha, i think youre onto something there. perhaps its just a lot more exaggerated with country than other pop music. it kinda reminds me of wrestling. i listen to mostly punk & hip hop and stuff, and trying to pull something inauthentic off in those genres would not only make you a laughing stock but never ends up sounding right to the ear anyway

i can see why a certain demographic of people eat this stuff up. catchy & cute.

 

[nad7155]

It's music.

You either like it or not.

As for country, I like a lot of the real old stuff.

A lot of music personas are horseshit.

Some rappers never set a foot in "the hood".

Some country singers never drove a rusty pickup truck and smelled cow dung.

Some metal bands just copy Iron Maiden.

 

[MrFloppy]

nobody's knocking it.. or at least im not. older country seems to have a more legitimate soul... maybe modern artists are just trying to pay tribute and keep it going(?) i'm not invested in it, just thought it was funny & wanted to see if anyone on here might know the answer

 

[nad7155]

I am not putting you down, just saying the way I see it.

If I came across as a dick, it was not my intention.

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

As far as I'm concerned, this was the only country musician that mattered:

Everything else is God, dog, truck, USA, twang twang.

 

[_blank_]

As far as I'm concerned, this was the only country musician that mattered:

Everything else is God, dog, truck, USA, twang twang.

Sadly, it's not even that anymore.

I didn't grow up listening to country, but for the last 3+ years, I've been working with a multimedia outfit that also owns a few radio stations, two of which play country (one classic country, the other modern country), and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the idea of a country singer being some guy wearing a cowboy hat and singing about the hard life out of the farm is pretty much dead. Instead, you now get acts like Lee Brice, Luke Bryan, Brett Eldredge, Easton Corbin, Billy Currington, and Tyler Farr which seem to have some kind of internalized self-consciousness about being a country act. Instead of singing about hardships, they mostly sing about getting drunk or chasing tail. Hell, if I went through the country top 40 right now, guaranteed 85% of the song on there are going to be about drinking/ getting drunk.

What makes it even more terrible is the fact that, couple with the self-hatred country artists seem to have, they have completely buthered their sound to find a more mainstream acceptable sound. You got Tim McGraw (one of only three or four popular acts that will wear a cowboy hat unironically )singing in autotune, you got acts like Blake Shelton trying badly to appeal to the black demographic, you got Florida-Georgia Line trying to create a bastardization between rap and country, and then you get Luke Bryan, which I swear is the goddamn musical antichrist.

Oh, and there are some female acts as well. Although I would be hard pressed to tell you there were more than two or three female performers who sing outside of a group like Lady Antebellum or Little Big Town (the latter actually being a decent act). But in any case, if you are a female country singer, the only way you're gonna make an impression it seems is that you have to be a really pissy white girl. Granted, sometimes Carrie Underwood drops a number about Jesus, but more often than not you get some female act trying to be the next Miranda Lambert.

How bad is modern country? One of the best genuine acts is Darius Rucker, the black guy from Hootie and the Blowfish. When one of your best examples of modern country is a guy whose heyday was back in the early-to-mid 90s that sung about dolphins making him cry, son, you got some problems.

 

[klystron]

I used to listen to a lot of country for several years, and in my experience when a country song gets popular and the singer makes a "pop version" where his/her accent disappears then you know it's fake. My post is not nearly as detailed as @_blank_'s because I'm not a music nerd

Oh and speaking of Darius Rucker I didn't know him until country and I had no idea he was black for months. I was laughed at quite a lot for that.

 

[Lefty's Revenge]

listen to mostly punk & hip hop and stuff, and trying to pull something inauthentic off in those genres would not only make you a laughing stock but never ends up sounding right to the ear anyway

Rick Ross would disagree.

 

[Cuck Norris]

How bad is modern country? One of the best genuine acts is Darius Rucker, the black guy from Hootie and the Blowfish. When one of your best examples of modern country is a guy whose heyday was back in the early-to-mid 90s that sung about dolphins making him cry, son, you got some problems.

Darius didn't write Wagon Wheel.

 

[Ariel]

The only good country music was made and released before 1940.

 

[Yog-Spergoth]

Not really as a country fan, but as a general musician, I would argue that the act can be a considerable part of any kind of music.

Music, of course, has to be good to the ears, but your audience is going to see you before they hear you. How you present yourself, how you line up, can be beneficial to the atmosphere you're trying to present. That's why stage presence is such a big deal, and why charismatic, energetic bands like Black Flag can be terrific while being, maybe, a bit underwhelming on a pure theory level.

 

[CatParty]

 

[_blank_]

Darius didn't write Wagon Wheel.

Figures, since it's easily the most country song he's performed.

Right now, Darius is on the Top 40 again with "Homegrown Honey" which is apparently country because there is a fiddle in it or something. It also has one of the best lyrics last year and this one: "Homegrown honey, honey honey; you're so money, money, money..." I mean... artistic genius right there.

Also, this song shouldn't be confused with the Zac Brown Band's "Homegrown" which is on the charts as well this week. See, I don't have any factual information to back this up other than personal experience, but country seems to have this thing where music always seems to go in pairs. For example, right now you got Miranda Lambert's "Little Red Wagon" competing with Carrie Underwood's "Little Toy Guns." Shit like that goes on all the time it seems. I doubt it's a conspiracy, but it just kind of feels pretty much that Nashville doesn't trust it's audience to be able to tell the difference in songs....... which is also kind of spot on.

And @klystron, I don't think it's so much I'm a music nerd, but more that part of my job is paying attention to this nonsense. Just stuff I've picked up along the way.

 

[Cuck Norris]

Figures, since it's easily the most country song he's performed.

Right now, Darius is on the Top 40 again with "Homegrown Honey" which is apparently country because there is a fiddle in it or something. It also has one of the best lyrics last year and this one: "Homegrown honey, honey honey; you're so money, money, money..." I mean... artistic genius right there.

Also, this song shouldn't be confused with the Zac Brown Band's "Homegrown" which is on the charts as well this week. See, I don't have any factual information to back this up other than personal experience, but country seems to have this thing where music always seems to go in pairs. For example, right now you got Miranda Lambert's "Little Red Wagon" competing with Carrie Underwood's "Little Toy Guns." Shit like that goes on all the time it seems. I doubt it's a conspiracy, but it just kind of feels pretty much that Nashville doesn't trust it's audience to be able to tell the difference in songs....... which is also kind of spot on.

And @klystron, I don't think it's so much I'm a music nerd, but more that part of my job is paying attention to this nonsense. Just stuff I've picked up along the way.

What passes for country these days is "pop with a southern accent". Same basic formula, marketing, everything. So in that way it IS an act. As for Wagon Wheel, Darius' version is way more "pop" than the original.

Spoiler: Original Wagon Wheel

This is one of my favorite songs, and I hate Darius' version.

 

[Globe]

Born, raised and currently live in the south, have to listen to this stuff for a pretty good chunk of my work day and it's almost everywhere I go. Can't say I ever cared much for it, but the classic stuff like Cash and Conway Twitty and even Kenny Rogers at least had some meaning and depth to it. This modern shit is abominable.Thematically, you end up choosing between the Drinking Song and the America Song. You're probably all familiar with the Drinking Song; if you've heard that Garth Brooks song "Friends in low places", you've heard the Drinking Song. The America Song is a bit different. It's so fucking try-hard and over the top, it comes across as more of a goofy caricature than anything else. Just look at the lyrics for some of this shit - -

It's a high school prom, it's a Springsteen song, it's a ride in a Chevrolet
It's a man on the moon and fireflies in June and kids sellin' lemonade
It's cities and farms, it's open arms, one nation under God
It's America

We say hell ya and amen, yeehaw, and y’all come back again
And pray that our boys come home alive
And when Old Glory flies, we still hold our hands over our hearts
Where there’s more trucks than cars.

Those paragraphs are two different songs, not that you'd be able to know the difference even if you'd heard them. The fucked part is that this stuff is the rallying cry. It's what other musicians aspire to. It's the shit that tops charts and wins awards. The America Song is modern country's heart and soul and it couldn't be more plastic and empty even if it tried.

 

[Alex Krycek]

If you consider Lucero and Ben Nichols to be country music, I'm a huge fan of country music but I think of them as being more punk rock with country influences. Otherwise I like smaller acts that have influences from old outlaw country like Hank III and Robert Earl Keene but little else is worth listening to.

 

[Teddy]

Country singers like Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Charley Pride seemed genuine.

I don't even know Swift and her ilk make. It's like they're embarrassed of the genre, so try to be hip and thus pseudo country/pop/rap rubbish is created. I guess that type of country music can be considered an act.

 

[Trombonista]

Modern country should probably be classified as country-pop.