Country music has received a negative stigma in many recent years as turning tail to its roots, selling out even. One must think about the beginning of country music to judge. Is country more like the blues of the 1930’s with a more devout focus on the guitar and little else? Is the message conveyed still that of unfathomable sadness. Perhaps in the songs of the early sixties and late 1950’s that was true. However, now country has taken on a new roll, a roll of glaring modernism. Gone is the wah-pedal and steel guitar replaced instead with electric instruments and synthesized tones. Rock country is now what they play on the radio of Top-40 stations making country music now sound much like everything else, which the SUV driving, soccer practice going, GAP shopping populace loves very much.
Not all country music has gone this route. There are still songs out there that will make you cry or want to take up drinking and that’s the country that seems to really hit home. Country music about something of import, not peaches and driving trucks but something of substance that matters, that touches the very heart of the audience. Like many, we noticed when the country “twang” was lost. We would tap our foot to a rock song only to hear it was song by a country star. Perhaps this is musical diversification and adaptability. If one doesn’t change they die it is said. The people that listened to the songs of the early days have long since gone to the great good-bye or at least are in the twilight of their life. The new listeners don’t want to sit in dusty rooms and listen to 33 and a third or forty -fives drinking Yoo-hoo and waiting for the new episode of I Love Lucy to air.
They are the modern set that requires a more “extreme” Country music that punches one in the chest with heavy drum lines and catchy (albeit trite) lyrics that everyone can sing and enjoy. In the rare case that country music does wrought a serious tune it is over blown to a grandiose scale being either entirely too sappy or patriotic. It seems that currently most singers have but two settings one being the popular country about nothing at all or that setting hovering just under the melodramatic where upon only the most discerning (or ignorant) could fancy such an abomination.
