Is country music dead?

Fox News ^ | 05/16/2014 | Collin Raye

[Responsibility2nd]

As a platinum-selling country music artist and, more importantly, a lifelong fan of the genre, I’d like to send out this heartfelt plea to the gatekeepers of the industry:

Enough already.

I’d like to think that I am expressing what nearly every artist, musician and songwriter (with perhaps a few exceptions) is thinking when I contend that the Bro’ Country phenomenon must cease.

It has had its run for better or worse and it’s time for Nashville to get back to producing, and more importantly promoting, good singers singing real songs. It’s time for country music to find its identity again before it is lost forever.

~snip~

But as someone who grew up loving and being forever affected by the true greats of country music, I simply have to offer up this plea to the Nashville country music industry to reclaim the identity and poetic greatness that once was our format. The well-written poetic word of the country song has disappeared.

~snip~

Willie Nelson once wrote in his early song, "Shotgun Willie," that “you can’t make a record if you ain’t got nothing to say.” Apparently, that’s not the case anymore.

Disposable, forgettable music has been the order of the day for quite a while now and it’s time for that to stop.

[ArtDodger]

30 years ago, Buck Owens had concisely complained about it.
Really, when R & R and the Brit Invasion almost killed the C & W sound, the Nashville producers went in another direction, using Chet Atkins as their 5-star general for development. It worked, they got rich but the soul of country music never recovered. Now it is just formula and investment..

[nitzy]

I love country but I can't stand pop country and have put together a fantastic Pandora station. I could listen to it all day long.

If you use Pandora, you should create a station around the following artists...

Darrell Scott
Cross Canadian Ragweed
Tim O'Brien
Rubber Knife Gang
Dustin Bentall
Deryl Dodd
The Old 97's
Slaid Cleaves
Old Crow Medicine Show
The Avett Brothers
Runaway Planet
Redbird
Drive by Truckers
Turnpike Trubadors
Jason Isbell & the 400 unit
The Devil Makes Three
Mason Jennings
John Prine
The Wood Brothers
Alison Krause & Union Station
Robert Earl Keen

You won't be disappointed.

[ArtDodger]

Oops! But worth saying twice!

[mylife]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp5q4R9rg8c

[US_MilitaryRules]

+1

[Jeff Chandler]

It hasn’t been the same since that youngster Floyd Cramer ruined it.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“Acht Breaky Heart.” Now THAT’S music!

I play pedal steel and lead guitar. Line dancers would request that monstrosity 3/4 times a night. First time we’d play it straight. Second time I’d play the solo backwards. Third time I’d play the solo in Chinese-sounding parallel fourths. Fourth time, I get the band to add an extra beat to the end of the solo. Then we’d watch all the line dancers run into each other!
“Watermelon Crawl” put me over the edge. Can’t even listen “Country” radio at all.

[Snickering Hound]

Not guilty, but not listenable either.

[GeronL]

Maybe we should write a FReeper country song, we can save the genre!

possible titles:

My Viking Kitty Zotted Grandma

My Truck Went Fishing Without Me

Troll Got Zapped By Admin Moderator

Post Turtle President

She Got The Obama Phone, I Got The Tax Bill

I Remember When It Was A Free Country

[Resettozero]

It helps to know just who is ultimately behind the entire recorded music entertainment industry and what it is he intends to accomplish. Well, he appears as women most often but really, he isn’t feminine at all. He hardly hides himself at all anymore.

[US_MilitaryRules]

Dwight and Buck Owens “Streets of Bakersfield”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5P6zdlPJ34

[ErnBatavia]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iICDCj-qOEU

[Fiji Hill]

The Dixie Chicks couldn't hold a candle to this:

• Boogie Woogie Blues--Charline Arthur (1950)

Nor Billy Ray Cyrus to this:

• I Want to Be With You Always--Lefty Frizzell (1951)

[PapaBear3625]

The Taylor Smith joke is that one day she's going to write a song where it's HER fault, she admits she screwed up, and apologizes. Another bitchy song - Miranda Lambert - "White Liar" where she reams a guy up and down for being a dirty liar, then her "revenge" is she's been lying, too. OK, slut, you're the same slimeball you've been complaining your man is, who can be proud of that? Man, what what a sleazy song.

And then there's Carrie Underwood, who in "Before He Cheats", goes on about her cheating boyfriend and how she destroys his pickup in revenge. Listen to the song while visualizing the reception that a song about a guy taking revenge on the property of a cheating girlfriend would get.

Too many of these singers are just losers and psychos.

[Resolute Conservative]

I lost my shotgun in the lake but saved the beer.

[Dr. Sivana]

I would rather listen to cats fornicate.

I know that some of us think of cats as "little people". However, fornicate is not a word that normally applies to animals, even cats. "Mate" is an acceptable alternative.

[GOP_Party_Animal]

I don’t like Rascal Flatts because that gal they have as a lead singer sounds a bit too much like a dude.

[GeronL]

It All Went To Heck When Zombies Got The Vote

[nascarnation]

LOL that’s rude...

[hoagy62]

Country (swing) music ain't dead....it's just Asleep at the Wheel!