Chicken-fried pop, and not as manly as the Dixie Chicks. What happened to country music?
The "o" fell off.
Alan Jackson covered it’s demise with “Murder On Music Row”.
Sorry. “its”.
Still exists, just not in Nashville or on FM radio. Lots of really good country acts tour. Like Western Swing? Check out Hot Club of Cowtown. You liked the Outlaw movement? Then go see Whitey Morgan & the 78s, Hank III, Shooter Jennings, Jamey Johnson or Lucky Tubb. Bluegrass? Michael Cleveland and the Flamekeepers. Troubadours? Unknown Hinson. If you like Bakersfield, try Dale Watson. Want something just a little bit different than anything else? Junior Brown.
It was Hollywood-ized in the 1970s. I remember when it happened. Olivia Newton-John won the Country Music Association award as best female vocalist, displacing real country singers like Loretta Lynn. That set off a furor about a foreigner winning with a phony "country" sound. But it made big money and crossed over into the pop music market.
Since then "country" music has become slickly-produced and packaged commercial pap. I've never been able to stand country music liberals like Garth Brooks. Newton-John is an environmentalist who'd throw a PETA-fit at a real cattle round-up.
“What happened to country music?”
First, Hank Williams died (1953). Then Patsy Cline died (1963). Then Gram Parsons died (1973).
We still have Emmylou Harris and Buddy Miller, but Nashville churns out dreck.
Here's a short list of leftie country singers:
Garth Brooks (obviously)
Tim McGraw
Faith Hill
Brad Paisley
Willie Nelson
Kris Kristofferson
Alison Krauss
Roseanne Cash
Trisha Yearwood
Kathy Mattea
Rodney Crowell
Pam Tillis
Merle Haggard
Randy Travis (yep - loves Bill Richardson)
"Big" Kenny Alphin (you ever notice he ain't so big?)
Whoa! Haven't heard that name in awhile... Whatever happened to the Dipsy Twits? Haven't heard a thing about them since driving over the thousands of their CD's littering the country's highways.