You should listen to country music. You really should. I wrote this article because most people I know would absolutely, never, not EVER listen to country music, and I think that is lame and stupid and counterproductive.
To be very clear right out of the gate, I am NOT talking about country music in the vein of 70's outlaw country, or earlier country-western, or roots music, or even 80's-90's Garth Brooks style power country. I'm talking about the here-and-now of country. I'm talking Florida Georgia Line and Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton and Sam Hunt and Morgan Wallen and on and on. This is a genre that a large swath of the American population listens to almost exclusively, and is never listened to by anyone else. Why not? Why not at least give lip-service to checking out what is going on in the most successful surviving branch of the music industry?
So, here's a bunch of reasons why you should listen to country music.
YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO
You're reading this article. Admit it. You don't have anything better to do. You might as well listen to some country music.
YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN COUNTRY BUT YOU'RE NOT
Oh hello, nice to meet you Mr. and/or Ms. "listens to everything but country". Fuck off. Why do you think you're too good to listen to a certain style of music? Because people you don't respect listen to this type of music? Why don't you respect those people? Because you're a huge prick? Yes? O.K.
IF YOU'RE A SELF-IDENTIFIED 'POPTIMIST' AND YOU DON'T LISTEN TO COUNTRY YOU'RE A LIAR AND A HYPOCRITE
Rock-based pop has completely disappeared from the top-40 mainstream music scene. Hip-hop is the dominant pop form, and trap is peaking in its popularity. But, for all intents and purposes, rock-based pop hasn't gone anywhere. It's just called country now. Listen to this song. This is a song that can be found on the spotify "Hot Country" playlist. In what way is this a country song? What elements of this song distinguish it as 'country'?
So if you like pop, if you're into Ariana, Mayer, Beyonce, Bleachers, the Weeknd, Drake, Migos, Nicki and on and on, there's very little reason to spurn country. The difference, stylistically, is paper thin. An "I like everything but country" opinion is getting increasingly impossible to justify as country continues to shed its distinctions from other forms of popular music. If you're into pop and have never given country the time of day, give it a shot. I have no doubt you're gonna hate some of it, but there's enough there for you to make it worthwhile.
IF YOU'RE INTO GENERICALLY HOT WHITE DUDES WHO ALL LOOK THE SAME, YOU'RE IN LUCK
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| ummm... CHECK PLEASE! |
IF YOU'RE NOT LISTENING TO COUNTRY YOU'RE SLEEPING ON SOME HOT-ASS TRACKS
I've you're going to buy one argument that's being made in this bullshit rant, here is, I think, the best that I got. See, the country music industry is huge, and there's just so many songs getting pumped out all the time, and most of those songs are getting written and recorded with the same objective -- to be radio pop hits. Add to this environment the singer/songwriter dichotomy that still exists in Nashville, and you've got a whole industry designed to funnel the best songs to the most popular artists and give those artists the most exposure. So, like, c'mon, every one in a while all those blind squirrels are gonna find a nut, right?
Right! See, I will never argue that mainstream country music is really good, or usually good, or even good a lot of the time. What I will argue is a thesis I have spent months crafting, refining, researching and proving. Here it is:
The Fundamental Law of Country Music:
Contemporary mainstream country music is pretty good, every once in a while. Most of the time it kinda sucks though.See? I'm not overstepping my bounds there, am I? This gets to the core of what I'm arguing here. Just take the cream and leave the rest. That's what most actual country fans do anyway. Just throw yourself together an hour long playlist, and pop it on at an opportune time. Maybe when you're day drinking with some friends, or drivin' around in the country, or having a backyard barbecue. You don't even have to put together a playlist yourself if you don't want to, I've got one put together for ya right here!
TAYLOR SWIFT MADE COUNTRY MUSIC ONCE AND IF YOU DON'T LOVE TAYLOR THEN FUCK YOU
Before she turned into a lying snake who tried to manipulate us all into thinking she was a bad girl now, Taylor Swift was an impressively proficient singer-songwriter who made a number of fantastic country pop albums in the 2000s. To this day, Fearless remains the only thing that can melt my cold, dead heart.
Come back old Taylor, we love you.
COUNTRY RADIO IS STILL RELEVANT AND IT'S A TOTAL TRIP TO LISTEN TO A MEDIA FORMAT THAT YOU FORGOT EXISTED
Recently I've listened to a good bit of country radio, and it's really strange. The zany DJ's, the local ads, the same 20 songs over and over. It's all still there, just like it was 10 years ago when I stopped listening to commercial music radio. And country radio still has a robust audience, despite the myriad of astronomically better options for listening to the exact same music. It really is an interesting experience to listen to commercial radio if you haven't in a while. At the very least it'll make you appreciate your spotify subscription a little bit more.
IF YOU WANT TO HEAR WHAT'S HOT IN COUNTRY MUSIC RIGHT NOW YOU ONLY NEED TO LISTEN TO LIKE 20 SONGS, SO JUST GET OFF YOUR ASS AND DO IT
Related to my last point, a by-product of country music still being controlled by commercial radio is that only like 20 songs are popular at a given time. Radio stations format their programming to give you all the hit songs of today for exactly the interval of time the average listener will have the radio on. This means you can listen to the local country station for like 45 minutes and you're pretty much caught up with everything that's hot right now in country music.
EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY ALBUM HAS DOGSHIT COVER ART THAT LOOKS LIKE IT WAS EDITED IN iPHOTO IN 2006
This is something that genuinely baffles me about country. No matter how popular a country album is, no matter how much money is being put behind a project, every single album's cover art looks fucking awful. Some of the albums pictured above were huge selling LPs. Why did they hire the guy who took your high school senior pictures to do the cover art? I have no explanation.
LISTENING TO COUNTRY GIVES YOU INSIGHT INTO HOW THE COUNTRY MUSIC INDUSTRY PANDERS TO ITS FANS
I've always been a little split on country lyrics. Because most country lyrics are about of one of three things -- drinkin', girls, or bein' proud of where you're from. And that great! That's what so much great music is about. The problem arises when there's nothing but that going on. There's a lot of hip-hop about drinkin' and fuckin' and where you're from, but there's also hip-hop about other things to, and these other topics -- poverty and violence, politics and institutional racism, are addressed by mainstream artists. There are country artists out there who are singing about living in poverty, drug addiction, racism and many other problems that are serious issues in America today. But they are unequivocally not in the mainstream. These artists -- Christ Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, Kacey Musgraves, Colter Wall -- are not part of the mainstream country music machine, full stop. And that's when mainstream country turns into pandering. The problem is not what it is on its face, but the diversity of perspective and ideas that it lacks.
Listening to country can help you get inside the mind of someone who listens to this kind of music all the time. It can help you consider how doing so might affect your worldview, if this kind of messaging was all you were getting from your entertainment. I know a lot of people who listen to country, watch Fox News, and go about their lives. Listening to this music is an opportunity to look inside their bubble.
SOMETIMES IN LIFE YOU GOTTA GIVE A LITTLE TO GET A LITTLE. MAYBE IF WE ADMIT COUNTRY MUSIC IS ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD SOMETIMES, COUNTRY FANS WILL ADMIT DONALD TRUMP IS A PATHETIC DISGRACE TO OUR COUNTRY.
Donald Trump is the current president of the United States of America. I doubt there is any hard data to corroborate this claim, but if I were a betting man I'd make a sizable wager that country music fans as a demographic voted very heavily for Donald Trump. The problem with this is that Donald Trump sucks and is a bad president. The other problem is that people who voted for Donald Trump don't seem to want to admit that he sucks.
Maybe if you put in the work, turn on the local country station, find a couple songs you like, you'll be emboldened to step across the isle, find a country music fan and tell them something along the lines of, "hey pal, y'know what? Florida Georgia Line is actually pretty sick, sometimes". And maybe, just maybe, he or she'll come back with a, "honestly it's really fucked up how they're treating immigrants right now," or a, "yeah, it does bother me how beholden to Russian interests this administration seems to be," or even a, "maaaan, I just voted for Trump because Kid Rock told me to". Which would be so wonderful, wouldn't it! And in the case of the last guy, you've finally found a buddy to go to Kid Rock concerts with!
