Okay, so much for Country.
What about Western?
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To me, these two can be classified as bad country music. Just my opinion, though.
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I’m sure everyone has their own idea of what makes for bad country, but I might start with “Beer for my horses” which is famously a celebration of vigilantism, and had a certain Rah-Rah-America kind of resonance back in 2003 when america was taking its 9/11 rage out on Iraq
Despite what @teknocholer says, it featured both Willie Nelson, and MAGA sensibilities
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my father was full blood kiowa, moms cherokee. he laughed at Tennessee Ernie Ford’s goofiness and never listened to any kind of country. in fact i thought the rolling stones and grateful dead were of this ilk until i was 18. learned to play guitar and to appreciate other forms of art, even some gospel. to be sure, many a lynyrd skynyrd were/are gun totin-pot smokin rednecks here i tulsa. maybe this is all ethnic but some is aesthetic, like the Californian here who refuses to play any 3 chord trite. most of you still can’t appreciate our “music”. let your kids listen to whatever they want, they will anyway. peace
Yeah, I think those count.
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I definitely draw a line at the stuff that’s pretty indistinguishable from arena rock, which I recall starting around the early 90s.
It’s funny to see yet another country version of this song, which was written and performed on stride piano by Fats Waller. Oddly enough, most of the versions I grew up on were country-fied in one way or another. Somethin’ Smith And The Redheads and Steve Goodman both had great versions that didn’t really borrow much from the original. Goes to show you what you can do with a great song.
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IMHO, the 60s is where country started to go off the rails while paradoxically producing some of its best work. Obviously Bobbie Gentry was a badass, and Charlie Rich and the great instrumentalists were great, but once people figured out the whole crossover thing and country-rock hybrids started up, things went downhill. I liked John Denver, but he was more a singer-songwriter who used country elements than a country singer, and The Eagles were a rock band with country elements rather than a rocking country band. Between the music industry smelling money and the ossification of a lot of country artists into the rhinestone era, country had no choice but to become watered-down pop. Hell, look at what Dolly Parton was doing by the end of the 70s. And what the heck happened to Western music? I figured the nail on the coffin there was Sonny and Cher’s hit ’ A Cowboy’s Work Is Never Done.’
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I dont care. I wont let other people live rent free in my head and dictate my tastes.
As I mentioned in another thread recently, it was the singer of a deathmetal band that introduced me to Johnny Cash & Hank Williams Sr. back when I was a punk kid who “hated country music”.
Lots of years have passed since then I’ve found lots of other artists in the genre I that please me. Some who werent even born yet when I first heard Big River done in a deathmetal style.
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I think this is usually considers country. It’s also pure, gloppy shite.
Robert Altman nicely skewered this kind of thing way back when, in Nashville. (about 1 minute in)
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Sadly, many (at the time, perhaps now as well) mistook the music in Nashville for genuine country (as played at the time), which it for the most part wasn’t.
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Yeah. Its kinda like trying to satirize Trump. How do you do that when the object of satire is already like a parody of itself?
(I looked for Gibson’s performance of “Keepa Goin,” I think it’s called, but couldn’t find it; that one really had me laughing when I first saw that movie.)
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Ooof! I forgot about Lee Greenwood. Calling it gloppy shite is being way too kind! That song makes me want to break things, but usually I just groan and say “Oh my gaaaawsh…noooo.”
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