The Official Country Music Thread Genre • Page 83

Well, if it’s all a bit, doesn’t that make my point about a non-country artist using country charts and controversy as a tool to build buzz elsewhere? What you’re saying is basically the problem, and the reason why the media making this a huge “country music is racist” narrative is disingenuous.

 

To be fair, if he genuinely says he is making country, and a lot of listeners agree with him, then he’s making country, no matter what the gatekeepers think.

 

It's an interesting point, and one that highlights why this is such a debate. To someone who listens mostly to pop or rap, I can absolutely see why this scans as country, because it definitely has country elements that you don't typically find in those genres. For someone like me, who had a 2018 EOTY list that was probably 27 or 28 country albums out of a 40-album list, it only sounds very tangentially related to the genre. And I'm definitely not a "gatekeeper," just someone who spends a lot of time with this kind of music. Nor am I a country traditionalist, like a lot of the people who are probably bristling about this song.

I don't know. I'd say this isn't any more "country" than Timberlake's Man of the Woods album, and there wasn't any question about what chart that belonged on.

 

If you just played that song and asked me if I thought it was country, my response would be "no" - but that's honestly my take on so much music that does make the country charts that nobody questions, songs with the snap-track or clap-track beat and the singer just basically talk-rapping. I like a lot of country or country-leaning music, I don't think I'm a traditionalist by any means, and I don't really have any concern about which chart any song gets to chart on - but there does seem to me to be one very glaring thing different about Lil Nas X than a lot of the people who chart unquestioned with very similar sounding music.

"Country trappings" seems like a bullshit term to me. I just sampled a bunch of country songs on iTunes by a bunch of white bros and literally the only country trapping to be found is their twangy southern drawl they are singing in and that's it.

Whether something is 'country' or not seems to me to be an increasingly arbitrary distinction , but I do understand that it is one which has real tangible effects on artists in the middle of this situation.

 

I don't know, maybe I'm talking from a selfish angle on this, because my favorite album from last year came from an artist who had to play the EP and single game for five or six years before she finally got to release a full-length, and who may not get the chance to release another album because the songs didn't take off at country radio.

Or maybe I'm just mad that Kacey Musgraves has never had a single peak above 10 on the country charts, even though she had the most widely acclaimed and beloved album of any genre in 2018.

There's definitely a huge and concerning racial imbalance in country music, and like I said earlier, it's a conversation that needs to be had and reckoned with. But a black man has topped the country charts more recently than a woman has, and country has a massive problem with sexism too. With that going on, I'm just not going to be concerned about a song with a line about boobies and bullriding being excluded from the charts.

 

Much more eloquent than me, but this pretty well sums up my thoughts on it.

 

Oh I agree that the way that the media has taken this is kind of crazy considering that there are hills to die on that don't involve viral novelty songs. It's amusing to me that a song as intentionally funny, albeit very catchy, as "Horses In The Back" could be the catalyst for such a serious and genuinely important conversation. I just don't blame Lil Nas X for playing along with the whole thing. I honestly don't care if the song charts, but I find the scenario entertaining nonetheless (and I do enjoy the song for what it is).

I will say that Kacey Musgraves deserves more than just critical acclaim which is something we can both rally behind. Hell, my favourite country artists are almost entirely women (Lucinda Williams, Kacey, Patsy Cline etc.), and I know that women need to be the center of the conversation just as much as POC artists do.

 

It’s jusy gonna be funny a year from now when no one cares about or remembers this terrible meme song anymore

 

*Great meme song. You guys are no fun at all.

 

It is funny that no one really noticed or cared that it got bounced from the country chart for like a week, until Rolling Stone published that story. Which is whatever, because it’s definitely a newsworthy story and RS actually has a good track record of covering country and giving exposure to new or undiscovered artists. I mostly got annoyed as this went on and a bunch of writers/publications that clearly know nothing about this genre or community started trying to give their commentary. It’s been an eye-opening look into how music journalism works in 2019 and how much of it is just “piggyback and rewrite what this other publication did without doing any original reporting or trying to look at both sides of the story.”

Right now, women are definitely making the most interesting music in country, especially in the mainstream or close to mainstream. A lot of the men at that level actually have a lot of talent, but have gotten lazy because the radio will just play whatever they put out. The women are writing really sharp, really poignant, really innovative lyrical and story work that is largely getting overlooked by the radio and the awards shows. Hopefully that changes.

I don’t find it particularly “fun,” as a song, or particularly anything really. The hook is solid. The verses are bad. Doesn’t really hold together as a song for me. The Billy Ray version feels a little more complete, but I just hate that guy, so I don’t find that version enjoyable either. Then again, I am definitely not the core audience for this song and just generally dislike most of what mainstream pop music is in 2019, so there’s that. It’s definitely not the worst song I’ve heard in 2019. That title still belongs to “7 Rings.”

 

Case-in-point on the writers/pubs wading into this debate when they have no idea what they are talking about: today's Ringer piece on Lil Nas X by Lindsay Zoladz. Yikes.

 

I can definitely say I’m not going to defend modern music journalism lol

 

A few of us did some covers of country songs

 

music journalism has become everything that that (imo, at the time, wrong-headed) frank zappa quote said it was. like...there's practically zero music journalism/writers out there right now i care about or find interesting or insightful. i still read decibel which is mostly great for metal, and occasionally i read through american songwriter but that's about it.

 

A big part of the problem for me is that there's no diversity of opinion at all, which is why every publication's EOTY lists are exactly the fucking same.

 

I think a lot of you would really like this new Anna Tivel album

 

Flew from Philly to Texas today. Going to the Old 97's in Tyler tonight and Brandi Carlile in Dallas tomorrow night. Any Texas people on here got any recs for food or other stuff to do in either city?

 

Sounds like Evan Bartels has a new EP out on the 26th

 

Don’t know much about this band/artist, but this album is really solid. Also not really country but wanted to mention it somewhere.

 

This is really good, legit rec we got here.

 

Forgot to share this in here yesterday, but I really love the new Joy Williams record:

First Listen: Joy Williams, 'Front Porch'

 

I like this a lot more than the other two full-band songs we've heard from her, which leads me to believe that I'm just biased toward the acoustic versions of those songs and will appreciate the album as a whole.

With that said, three singles without even announcing the album is...an odd move? I don't understand what her label is doing with this rollout. I feel like she had a ton of buzz like nine months ago and they just didn't capitalize on it. But "Somebody's Daughter" is actually climbing the country charts, so maybe they're doing something right.

 

Daniel Romano plays a whole bunch of different genres but I have a soft spot for his country material. Weird to think that he was in Attack In Black before.

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Corb Lund is also That Dude and a local legend. Classicist country done right and another Canadian who moved from punk rock to country.