Sad they didn’t mention what a disaster Country music has become over the last 5-10 years. Used to be about trucks, country girls and beer. Now it’s about beer, whiskey, moonshine, drinking in your truck bed, drinking because of country girls, and drinking because you are working class. I want a 1:35:47 YouTube video essay on the top 50 songs the last 4 years and how they became nothing but advertisements for branded alcohol and propaganda that all poor people need is a few beers or a shot of whiskey to keep being productive and “happy”.
I grew up (90’s) on local Canadian Country radio. I still tune into it on my drive to work if I don’t want to hear about boat crashes and genocide. And I sing along. But it’s fucked. I know it.
I’m not a big hiphop fan, but isn’t a lot of hiphop also about branded alcohol? Certainly plenty of rappers have started their own alcohol brands.
I don’t listen to a lot of pop hip-hop any more, but I had to drink a lot of Henny and Bombay in my late teens to early 20s because of the brands in songs and people I hung out with exclusively drinking them. I am finally starting to like Gin now that I know how to make drink and not just doing shots of it.
Gin and Juice?
Can’t comment because I don’t listen to much hip hop. But it isn’t a far stretch to think the same factors play a roll in what music gets produced and pushed.
So true. Country music was basically a variety of folk music back in the day. Now it is a twangy variant of rock music that caters to angry right-wingers, in the same way that early rap catered to angry inner city youth.
There is still indie country out there. It’s much more about musicianship. I’m not a huge country lover, but I can definitely appreciate a talent at the fiddle or the pedal steel or whatever.
Yes, that’s true. In fact, I think they call the new stuff “New Country” to distinguish it from the Ye Olde Country music.
My understanding is that the bulk of it is labeled “country rock”
I also think it’s hilarious how much trap and rap influence there is in a genre that is notably loved by white supremacists.
I suspect that early rap “catered” to angry inner city youth because it was created by angry inner city youth, who to a certain extent were understandably angry about their situation as inner city youth.
There is really good country out there, you’re just not going to hear it on Top40 stations. Darrel Scott, James McMurtry, Gillian Welsh, Lucinda Williams, and Sturgil Simpson make great music.
If you wanna keep up with artists who are putting out fire in the country/ folk genre, check out https://www.wncw.org/. Best radio station it the country IMO.
Upvote for Sturgil Simpson, that guy rocks
*countrys
A great philosopher once noted that it doesn’t matter what you say, as long as you sing it with inflection
Very true- hook always brings you back.
Researchers analysed
songs lyrics across several genrespeople from 1980 to 2020, found thatsong lyricspeople are getting simpler, more repetitive, angry and self-obsessedGod dammit, stop calling me out like that.
Is that a statement or an insult? … I feel like I’ve been maligned … that unwarranted attacks have been thurst upon my person.
You sound angry and self-obsessed.
Clearly, things have gotten worse since the halcyon days of the 1990’s, when we had such hits as “Rico Suave,” “Macarena,” and “I’m Too Sexy.”
Why, I remember singing along to that last one. Sing it with me! “I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hurts…”
That was actually a very deep song, talking about the existential dread that comes after you realize that your sole purpose in life is to shake that little tush on the catwalk
I’m quite sure “I’m Too Sexy” is intentionally silly and meant to be subversive of industries, including the music industry, that uses sex to sell stuff. The Macarena song is part of the dance genre, like the “Hokey-Pokey” song, in which the lyrics are just nonsense.
You are correct about it intentionally being silly, but not about who it was lampooning.
The idea for the song came about when the Fairbrass brothers were running a gym in London where, according to Richard, there was “lots of narcissism and posing”. One day, he took his shirt off and started singing “I’m too sexy for my shirt” in front of a mirror as a joke. The band originally recorded it as an indie rock song.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Too_Sexy
So basically it was just a comment on narcissism that got completely misunderstood.
Sort of like how Born in the U.S.A. is the opposite of a patriotic song.
Macarena
To be fair, the “plot” of that one insofar as it has one is that the girl who is known as Macarena is having a threesome with two of her boyfriend’s buds when he is out of town. The part of the chorus which is in Spanish is one or both of them propositioning her.
This seemed to escape the Moral Guardians of the time, who I guess were all to busy hyperventilating about Mortal Kombat and boobies on cable television.
10 year on Reddit would have done the same thing
