By Elliott Nace | Assistant News Editor
I honestly can’t blame those who think country music stinks.
If you happen to be in the country-hating camp, chances are that you have a certain image of what you hear on the internet and radio: listless, pitch-corrected vocals over compressed instrumentals that don’t even sound like the genre formerly known as “Country and Western.”
That image covers nigh every single song within the six-hour modern country playlist I slogged through over the past four days. For as much I love and am willing to defend country music, the dreck I just endured is exactly why you feel the way you do.
But I can tell you how a good thing went to pot.
Country is not an inherently traditional genre of music. If you remove the typically invoked left-right spectrum from the equation (perhaps with Willie Nelson and Jason Aldean at the extremes), you start to see how country developed from its inception in the late 1920s to the 1980s.
Early recordings of the Carter Family, perhaps the great country exemplars, sit within a nexus of American history. Our folk music, which branched out into the Tin Pan Alley sound, the Mississippi Delta blues and the “mountain music” of Appalachia, was present in the early musical output of the United States’ great musicians.
For what it’s worth, country legend Johnny Cash agreed. In a televised appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” broadcast on May 7, 1980, Cash explained to Carson how the regional music of the United States has the global staying power because of its interconnectivity.
“For a five-year period there, it was the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and Gene Autry, and the songs that they sang, songs like ‘Wabash Cannonball’ and ‘Wildwood Flower’ … we played Prague, Czechoslovakia, we played all over Europe recently, and the audience knows all these songs,” Cash said.
Cash was among many who consider gospel music the center of much great country songwriting. After all, the great folk standard “Will the Circle be Unbroken?” originated as a Christian hymn but soon became a smash hit for the Carters by the mid-1930s.
Yet, one undeniably conservative feature of country music is its former rigidity, at least in its purest form. The style, pioneered by the Carters, relied on guitar-like instruments to act as both rhythmic accompaniment and percussion, while vocals provided the melody.
Hank Williams’ harrowing “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” released a good 15 years later in 1949, follows an almost identical formula. Conversely, his posthumous 1953 record “Your Cheatin’ Heart” introduces a once-controversial element into country music: drums.
Even as the easy-listening sound crept its way into the records of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, the original takes of tunes like 1950’s “Faded Love” feature rather muted drums and piano by the standards of the day.
Country piano at this stage often consisted of simple left-hand accompaniment, while drums would quietly complement the “Western swing” sound.
However, by the late 1950s and 1960s, the proverbial country door had been blown wide open. The mournful male timbre was back in full force with singers such as George Jones. Female singers like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton began to sing in higher registers and pen groundbreaking lyrics. Non-traditional percussion became commonplace. Piano parts now strung together licks, while drums had a more modern sound.
Suffice it to say, country music has both innovative and conservative aspects and is not in its essence one or the other. All I can say with confidence is that country music was just plain good.
Now, we live in a time where country music is bad. It’s so bad, in fact, that it’s become the butt of many a joke. The phrase “I listen to everything except country” likely sounds familiar at this point.
If I could summarize the problem, I would say modern country stinks because it’s not trying to be country music anymore. The formulas and innovations of old country and country-rock have been eschewed in favor of chart-topping slop that imitates whatever churns out the most streams.
Country thrived off three chords for the longest time. Yet in the 2020s, Nashville and the major record labels have thrown the pop music kitchen sink at the country formula, giving it access to all sorts of certified platinum progressions and instrumental packages.
And none of it helps.
I am not here to tell you country music should not have “stomp-clap-hey” percussion, breakdowns or the “millennial whoop.” What I will tell you is that these elements were added to country against the spirit of the genre.
None of the bigwigs brewing this vat of quasi-country pap believe that country music, or really any sort of American folk music, can succeed on their own in the modern day. Great stewards of the blues and country such as Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and Junior Brown are now in an ever-shrinking minority.
Think about it. The outlaws start singing about how they’d seen the ghost of Hank Williams, and by the time you get to the present day, so-called “country singers” think that all it takes to make a song “country” is to drop in a line about how their grandfather used to listen to George Jones and George Strait.
This is key jangling to the highest degree. I have until now held my tongue about the modern country lexicon and its love of guns, trucks and “being country,” because I don’t need to tell you that this kind of pandering has been disingenuous for a long time.
Music was our earliest form of extra-verbal communication as human beings and holds a special place in our American culture. It’s more than just an identity, more than just the boots and jeans you wear, and certainly allowed to stand on its own without being ruined by the demands of other strands of culture.
There is no doubt that a secret, stinky ingredient has crept its way into the country music top 100. But that ingredient is not love, and it’s real bad.
