I’m not at all a fan of country-western music, even though my parents preferred it all the time. They played the classics, though — Hank Williams, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, etc. — and I could appreciate that there’s some really good stuff in the genre. It’s just that every time I’d try to listen to it, there’d be some twangy shit about pickup trucks and jingo and utterly unoriginal noise that would drive me away. I never want to hear Lee Greenwood or his ilk ever again.
But then I’d heard that Beyoncé’s country album, Cowboy Carter, is supposed to be pretty good. So I put it on this morning.
I’m blown away. It’s genre-busting but incredibly original and creative, and challenging but enjoyable to listen to. I think I’m going to have to play it again.
If more country music sounded like this, I might be able to suppress my urge to turn off the radio when it comes on.
I think it’s the law in some places that C&W music must contain references to beer, guns, trucks, cigarettes, God, Jesus, America, freedom, and/or girls dancing on bars.
Its an old classic so I’m sure most here know but Johnny Cash’s Man in Black song (with lyrics) here was “woke” as fuck long before the word was if not invented then made derogatory and a replacemnt for the worn out SJW as though being that was somehow a bad thing..
Then, of course, later but now “old” there was the (formerly called Dixie) Chicks interviewed here (3 mins) as th first victims of “Cancel culture” plus singing and performing in ‘Not ready to make nice’ then there’s their ‘March’ among many more..
I haven’t heard the whole album, but Texas Hold ‘em is very catchy, and I’m enjoying her remake of Jolene.
There is no begging in Bey’s version.
I hope this means we get a break from all-Taylor-Swift-all-the-time “news” for a few weeks.
@2 PS. Anyone else think those Black explosions in “Not Readytomake Ncie look like they inspired those dark Harkonnen fireworks on Giedi Prime in the Dune part II movie?
In ‘MTV;s Oddities’ (ca.1990) there was an extra-terrestrial character called The Head. When they travelled through a certain part of USA by car, he complained about the weird music thst kept turning up on the radio. It was strongly associated with signs saying “The World’s Largest…”.
No need to thank me.
Whenever my dad visits, he turns on the radio to listen to country music. Not current country music, but stuff from the 1920s. Granted, they aren’t singing about pick-up trucks, but the yodeling gets really tiresome.
Still sounds like overproduced Beyonce.
I’ll stick to my Hank III and my Steve Earle, thanks. And I don’t care if they’re new or “classic.”
The Houston Rodeo is underway now. Ride ’em Cowgirl!
Reve;ation 17
3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
5 And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth.
#10- That horse isn’t scarlet.
Ronald Couch @7: I always thought that the perfect country song was Heaven’s Just a Sin Away.
Johnny Cash. Folsom Prison. The country song for the Trump era.
Country music’s current far right bias isn’t an accident. In the 80s and 90s there was strong push to turn the genre into a “guns, Jesus, and pickup trucks” status in order to push out the counterculture elements in it that had protested the Vietnam War and supported the Civil Rights and Environmental Movements.
I think the corporate takeover over the music industry has affected all genres, not just country pop. Sony is more than a little evil in its business practices, which is exactly why Prince changed his name. I believe they are also the reason why Taylor Swift has re-recorded many of her songs.
The 80s and 90s had a plethora of dudes in cowboy hats waving the flag, which is the pop country version of boy bands.
The only reason I will ever want self-driving cars is the inevitable song ablout the broke cowboy whose truck has left him…
According to some here, she’s on her way to becoming automatically evil:
Ugh, that should read takeover of the music industry…
I’m not the biggest country fan either, but Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash I will make time for any day. Johnny was more progressive than most country fans (who, like right wing Star Trek fans, don’t get the media they consume – https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/lifestyle/columnist/spevak/2014/08/14/rosanne-cash-unique-voice-powerful-legacy/14054633/ and https://www.facebook.com/RosanneCash/posts/a-message-from-the-children-of-johnny-cashwe-were-alerted-to-a-video-of-a-young-/10155413372345336/) and Dolly is a legend, even if she seemingly bought into the lie that feminism is about hating men (she does a lot of good, so it’s okay to let that one slide).
Here’s the iconic line from Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna”:
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
Country western music is awful, and will always be, Beyonce or no. It’s mostly about truckers, convoys, down-home lovin’, pseudo-Christianity, patriotism, the Alamo, rugged individualism, and beer chuggin.’ Beyonce is at least a step above skinny redneck crooners with neck cysts, but not much. She’ll make lots of money, which is the whole point. I only pray she doesn’t use the refrain “Giddy-up go, Daddy, giddy-up go.”
Sorry, I gave the album a listen, but it wasn’t for me. An awesome and criminally under-appreciated Black female country artist I can recommend is Mickey Guyton. My faves of hers are Black Like Me, I Love My Hair, All American, and Better Than You Left Me. One that always brings tears to my eyes is What Are You Going to Tell Her. She does some gospel music also, but then nobody’s perfect.