Do people really hate Country Music?

Post Reply New Topic

I don't hate a lot of country, a lot of the new stuff does leave a lot to be desired though

As others have said, I like older country music like Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, etc.

I hear a lot of more recent country music at work, and it doesn't appeal to me. When I hear certain songs, all I can think is, "This is like a parody of a country song, but it's too extreme even for a parody! This can't be real!" But it IS real. And it just blows my mind every time.

I feel like the newer songs require you to be a part of the "country lifestyle" to appreciate them more than the older ones did. They seem to bring up the word "country" very often in the lyrics as well. I live in a small city in California where country music is one of three popular genres (the other two being hip hop and banda). The local rodeo is considered the most exciting event of the year. I can't even remotely imagine wanting to go to the rodeo. Likewise, I can't connect to these songs.

It sounds like you live close to Bakersfield, long time home to the late Buck Owens and his Buckaroos. Owens is probably the reason I detest modern country music, since i’m Hearing a lot of what was, at the time, considered modern rock was showing up in his music, as well as a major influence in what I call the Bakersfield sound. (It also didn’t help that I came under the influence of Stan Kenton, who definitely considered all country and western music, whether it be bluegrass, Nashville, Texas Swing, or Bakersfield, to be fake and artificial.)

...I guess this discussion centers somewhat on the part of modern country that has been pejoratively called " bro country " ! I have only recently been made aware of some of the criticism of that perceived genre that has in fact been being made for a coupla years now !

I'm about 3 hours from Bakersfield. They don't announce who the artists are at work, they just play the song, so they could be influenced by the Bakersfield sound for all I know. I don't find the older country songs to be as artificial. Some of the newer ones use autotune, which I dislike in general, but I find it especially clashes with country.

This is a parody lyric I wrote based on the songs that I hear:

I'm a country boy who lived a country life
Gotta find a country girl to be my country wife
I'm a country boy who walked a country mile
And all the food I eat is cooked country style
Well, ev'ry single song that I ever sang
Was a country tune with a country twang
Gonna live in the country 'til my life is done!
Then I'll go to Country Heaven an' have some fun!
(fiddle solo)

I completely understand what you mean. These songs alienate anyone who doesn't live or want to live the country lifestyle. In fact they mock anyone who doesn't live that lifestyle. That's why I find these songs so annoying.

I have often wondered why "Southern Rock" is considered a genre of Rock rather than Country. Hard to assign it to the same general category as the kind of thing David Bowie or Queen produced.

I find the forced association of one's ethnic group to a particular genre of music rather repressive, i.e. if you're black then you're a hip hop fan, if you're Chicano you're a Banda fan, and if you're white you prefer country. So if you're white and you prefer some other type of music, you are an outcast.

The whole "country lifestyle" thing makes me sort of paranoid. When I think of country lifestyle, I think of somebody living on a big spread hours away from any place remotely urban, who drives a big-ass truck, into which he loads his family every Sunday to go to the big-ass megachurch he belongs to. And that person's only personal relationship to the Government is of being told he can't graze his livestock on Federal lands, should probably think about someday having to surrender the guns he mounts behind the cab of his big-ass truck, and should also worry that his wife will one day leave him to be with another woman in the interest of diversity; and every year he has to turn over a huge chunk of his income to them so they can continue to do him all these favors. In other words, it's hard for me to not see a hidden political message in all this, and wonder who might be behind it (NOTE it wouldn't be Donald Trump).

I like some, in small doses. I had to visit a client and was put with their bookkeeper who played it all day long. She suffered from depression, and by the end of the week, I was screaming inside to get out of there. There are only so many songs about lost love and dead dogs one can take.

And a tear in my beer

I don’t hate country music.

A constant dose of it is sort of irritating.

I ain't gonna lie I hate it. I cringe every time I'm forced to listen to it.

I’m not really a fan of country music, though that’s because of the way it sounds. I just can’t stand the general instrumental parts, and I don’t really care for the topics discussed in the lyrics. My music tastes tend to lean more towards weird, morbid, and morbidly weird.

Like this?

The lyrics are nice, though the pace and the instrumentals aren’t really my thing.

I started liking country when I was depressed. The ironic thing is I was listening to some radio station & the DJ was talking about a study that people who listen to country were comfortable & happy with their lives. He mentioned Rock & Rap & maybe another genera too but I don't really remember what he said about people who listen to them.