I Hate Country Music

I was talking to some coworkers the other day about music. One of them wanted to change the radio station and most of us agreed without a second thought that the continuous stream of what was playing needed to be stopped. I was the only one that was shocked and offended when the radio station was changed to a country music station. At first I thought it was a joke; but then they all started talking about concerts that they had seen that summer – concerts held by musicians in the country music genre. From teenagers to adults in their mid-thirties, the country music genre seemed to be embraced by all of them. I wondered when this had happened in our culture. When did it somehow become fashionable to like country music?

I had heard it said that country music is the second most popular genre of music in the world (second only to classical music). However, it still seemed like living in the upper mid-west that I rarely ran into anyone that actually liked country music. When I did, they really were not fans of music in general, but rather listened to country music mainly because their parents did and that is what they grew up with. Then I considered how artists like Taylor Swift and Shania Twain are not really country at all, but are actually pop musicians. I guess if you call yourself a county artist you can instantly appeal to that entire genre of tone deaf hillbillies that will listen to anything that falls into that category. Eventually, when the mainstream pop crowd adopts songs by these artists they might think that they are listening to country music because they are told that they are listening to country music.

I guess it is a marketing strategy that works. Shania Twain’s 1997 album, Come On Over, became the best-selling studio album of all time by a female artist (over 40 million copies worldwide). And while I do have to give credit to Taylor Swift as a true marketing talent who runs her own marketing department; anyone with functioning ears that knows the difference between right and wrong should be able to realize that her 2012 album, Red, was one of the biggest abominations in any genre. Swift’s brand clearly supersedes her songs as Red sold 1.2 million copies during its opening and made her the only female artist to have two million-plus opening weeks.