Steamin' Pile of New Country
Over time I have developed a most unforeseen capacity to appreciate some of the old classic country music. Maybe it is the sense of authenticity in it, the historical quality to the sound, the perception of "soul" in the music, or the relative lack of self-consciousness that has reached parodistic levels in its modern, bastardized cousin called "New Country".
Speaking of New Country, what a bunch of revolting shite! Where to begin?
What passes for New Country is grotesquely self-conscious, and way too self-referential. All night long, practically every song is about "country" itself, about "being it", about THE country...MY country. The effect to my ears is a massive sense of insecurity, what with all this bombast about "what I am". It is a maddening mix of pandering, self-perpetuating propaganda, and marketing.
The correlative to this theme is the inability / refusal to ever change, i.e. "a Mississippi girl don’t change her ways". They "been to New York" and "LA", but their soul is still in the holler or on the farm, drinking "cherry Coke on the porch and everythin's black and white" (actual lyrics) That is all fine and good in one way, yet in another I sense a drubbing propagandistic message that is saying - "I am product. I am only what I have been made to be. I cant overcome my programming, and don’t want to. I have no creativity, and am afraid of it. I am brain-washed and proud of it."
There's the "little-bitty" songs, such as "its all right being little-bitty", and the one I just heard about a "little-bitty" life…for little-bitty people with little-bitty minds, unfortunately.
This shite does the same thing politicians do to the American people all the time - pander to the lowest common denominators in herd psychology, manipulating them with banal, stereotyped, cliché symbols. New Country is pure propaganda of a much more insidious, misanthropic, cold-blooded nature than any purely political propaganda, which is "pure" only in that it is blatantly political. This putrescence portrays itself as some kind of authentic American spirit of the good ol' down home days of yore.
Another exhaustive theme is nostalgia; my childhood, little towns, momma and pappy and how simple (i.e. country) they were. You can mark time by the frequency of nostalgia songs. The mentality on display is forever looking back to a "better time" that is expressed in terms as shallow and formulaic as the music itself.
Speaking of the music, it is cookie-cutter in every way, something that plagues all forms of "popular music". The music as well as the lyrics are by numbers; products for marketing pure and simple. Whenever I hear that danged fiddle playing the same mindlessly jolly riff over and over, I see Barney dancing...in over-alls!
I hear no semblance of sincerity in any of the singers. They sing what they sing to reach a large target audience, nothing more. Those are the "numbers" by which they color their cardboard squares. The music is empty, soulless, and frivolously jovial. This aspect disturbs me most. Such a 'disposable plastic cup' and mechanistic approach to the semblance of life and happiness and value only degrades the notion that life and happiness and value could ever be something more than just a semblance, more than mindless, but something with real depth and content - a current with real voltage!
Of course, I cant leave out the workin' man ethics / patriotism / and Jesus songs, most of which are mixed with the "proud I'm ignorant" message, such as "I'm a simple man" and "I don’t ask no questions" and "work all day" variety. I don’t believe a single one of these guys. I hear what they are really saying, and it is "buy my records you push-button robots". No soul, just dollar signs and cynicism.
Worst of all is the "little girl or mamma with cancer" songs; formulaic tear-jerkers for sentimental women and manipulative men who cry along with them. The word Shameless! keeps flashing in my mind, red as cheesy neon.
On a lighter note, the most clever line of the evening was - "another lunch from a sack / a 99 cent heart attack"!
Yee-Haw brother!
At the end of the shift I turned the radio to an Atlanta rock station, and there was the same New Country playing. What the hell? It sounded no different than what I had heard all night. The guy was singing about 'goin' back to the good old days'...with Blue Bell butter. Ah, Ok, its a commercial. Blue Bell tastes just like the good old days that momma used to make, churnin' it by hand. That illustrated my point better than I myself could have.
Stick your boot down into a steamin' pile of new country music!
- Bo "Ox" Skwaggert
Speaking of New Country, what a bunch of revolting shite! Where to begin?
What passes for New Country is grotesquely self-conscious, and way too self-referential. All night long, practically every song is about "country" itself, about "being it", about THE country...MY country. The effect to my ears is a massive sense of insecurity, what with all this bombast about "what I am". It is a maddening mix of pandering, self-perpetuating propaganda, and marketing.
The correlative to this theme is the inability / refusal to ever change, i.e. "a Mississippi girl don’t change her ways". They "been to New York" and "LA", but their soul is still in the holler or on the farm, drinking "cherry Coke on the porch and everythin's black and white" (actual lyrics) That is all fine and good in one way, yet in another I sense a drubbing propagandistic message that is saying - "I am product. I am only what I have been made to be. I cant overcome my programming, and don’t want to. I have no creativity, and am afraid of it. I am brain-washed and proud of it."
There's the "little-bitty" songs, such as "its all right being little-bitty", and the one I just heard about a "little-bitty" life…for little-bitty people with little-bitty minds, unfortunately.
This shite does the same thing politicians do to the American people all the time - pander to the lowest common denominators in herd psychology, manipulating them with banal, stereotyped, cliché symbols. New Country is pure propaganda of a much more insidious, misanthropic, cold-blooded nature than any purely political propaganda, which is "pure" only in that it is blatantly political. This putrescence portrays itself as some kind of authentic American spirit of the good ol' down home days of yore.
Another exhaustive theme is nostalgia; my childhood, little towns, momma and pappy and how simple (i.e. country) they were. You can mark time by the frequency of nostalgia songs. The mentality on display is forever looking back to a "better time" that is expressed in terms as shallow and formulaic as the music itself.
Speaking of the music, it is cookie-cutter in every way, something that plagues all forms of "popular music". The music as well as the lyrics are by numbers; products for marketing pure and simple. Whenever I hear that danged fiddle playing the same mindlessly jolly riff over and over, I see Barney dancing...in over-alls!
I hear no semblance of sincerity in any of the singers. They sing what they sing to reach a large target audience, nothing more. Those are the "numbers" by which they color their cardboard squares. The music is empty, soulless, and frivolously jovial. This aspect disturbs me most. Such a 'disposable plastic cup' and mechanistic approach to the semblance of life and happiness and value only degrades the notion that life and happiness and value could ever be something more than just a semblance, more than mindless, but something with real depth and content - a current with real voltage!
Of course, I cant leave out the workin' man ethics / patriotism / and Jesus songs, most of which are mixed with the "proud I'm ignorant" message, such as "I'm a simple man" and "I don’t ask no questions" and "work all day" variety. I don’t believe a single one of these guys. I hear what they are really saying, and it is "buy my records you push-button robots". No soul, just dollar signs and cynicism.
Worst of all is the "little girl or mamma with cancer" songs; formulaic tear-jerkers for sentimental women and manipulative men who cry along with them. The word Shameless! keeps flashing in my mind, red as cheesy neon.
On a lighter note, the most clever line of the evening was - "another lunch from a sack / a 99 cent heart attack"!
Yee-Haw brother!
At the end of the shift I turned the radio to an Atlanta rock station, and there was the same New Country playing. What the hell? It sounded no different than what I had heard all night. The guy was singing about 'goin' back to the good old days'...with Blue Bell butter. Ah, Ok, its a commercial. Blue Bell tastes just like the good old days that momma used to make, churnin' it by hand. That illustrated my point better than I myself could have.
Stick your boot down into a steamin' pile of new country music!
- Bo "Ox" Skwaggert
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