Fascinating history of country music: In the 1920’s, the recorded music industry hit a slump, and started to recognize the lucrative potential of sales to Black Americans. They created a category called “race records,” which lumped together jazz, blues, R&B, and other genres which came out of Black communities. This was in contrast to “country music,” which originally grew out of white folk traditions, but appropriated other genres to expand to country&western, country swing, and later borrowed from rock 'n roll and pop. So it wasn’t at all unprecedented for country music to borrow rap and hip-hop elements in recent decades.
In brief, country music isn’t so much a genre as a code word for “white people music.” Once you know this, the hysterics over Lil’ Nas X, or Beyoncé, making country songs makes a lot more sense.
Townes van zandt rolling in his grave right now seeing the state of modern country music
Livin’ on the road, my friend, was gonna keep us free and clean…
Now our breath’s as hard as kerosene
Those black eyes peas tasted alright to me, Earl
Country music used to be about solidarity with the working class. Now country music is all about who can like a boot the fastest.
Billy strings, sturgill simpson
Trampled by turtles, the devil makes three
I love The Devil Makes Three
Sierra Ferrell is another great one, she does some songs with Billy Strings.
Went to a show w/ a friend, didn’t know what I was getting into. Billy Strings had me dancing my ass off and I mostly don’t like country music. It’s all about when they they’re just jamming, it’s incredible.
I love the jamming too! The grateful dead/jerry garcia started out with a more bluegrass sound, which apparently is what the jammy nature of their music was inspired by. See the hart valley drifters
Billy strings is hella talented.
It’s somewhere on the bluegrass<>country spectrum I wouldn’t really call it country music.
Id argue bluegrass is a subset of country
I wish radio stations felt that way too so they’d play some decent shit instead of pop garbage.
Tyler Childers
The catechism I would put on Reddit when the 20 something men would say country music sucks:
Jason Isbell
Hayes Carll
Sturgill Simpson
Tyler Childers
Margo Price
And I would now add Charley Crockett and Joshua Ray Walker, so good.
Colter Wall, Joshua Quimby, and Nick Shoulders too!
There’s a Tiktok account (yes, boo hiss tomato, etc) that makes AI generated music, and the country songs are indistinguishable from actual country songs on the radio until you listen to the lyrics.
There was one where the lyrics were something like “thinking about corn/gun up my butt” that I still think about…
Dirty beer, dirty truck!
That was an awesome one. And what’s wrong with TikTok besides the government trying to ban it because it’s pro-palestine?
China.
Plus the fact it’s an inherently fucked app that is rewiring your brain to need constant hits of dopamine every 10 seconds or your skin starts crawling and you can’t have a conversation.
“We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.”
I’m naturally like that.
I mean they’re trying to ban it because they don’t want American social media data in China’s or hostile 3rd party hands.
The hypocrisy comes from the fact that they won’t regulate the Silicon Valley social media companies the same way. Cambridge Analytica (now Emerdata) wasn’t Chinese, they were British. The fact that tech giants like Meta are looking to buy Tiktok in order to stop the ban should also be something to raise eyebrows at.
I’m not for or against Tiktok, btw, I see it as a tool for study. From a professional standpoint, it’s algorithm is fascinating, especially as so much other social media is getting more and more enshitified. And a lot of people who don’t use it don’t realize how tailored it can based on their usage. Scary stuff, but also shows an effective use of user data compared to other sites like Instagram or YouTube’s algorithms.
And what’s wrong with TikTok besides the government trying to ban it because it’s pro-palestine?
Talking about banning TikTok started before the current round of Israel/Palestine violence. And the short answer is Chinese ownership, and that the CCP is so far up the asses of every major Chinese corporation that even the US government thinks it’s a bit much.
