Shitty patriot country music has always been a thing and there are still tons of Outlaw country artists right now. This is literally just like those "rap in the 90s vs rap today" memes that ignore the fact that trap has been a thing since the 90s and old school hip hop is having a Renaissance right now
TBF, country music hasn't been country music for a quite a while now
There's lots of good old fashioned country out there. You just gotta leave the mainstream behind. You'll find men in touch with their emotions. You'll find women who won't settle down. You'll find fine American classics. You'll find new classics waiting to be known. And Mckain Lakey!
The country music community may be problematic, but country music itself is wonderful. And many country musicians are fantastic, unexpected people. If you want country like it used to be, dive into Melissa Carper's catalogue. She's the master of the brand new old time song.
I'll just leave this here...
An absoluteky outstanding song by Cash btw. If you haven't checked it out, I suggest you do so. Even if you have zero interest in Country do yourself a favour.
I know this is obvious, but Cash's beliefs are endlessly fascinating. The same man who recorded "Ragged Old Flag" also wrote "Man in Black" and covered "Out Among the Stars." The latter is a song about a kid who commits suicide by cop because he doesn't feel like his life matters.
Every song by Johnny is a banger.
We listened to the song in English class when I was about 14 years old and we discussed it quite a bit afterwards. I guess it was kind of a first transitioning into adulthood for me, seeing how much is going wrong and hurting people. Since then about 95 % of my wardrobe is black. It's a statement and a reminder for myself and I
wantneed to carry it everywhere I go.I dislike a lot of country music, but Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson are practically a genre in and of themselves, seperated from even the outlaw country genre they started.
Cash may sing country, but he's always been rock n' roll.
Someone needs to show it to Oliver Anthony.
Do yourself a favor and listen to the Americana genre. All the blues and western inspired folk, without the bootlicking!
Heard a lot of this growing up like Seeger, Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, but also Canadians like Lightfoot and Stan Rogers. Lately I've enjoyed some of the IWWs compilations of workers' songs, Utah Philips etc. Phil Ochs is up there too.
My mother's from an assimilated Mennonite background and it was one of the non-Christian genres that was permissible to her parents, because of the pacifist and civil rights sentiments in a lot of that music at the time. Also it lacked the sex and drugs themes which rock had. "I Aint Marching Anymore" and "Where have all the flowers gone?" I remember hearing quite often.
That's a solid fucking set list, I Aint Marchin Anymore and Utah Phillips are especially bangers.
Nowadays, ironically some of the best Americana music comes out of Sweden by First Aid Kit.
Twenty hours in and it's up to me to remind people that Dolly Parton is the full package?
- She's got tunes, OK 'I Will Always Love You' is a bit cloying but the rumour is that she also wrote Jolene the same day
- She supports other women. When porn star Julia Parton was around and telling people that she was Dolly's cousin, Dolly's public response was something like, 'She ain't my cousin but I can't condemn what she does... it's not like I ever tried to hide my breasts. Good luck to her.'
- She produced Buffy The Vampire Slayer through her production company Sanddollar. She kept a low profile publicly but behind the scenes was very supportive of the show because it provided good role models for young women.
- She funds the Dolly Parton Imagination library which mails free books to kids under five.
No shirt No shoes No jews..... You didn't hear that
It shocked me the first time I met a real anti-Semite, in real life, in Tennessee. I've worked in a lot of places all over the world and I've seen plenty of racism. No one else topped that guy in Tennessee. Other places racism was mostly contained to 'they stay over there and we stay over here.' Tons of problems but living together but apart was possible. That doesn't speak to every experience obviously. That old guy in Tennessee wanted another Holocaust, plain and simple. Anywhere else he'd get the shit kicked out of him, there it was tolerated.
Had someone try to sell me on the merits of the Ku Klux Klan while working at a factory in Tennessee, I was a staunch Libertarian at the time so i guess he thought i might bite, he told me how they helped the community out and kept people safe.... the guy was dead fucking serious, and when I asked him about them being racist he just changed the subject... Still feels like a fever dream...
I drove through Alabama once. That was enough. What a shit stain state? Experience the racism there, even if sort of second hand, was surreal. Sucks I know some people that were forced to move there.
That's a scarecrow!
I unfortunately see a lot of white guy with a heavy (and fake) country accent does a "redneck" version of a popular rap or hip hop track and seeing other white people say "Now that's how it should be done!"
Modern "country" is a plague and I hate it. Its the only genre I can't listen to.
It's pop music
I guess that's just the next evolution. Old country was basically gospel that wasn't about religion. Country in the 80s and 90s was basically old rock but about cowboys, trucks, beer and being cheated on. I suppose by now you have to transition to the kind of music that was the in thing in the 90s to keep up with being the appropriate number of decades behind.
Eh, there are some gems. Chris Stapleton, Ryan Bingham, Zach Bryan
Is almost the same thing with Brazilian sertanejo. Was once about the bucolic reality in the rural side of the country, now is about bragging about being rich, going to pointless parties and drinking a lot of alcoholic drinks, f-cking everyone...
And listened to by the same people who complain about rap music doing the same thing (in their eyes, anyway).
Plenty of good modern country music out there, you just have to look for it. Tyler Childers and Colter Wall are some famous ones that spring to mind, but there's many others.
Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell too
Brent Cobb has some good songs. Lost Dog Street Band is pretty good too.
I really love "Sarah Shook and The Disarmers" as well. They actually go by River Shook now I think, but the band still uses their dead name.
A bit more on the folk side than country, but "Nick Shoulders and The Okay Crawdads" is one of my absolute favorite bands these days. They just put out a new album too and I can't recommend it enough.
I wanted to do a "to be fair here, Cash had songs with stupid lyrics, too", but all I can think of is "Ring of fire" and that one is just a harmless metaphor about love.
I'd argue that Ring of Fire is a metaphor about forbidden love that you know is damning you but the feelings are too powerful to resist.
Rather than a harmless metaphor, I find it an incredibly powerful metaphor about the pain and suffering caused by helplessly loving the "wrong" person.
Plus, there's an opportunity to make STD jokes.
He didn't actually write Ring of Fire
He didn't write several of his songs. That's really common. Many writers are not performers.
Ring of Fire was written by June Carter, and first released by her sister Anita Carter.
Ring of fire is my song to sing when I've had too much Mexican food and beer.
I don't think modern country even uses metaphors anymore. Before anyone comes at me, I'm well awair that there's some fantactic country writers out there.
That's because modern country is squarely focused on (far) right leaning people and they are utterly deaf, dumb and blind to any sort of metaphor, sarcasm and subtlety.
It's why these pricks go nuts for songs like Killing in the Name, not realizing it's a song that explicitly hates on them saying stuff like "some of those who work forces, are the same that BURN CROSSES".
They only see and hear that title and have no fucking clue what it and the rest of the song is actually about.
"One piece at a time"
Also still fairly anti capitalism. The whole core is "I worked at a Cadillac factory making cars I could never afford with what they paid".
That's a classic, and I won't hear one word against it.
And it didn't cost me a dime!
I loved ‘a boy named Sue’ but it was ‘the Man comes around’ that sold me. Heard it first during the OP of “Day of the Dead” remake, and there is no other song that comes close to fitting with this opening
I think Orville Peck might be my gateway drug into country. I don't imagine there's too many gay cowboys out there, but surely there's other stuff I'll like.
I highly recommend Buck Meek.
He's the guitarist for Big Thief but his solo albums are some of the best country I've heard in a long time. And free from the toxicity of modern country (as far as I can tell)
Holy shit Buck Meek and Big Thief are so good. Definitely more on the indie folk side of country but I'd be lying if I said Dragon New Warm Mountain wasn't my favorite album of last year
Hell yeah, Adrianne Lenker’s solo stuff is great too
How the mighty have fallen
Thanks for the suggestion! I would consider this more folk punk than country, but it's got a Johnny Cash vibe to it for sure. I like it.
I would like to add The Devil Makes Three to the list of redeemable country music. I guess they are more bluegrass/folk punk, but they shred and the lyrics are good.
We. Live. In. A. Society.
The Nordic nations are societies. They care for one another. They don't resent their taxes being used to aid and elevate the other members of their society. They root for one another in more than empty rhetoric.
We the US are just a bunch of rugged individuals competing against one another at eachother's throats due to decades of propaganda by our owner class to keep us divided, isolated, and distracted from what they've inflicted upon our former society.
There's a reason they hide behind gates and door guards, they know what they've done to this country outside their steel towers and golf clubs.
Nordic societies are also largely homogenous. Sweden has seen massive increases in violent crime and poverty ever since they started allowing anyone in. America has a very similar policy with immigrants and it’s really difficult to create such an insular culture with such a large landmass and variety of people. Americans to view themselves as -Americans and you don’t get the same with the Norwegian’s or Icelanders. I’m all for the Nordic model in Nordic countries (less Sweden until they clean up their policies that are turning their country into the third world) but America needs a different form of social welfare, starting with UBI, universal education, and socialized healthcare.
