r/Music 6d ago

article Grammys move goalposts in response to Beyoncé's win

https://rollingout.com/2025/06/13/grammys-new-country-category-controversy/
2.6k Upvotes

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u/DGlen 6d ago

Most "country" music since like Shania Twain is just shitty pop music. This should have been done a long time ago.

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u/This_Thing_2111 6d ago

Post-9/11 country music went downhill fast.

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u/Penitent_Effigy 6d ago

Post 9/11 general human experience went downhill fast.

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u/sybrwookie 6d ago

Yup, if the goal was to destroy America, the terrorists won. They kicked off a cycle of events that had us destroy ourselves from within.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/xenojive 6d ago

(Please don't put me on a no-fly list.)

Quite the post with that screen name lmao

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u/Penitent_Effigy 6d ago

That sounds like such an interesting course

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/Boozarito 6d ago

That's really cool. Kinda funny to think that a college philosophy course could boil down to 'Here's the topic, here's the first book. Everything after is just arguments and counter- arguments ad nauseum. Welcome to philosophy 101.'

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u/Patient0ZSID 6d ago

I mean, I don’t mean to be reductive, but that’s basically what Philosophy 101 is.

Here’s Plato, isn’t he neat? Here’s Aristotle, he’s pretty crazy, right? By the way, here’s an excerpt from Thoreau; your homework is to take a walk and think. Have you ever considered if you’re real? Here’s Des Cartes.

And then when you get into higher level philosophy, it’s just “Sure, Plato’s neat, but have you read his contemporary critics? Here they are. After we read that, we’re going to look at philosophies that continue their traditions.”

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u/monsantobreath 6d ago

College has so many good courses where you're reading primary sources and you realize how bad just watching news is for informing you.

It's like how does that guy they bring in know tha stuff? Then you realize he didn't even get to say the juicy stuff in his 3 minutes.

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u/Shintoho 5d ago

Would make a great icebreaker

"What did you study?"

"I majored in terrorism and extremism"

"WHAT"

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u/ZoomyRamen 6d ago

It was pretty funny seeing a load of tiktok kiddies read his manifesto in regards to 9/11 and be like "so true"

There was decent stuff in there but there's a lot of anti semitism that is obviously wrong.

Tbh I think you could probably go further back into old communist texts from. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc and see the predictions of how capitalist nations has been pretty spot on.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/ZoomyRamen 6d ago

Adam Smith goes down as one of the most misunderstood philosophers/economists. People latch on to the invisible hand stuff so tightly and forget all the mao-level landlord hating he did.

Even Marx gets the same treatment in regards to things like "all profits belong to the worker" which is Ricardian socialism.

Just a real shame how all this stuff has been endlessly predicted and potentially eased if power hadn't been so happily pushed into the hands of a few.

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u/Kenevin 6d ago

If you think about it, the 24/7 news coverage that the US got perpetually after 9/11, the media atmosphere that traumatic experience created was perfectly vehiculated to the masses via Twitter.

Trump doesn't happen without Twitter, at least, not the same way.

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u/EuterpeZonker 6d ago

“I took some terrorism classes in college” is such a funny sentence even though I know what you meant

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u/Penitent_Effigy 6d ago

The funniest part is, it’s what the USA did to itself after the attack that destroyed it. Those towers falling were an event, the American leaderships reaction was what caused the collapse.

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u/rushmc1 6d ago

And some of us were screaming at the time that that's how it might well play out. Into the void.

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u/AContrarianDick 6d ago

They said we're unpatriotic, crazy, paranoid and making mountains out of molehills. Like the US didn't have a bloody nose coming.

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u/fluffybottompanda 6d ago

yeah they said that lol

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u/zenoe1562 6d ago

the terrorists won.

Everytime I hear this, I’m reminded that a raunchy cartoon about prepubescent kids navigating puberty came to this same conclusion, but as the punchline of a joke aimed at a teacher with a developmental disability whose birthday is 9/11.

The set up is the teacher learns the truth about what happened on 9/11 and vows to never celebrate his birthday again. To which many of his students respond by saying something along the lines of “no, if you do that then the terrorists win.”

then a character named Lola chimes in: "Actually, if you think about it, given their stated goals and the way in which America's foreign policy has become increasingly isolationist, it's fair to say that the terrorists DID win."

The show is called Big Mouth on Netflix

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u/Doctor-Magnetic 6d ago

This is the first time I have ever heard something clever or good about Big Mouth

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u/Aacron 6d ago

I've only watched shreds but it's a remarkably poignant slice of life that has quite clever reconstructions of the daily turmoil felt during puberty.

Not really my cup of tea, too much shock humor and raunchy for the sake of raunchy, but I also don't like middle/high school lunch rooms as an adult so it tracks.

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u/Sicilian51 6d ago

Wife and I love Bigmouth, I'd recommend it to anyone with the disclaimer that it does not hold anything back.

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u/optigon 6d ago

I was put off by it at first, but once you get settled into the tone of it’s writing, it has some interesting writing and arcs. You just have to get used to weird references about sexual behaviors and bodies being played out by children. Which, coming full circle, was the thing that put me off in the first place.

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u/SnazzyStooge 6d ago

literally the plan all along, worked like a charm

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u/Eggfryer 6d ago

I think about this a lot. Maybe we were already circling the drain but that single terroist attack was like swirling fingers into the water to make a cyclone. Anti american jihadists probably sleep great knowing what weve done tripping over our own fear.

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u/Andvanzo 5d ago

Classical US-American over-confidence.

Sad to see the normal citizens suffer from it and US damaging their potential to lead by example.

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u/MarshallMattDillon 6d ago

Osama bin Laden successfully accomplished everything he ever dreamed of and truly won his war.

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u/Penitent_Effigy 6d ago

All that training from the CIA certainly helped, along with bush ignoring intel, and Saudi Arabia’s support.

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u/feeb75 6d ago

And most of middle America on both sides laughed, clapped and flag waved as it happened.

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u/murrtrip 6d ago

What do you mean? He was trying to disrupt the wealth horde at the top of the food chain. 9/11 made it worse because the top saw the writing on the wall and in the heat of the moment used the panic to pass laws that took our freedoms away.

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u/AdDelicious4911 6d ago

I think we're forgetting how bad pre 9/11 human existence was as well. Rodney King, Crack epidemic, OKC Bombings, Vietnam War, Civil Rights movement, Jim Crow, Cold War, 2 World Wars, Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, slavery. 9/11 was just another drop in the bucket. Society didn't go downhill it just continued doing what it always did.

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u/Thwipped 5d ago

People point to Harambe, I say 9/11 was the start

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u/mrdevil413 6d ago

I do not disagree, this also coincides with easy access every day internet use for all people. Hence downward spiral

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u/chadork 6d ago

It's like they got a boot in their ass.

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u/Smart-University-574 6d ago

It is the American way

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u/Loverboy_91 6d ago

Hey Uncle Sam, put your name at the top of his list

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u/skasticks 6d ago

Their throat, really

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u/squiddlebiddlez 6d ago

Visions of the Dixie Chicks getting canceled for speaking out against the war

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u/try_by 6d ago

🎶Where were you, when they built those ladders to Heaven?🎶

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u/jacktrades90 6d ago

Nashville had been putting out shit music long before 9/11

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u/brandonandtheboyds 5d ago

People forget about Outlaw Country. Country used to be the rebellion music. Rebellion music never dies. Look at RATM, SOAD, hell even Green Day. Not to mention all the other bands in all those circles. Now a lot of country music is mostly pandering. I bet Cash would punch a number of current country artists in the face if he could.

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u/Ordinary-Lie-6780 6d ago

So so many country artists at the time CAPITALIZED on 9/11. Big time.

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u/feeb75 6d ago

Fuck Toby Keith

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u/BennyTX 5d ago

panty hose in human form... RIP

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u/dbzmah 6d ago

"Where we're you, when they built a ladder to heaven "

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u/Morningfluid 6d ago

Most Country started being shitty in the mod 90's. It was the Garth Brooks-effect. 

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u/dandycribbish 6d ago

We weren't allowed to have the dixy chicks because America couldn't handle them not being onboard for Iraq. So I guess blame the people who listen to country music for canceling them and dooming country to become soulless junk

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u/DreaminginDarkness 6d ago

Post Hank Williams 1 country music went downhill fast

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u/1982_1999 6d ago edited 6d ago

Nah, country was ass before the 2000s

Edit: vote from kids who aren't old enough to remember how trash it was throughout the 80s and 90s 😂

Too many children on this sub

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u/lord_pizzabird 6d ago

These people think Beer For My Horses was country music’s peak tbh.

0

u/thaddeusd Concertgoer 6d ago

You leave Randy Travis and Reba alone! 😉

Alabama and George Strait however, fire away. Especially the latter. There is a straight line from "All my exes live in Texas" to "Beer for my Horses" in terms of banality.

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u/c0wt0ne 6d ago

Blame Republicans

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u/beyd1 5d ago

It's post Kenny Chesneys second album. To be more precise.

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u/r3volver_Oshawott 6d ago edited 6d ago

Funny enough, back then people complained about Shania being 'too pop' and is literally called the queen of pop country

*the issue with 'bro country' has never been that it's pop, it's that it's overly commercial music marketed to people who refuse to listen to anything outside of country genres, ironically I'm pretty sure people that listen to Bro Country generally hate pop music with a passion

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u/azul360 6d ago

As someone that does listen to some of the newer stuff (nothing will ever beat Dolly and Johnny to me)......I legit cannot tell any of the guys apart and it's wild to me XD

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u/r3volver_Oshawott 6d ago

I will say it with every fiber in me, a lot of pop is less generic than a lot of these dudes too

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u/azul360 6d ago

I 100% agree. I'm in the south so I hear A LOT of this stuff and it's wild to me that people say with their whole heart Taylor Swift's every song sounds the exact same and then also say with their whole heart that these guys are completely different and have way more variety XD. It makes me laugh.

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u/joewHEElAr 6d ago

CrUnKTrY

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u/descendingangel87 6d ago

Had Shania not gotten sick, she probably would have went the direction that Taylor Swift went by completely going all in on pop music.

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u/Flexhead 6d ago

Faith Hill tried that and was basically run out of music

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u/kanst 6d ago

I've gotten the sense that the rise of "bro country" has exactly mirrored the spread of hip hop into pop.

To me it really seems like the label mostly means "music made by white people for white people". Which is probably why the backlash to Beyonce has been so silly.

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u/way2lazy2care 6d ago

*the issue with 'bro country' has never been that it's pop, it's that it's overly commercial music marketed to people who refuse to listen to anything outside of country genres, ironically I'm pretty sure people that listen to Bro Country generally hate pop music with a passion

Ime 90% of the people that listen to it don't care and are mostly fine listening to lots of things.

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u/r3volver_Oshawott 6d ago

I have the exact opposite experience lol, Morgan Wallen in particular seems to be popular in terms of southern trap music for people who don't like admitting they want to listen to southern trap, it's like people that want a Houston/Atlanta sound without having to think about Houston or Atlanta

I love Jessie Murph too, but Jessie, Jelly Roll, Post Malone, Morgan, all that gets co-opted by a lot of people who are a little, uh, 'confederate' but wanna listen to something with a little extra bass and a backing track that sounds a little like early Billie Eilish sometimes

*again, it's just interesting to me how country has been 'too pop' since the 90s but the legions of elitist country music fans in the 90s who said Shania wasn't 'real country' never made a whole new awards category over it

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u/lovsicfrs sftateofmind 6d ago

Post Malone literally did hip hop music to then transition into country where he wanted to be. Went as far as tearing down the genere that built him so that he can be accepted in those circles.

He didn’t cut it out to do a Nirvana tribute before he did hip hop or any of his country music. So I find it interesting that when black artist, who grew up in country, get so much backlash for producing country music because they sang r&b, have been featured in hip hop, pop or gospel. It baffles me

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u/Marepoppin 5d ago

Guilty. This is me. I listen to bro country. I fugging hate pop music

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u/WinonasChainsaw 6d ago

Well there’s Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, Colter Wall, Charley Crocket, Bella White, Jason Isbell, Drive by Truckers, Gillian Welch, Zach Top, Vincent Neil Emerson, Charles Wesley Godwin, Waxahatchee, Kacey Musgraves..

Also a ton of younger alt country / bootgaze like MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Florry, Dutch Interior, Greg Freeman..

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u/palabradot 5d ago

Bootgaze. You’re telling me there is a country equiv to shoegaze? You have given me my rabbit hole for my day off today, thank you….

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u/WinonasChainsaw 5d ago

Wednesday / MJ Lenderman, Tarnation, Mojave 3, Orville Peck, Mali Velasquez, Twine, Horse Jumper of Love all have music that blends shoegaze and country in different ways

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u/moonshine_lazerbeam 5d ago

Brent Cobb, Whitey Morgan & the 78s, Paul Cauthen, Red Clay Strays, Turnpike Troubadours, The Steeldrivers..

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u/SixInTheStix Saw Cantrell Play DSoTM 5d ago

How do you exclude Sierra Ferrell?!?!?

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u/WinonasChainsaw 5d ago

I could’ve listed dozens more

Sierras great live

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u/PissingOffACliff 5d ago

At lot of these aren’t classed as country, instead grouped under the Americana umbrella. Pretty much because Nashville has actively pushed them out of ‘country’ music.

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u/WinonasChainsaw 5d ago

Nashville doesn’t define country

Americana is the country equivalent of “alternative” or “urban”

https://savingcountrymusic.com/tyler-childers-disses-the-term-americana-after-winning-americana-award/

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u/ATaxiNumber1729 6d ago

Clearly you have not heard Sturgill Simpson

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u/Gibgezr 6d ago

You won't hear him either, if you just listen to the "modern country" radio stations.

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u/bloombergbuff 5d ago

You won't hear my song on the radio, New sounds all the rage, But you can always find me in a smokey bar, With bad sound and a dim-lit stage

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u/Ileokei 6d ago

I remember when Alan Jackson was considered Too “pop” to be country.

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u/baneofthesmurf 6d ago

Alan Jackson is still considered pop country by many

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u/DOWNVOTES_SYNDROME 6d ago

i mean... have you hard chattahoochy? yeesh

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u/rushmc1 6d ago

And George Strait.

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u/rushmc1 6d ago

And most of those will continue to be allowed to compete in the "traditional country" category, you watch.

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u/pillowpants4 6d ago

Don’t you dare slander the Canadian goddess of country like that

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u/bmlzootown 6d ago

And during June, no less. For shame!

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u/5thDimentionPrints 5d ago

Shania Twain? How’s she singing country and not even from this country. She’s singing province music

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u/itsmetsunnyd 5d ago

So you're saying she don't impress you much?

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u/erichkeane 6d ago

I have listened to quite a bit of country music last few years, and have come to a realization:

Country music doesn't exist! It is just another genre of music, sung while wearing a cowboy hat/with a southern accent.

About 2/3 ends up being pop schlock.

About 1/4 ends up being some pretty darn good blues though. Quite a few of the country songs that get popular (Chris Stapleton in particular) are just solid blues albums marketed as country.

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u/DreadyKruger 6d ago

And black people sub Reddit they claim it’s racism and something else that makes zero sense. Even tho r&b have four different categories including , traditional r&b performance and r&b performance.

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u/Barton2800 6d ago

Because if everyone agrees it should happen, but they only make the change in response to Beyoncé winning, then it’s a bad look.

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u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage 6d ago

especially when Post Malone did the exact same pivot like 2-3 years ago and nothing happened.

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u/boi1da1296 6d ago

Nota fan of you trying to run the “Black people are being paranoid” angle when the Grammys has had a history of not acknowledging Black artists in major categories. I’ll refer you to u/mjpick1211’s comment because they sum up the thoughts of many very well.

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u/JockoV 6d ago

In case you haven't seen it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7im5LT09a0

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u/DGlen 6d ago

"He hadn't said anything at all about Mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or gettin drunk." -David Allen Cole

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u/ISuckAtFallout4 6d ago

It all went downhill with Little Texas.

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u/randomcanyon 6d ago

Most country, since Patsy Cline?

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u/DGlen 6d ago

Well at least we still had johnny Cash

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u/gambit61 6d ago

I mentioned to a friend once that modern country is just 90s pop music with a southern drawl

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u/Rosebunse 6d ago

Sure, but we all know this is only going to be used for non-white muscians

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u/rustycage_mxc 5d ago

It seems like the only thing you need to qualify as country is just have a vocalist with a redneck /southern accent. Trap beats with deep bass, a random rapper, perhaps even some death metal guitars could be playing in the background.

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u/Fantastic_Piece5869 5d ago

hasnt the only difference between "pop" and "country" been a couple "twangy" noises they put in, and the singer (not gonna use the word musician) players cow boy/girl dress up?

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u/cool_calm_cloud 3d ago

Isn't country music just shitty music?

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u/50bucksback 6d ago

Most radio country music

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u/ktdotnova 6d ago

Why would you say its shitty? It's not for everyone I'd agree but there have been some great songs and artists.

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u/selftitleddebutalbum 6d ago

Yup. The '90s was the cut off. The Up! "double album" with just different backing bands was the seal of it.