If you told me 20 years ago that rock music would be dead and country music would be alive and more popular than ever I would not have believed it. But that's exactly where things are at the moment. Country music is killing it and rock music is as dead as my grandmother. Every weekend there's a country music concert here, and if you go to these shows you will actually see young people there having fun. Can't say the same for rock, outside of the legacy acts there aren't any new rock bands coming through town. Even my friends listen to country now after being rock fans back in the day who wouldn't listen to anything else. We would legit make fun of country singers like Garth Brooks and Shania Twain, it just seemed so embarrassing at the time....Now it's all the rage and rock is the but of all the jokes. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Are you living in some alternate universe?
Sure, Rock is dead. I'll give you that. Classic rock, hard rock, hair rock, alt rock...all of it. It's niche. But LOL, where in the hell is the surge of popularity in country music taking place? At your backyard BBQ? Because it sure as hell isn't happening anywhere else.
And that's if one even tolerates calling what passes as country as country, anymore. Many don't. Frankly, I don't think a pop song with a twang qualifies as country. Still a pop song. To put it more bluntly, it's "
hip-hop for people afraid of black people", as Steve Earle said. MorganFreemanhe'srightyouknow.gif. Just go watch a Florida Georgia Line music video. Their music videos could be any hip hop or R&B star's music video from the 90's. Just swap out all the black people for white people with gawdy tattoos. Hell, at some point, even they realized that's what they were doing, and they just started inviting Nelly to star in the videos directly.
Right now on the Billboard Hot 100 the top country song is "White Horse" at #27 by Chris Stapleton. Next up? Nate Smith at #55 singing a pop-rock song while not even bothering to wear a cowboy hat. At least that pretense has been dropped. Almost none of the people who listen to this stuff work anywhere near to a ranch, anymore, much less on one. It's the same story if you go to the Kworb and look at other trending charts like YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music. Country dominates music like baseball dominates spectator sport, LOL.
Similarly, the most popular country stars on the Billboard chart aren't even country stars, anymore: Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus. Two stars whose ambition transcended the genre, and realized they'd never be where they are if they stayed within it, so they left it. Ironically, in that context, the highest ranked country star who is still
usually country on the list is Luke Combs at #17 covering Tracy's Chapman's non-country hit, "Fast Car". Tracy Chapman is a black woman.
I don't know what to tell you man. This is one of those examples where the water warmed up so gradually around country fans they didn't realize they were the frog in the pot of boiling water. All those urban kids won the war. They invaded from within-- Manchurian style. At some point the country stars and country fans didn't even realize they weren't making or listening to country, anymore. They didn't notice they were copying everything the kids in the hood were doing because everybody still looked like them.
