• BigNote
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    9 months ago

    I believe that mainstream country turned to shit in the 80s, not sure why. My theory is that it’s down to the money men in Nashville turning out an increasingly phony product for commercial reasons, but I don’t actually know enough about that aspect of the business to have an informed opinion.

    Fortunately there’s always been legit musicians turning out excellent alt-country or Americana, or whatever we want to call it. Also a lot of the older country musicians never completely sold out either.

      • BigNote
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        9 months ago

        That sounds about right. I also think that at some point around that time the big Nashville labels decided that it made more financial sense to get behind a specific type of cultural and political messaging than it did to simply let the music be whatever it wanted to be.

        Long gone were the days of Loretta “The Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and Johnny Paycheck “I Owe my Soul to the Company Store,” and while we still had Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt and their protogé young Steve Earle, for the most part mainstream country and western was turning into formulaic corporate crap.