Maybe I should stop reading blogs. I would have never known this existed on my own.
"Got a keg of beer and a bunch of girls" - REALLY? I've never heard of such a thing! BEER and GIRLS in a song? What will these crazy outlaws think of next?! I know, they should take the keg of beer and the girls and put em in - wait for it, this is genius - a TRUCK! Y'know, the big jacked up kind you can crank Nelly real loud out of? I mean, Hank Williams, obviously. So easy to get them confused. Anyway, this sure is a nice change from all those songs about warm milk and bible studies!
LOL... "Crank that country up loud" - I will, as soon as you turn down your shitty rock song!
Seriously, what is this atrocity?
The only thing I can definitively say is, it's not a country song. It could be pretty much anything else though. Is it a terrible rock song? Is it "Friday" with a guitar? Is it nuclear fallout set to music? Is it a rabies-infested raccoon stumbling around someone's tool shed? Poor raccoon. They should really put it out of its misery.
Okay, palate cleansing time. You know, I'd pretty much forgotten more good music from the 90s than I've even heard in the last 5 years. Here's one of those gems, from another artist I miss.
Showing posts with label trucker hat of music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trucker hat of music. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Music is powerful
Music is powerful. It's more powerful than charts or any of the other artifice that's been built up around it.
I've been enjoying listening to some newer music lately, but my heart keeps going back to my favorite 90s stuff. Why is that? Well, it's almost across the board better music, but it's much more than that. A big part of enjoying music comes from the memories it makes; you hear a certain song and it takes you back. Songs have even been written about the power of songs. Kenny Chesney's I Go Back and Eric Church's Springsteen are two good ones.
So why would I want to return to the 90s, which was an absolutely terrible time for me personally? One of the reasons I still like 80s pop music is it takes me back to being a kid. Great memories. (I also like the fun, catchy music. Pop before it become one long electronic drone.) So why 90s? I've come to the conclusion that the music is so good, so powerful, that it in itself has become the memory. Hearing those songs doesn't take me back to the loneliness, the heartbreak, the complete shittiness of being a teenage girl and young woman in her 20s. The songs themselves supercede that, even cleanse it. All I hear is the music. All I remember is driving around listening to it. I might as well have not had a care in the world.
I remember how the music saved me, and still does.
This is why good, non-disposable music is so damn important.
There was a "sound" in country music, from the late 80s into about the early 2000s. I call it 90s country because pretty much the whole decade was like this (though less so in the later years). The best way to describe this sound is "warm." Warm vocals, warm songwriting, the warmth and genuine feeling that can only come from real musicians playing real instruments. I'm choosing these two songs not to go out of my way to prove my point; I looked at my list of hundreds of 90s songs and just let two pop out at me. My point being, it was very easy to find two songs that embody that warmth and feeling from back then, because almost every song had it. From the top artists, to the middle stars like Mark Chesnutt (who should have been bigger), down to those who had only a few hits. This was the sound.
So for everyone who thinks it's no big deal what "country" sounds like now, or who even thinks it's rightly "evolving," here are two songs that I feel embody today's soulless, ugly sound. I didn't pick something off the rails like "Donkey," I didn't need to. It's just as easy finding the bad now as it was finding the good back then. And THAT'S what I'm trying to contrast here. Not song vs song, but sound vs sound. This is too big to just sweep under the rug and not fight for.
The first one is useless garbage with a shamelessly catchy chorus. The second one is secondrate rock music, like something a Bon Jovi cover band would write in their off time. And these are, respectively, the number one and number five songs on Billboard right now. And they're very indicative of the sound of the past five or so years.
So who wants to tell me we don't have a serious problem here? And yes, I do take music damn seriously. Music is the closest thing we have to heaven. Music has the power to temporarily transport us out of our minds, out of our troubles, and into another state. Do you really want that state to be:
"Yeah holla at your boy if you need a ride
If you roll with me yeah you know we rollin' high
Up on them 37 Nittos, windows tinted hard to see though
How fresh my baby is in the shotgun seat oh
Them kisses are for me though, automatic like a free throw
This life I live it might not be for you but it's for me though
Let's roll!"
Jesus. I think my computer just got dumber from copying and pasting that.
It's important to note there's still good music on the radio. Chris Young, Randy Houser, Easton Corbin, Eli Young Band, and Dierks Bentley all have that warm sound on most of their songs. (I really hope they keep it up, cause there was a time when I thought Blake Shelton would help carry on this tradition. Har.) Miranda Lambert and Zac Brown Band don't have a 90s sound but make consistently good music with their own sound, which is awesome. Kacey Musgraves reminds me of 70s country, especially on her new song, but she has her own sound too. These are all good things. But the sad fact is these artists are the exceptions, not the rule. And that's why this era of music will never be one I go back to over and over for solace. I'll pack up the handful of songs I love with me, and run like hell.
I've been enjoying listening to some newer music lately, but my heart keeps going back to my favorite 90s stuff. Why is that? Well, it's almost across the board better music, but it's much more than that. A big part of enjoying music comes from the memories it makes; you hear a certain song and it takes you back. Songs have even been written about the power of songs. Kenny Chesney's I Go Back and Eric Church's Springsteen are two good ones.
So why would I want to return to the 90s, which was an absolutely terrible time for me personally? One of the reasons I still like 80s pop music is it takes me back to being a kid. Great memories. (I also like the fun, catchy music. Pop before it become one long electronic drone.) So why 90s? I've come to the conclusion that the music is so good, so powerful, that it in itself has become the memory. Hearing those songs doesn't take me back to the loneliness, the heartbreak, the complete shittiness of being a teenage girl and young woman in her 20s. The songs themselves supercede that, even cleanse it. All I hear is the music. All I remember is driving around listening to it. I might as well have not had a care in the world.
I remember how the music saved me, and still does.
This is why good, non-disposable music is so damn important.
There was a "sound" in country music, from the late 80s into about the early 2000s. I call it 90s country because pretty much the whole decade was like this (though less so in the later years). The best way to describe this sound is "warm." Warm vocals, warm songwriting, the warmth and genuine feeling that can only come from real musicians playing real instruments. I'm choosing these two songs not to go out of my way to prove my point; I looked at my list of hundreds of 90s songs and just let two pop out at me. My point being, it was very easy to find two songs that embody that warmth and feeling from back then, because almost every song had it. From the top artists, to the middle stars like Mark Chesnutt (who should have been bigger), down to those who had only a few hits. This was the sound.
So for everyone who thinks it's no big deal what "country" sounds like now, or who even thinks it's rightly "evolving," here are two songs that I feel embody today's soulless, ugly sound. I didn't pick something off the rails like "Donkey," I didn't need to. It's just as easy finding the bad now as it was finding the good back then. And THAT'S what I'm trying to contrast here. Not song vs song, but sound vs sound. This is too big to just sweep under the rug and not fight for.
The first one is useless garbage with a shamelessly catchy chorus. The second one is secondrate rock music, like something a Bon Jovi cover band would write in their off time. And these are, respectively, the number one and number five songs on Billboard right now. And they're very indicative of the sound of the past five or so years.
So who wants to tell me we don't have a serious problem here? And yes, I do take music damn seriously. Music is the closest thing we have to heaven. Music has the power to temporarily transport us out of our minds, out of our troubles, and into another state. Do you really want that state to be:
"Yeah holla at your boy if you need a ride
If you roll with me yeah you know we rollin' high
Up on them 37 Nittos, windows tinted hard to see though
How fresh my baby is in the shotgun seat oh
Them kisses are for me though, automatic like a free throw
This life I live it might not be for you but it's for me though
Let's roll!"
Jesus. I think my computer just got dumber from copying and pasting that.
It's important to note there's still good music on the radio. Chris Young, Randy Houser, Easton Corbin, Eli Young Band, and Dierks Bentley all have that warm sound on most of their songs. (I really hope they keep it up, cause there was a time when I thought Blake Shelton would help carry on this tradition. Har.) Miranda Lambert and Zac Brown Band don't have a 90s sound but make consistently good music with their own sound, which is awesome. Kacey Musgraves reminds me of 70s country, especially on her new song, but she has her own sound too. These are all good things. But the sad fact is these artists are the exceptions, not the rule. And that's why this era of music will never be one I go back to over and over for solace. I'll pack up the handful of songs I love with me, and run like hell.
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