Ten Reasons Why I like Country Music

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If you admit to liking country music you'll get those looks.  It'due south like people are discovering an unknown only strange side of your personality. This is the aforementioned wait you'd get for joining the Rand Paul presidential entrada or going on a reality show.   But that's a amend reaction than you'd get from roots aficionados.  They'll say they besides like country music — but only the non-commercial, accurate stuff.  Inappreciably anyone will admit to beingness a fan of large hat and big hair country music — the kind portrayed on the TV show Nashville.

Land has always had a disreputable, depression-rent reputation; the cliché is that country fans are rural, gap-toothed hicks with gun racks on their pick-up trucks.  Even my friends from the South are defensive about it, making certain I know that "not anybody in the South listens to land music."    Just one-half the time these critics don't really know what information technology is they don't like. They're reacting to the corny "Hee Haw" stereotype of the threescore's and 70'due south, without appreciating that the country genre crosses many types of music.  This ignorance is especially loftier in the New York metro surface area, where they are no state radio stations and few honky-tonk clubs.

Office of the problem is that there's no real understanding on what constitutes "real" land, and in some cases artists who phone call themselves "country" don't seem that different from mainstream popular (I'm talking to you Taylor Swift.)  For me, country music should take a particular sound – something with a steel guitar, fiddle or twanging vocalist.  But even more than important is the song itself.  State music is e'er most something; it's a short story in rhyme.   In fact, what I like most land music is exactly what brands it every bit an unsophisticated, simplistic art form:  the songs tin can be happy, aroused, melancholy, fun, sarcastic, or patriotic, simply you don't have to work difficult to sympathise their betoken.

In this respect, land is the opposite of rock, where the lyrics are the least important part of the song.  Half the time you can't understand the words because they are slurred or overwhelmed past the music, so, even when you can hear them, the meaning is opaque.  Even my dear Beatles wrote elliptically, in confusing symbols and images.  Who exactly was Lucy in the sky with diamonds?  I am the eggman AND the walrus?  Huh?  Y'all would never sit around a dorm room spinning theories on the deeper significant of a state vocal.  Country music is likewise down-to-earth and unpretentious for that.

Just what I similar best about country music is that information technology addresses the total range of cares and concerns that occur in a human being life.  Rock and pop are almost always well-nigh love – new love, erstwhile love, failed love.  Country music certainly covers this area (especially the realm of someone'south cheatin' heart), but it also understands that a meaningful life is about more than than the state of your romantic attachments.

Some of the staples of state music include:

1.  Accepting fate. State music is very clear that people are not really in charge of their own destinies. As Darius Rucker and Kenny Chesney point out respectively in "This," and "In that location goes my Life" (come across videos below) you don't have to attain your dreams to have a happy life. In fact, sometimes not reaching your dreams is the best thing.

2. Female empowerment and a celebration of women. Women give as good every bit they get in country music. No one pushes them around. There are endless state songs about women getting by on their own, similar George Strait's "She Let Herself Become,"  or songs nigh women interim an atrocious lot like men, every bit in Terri Clark'south hilarious "Girls Lie Also" . Only my favorite vocal celebrating women is Martina McBride's "This I's For Girls."

3.  Patriotism. More than than anything else, the overt my-land-correct-or-wrong patriotism of country music sticks in the craw of those who like complication in their music. There's nothing subtle virtually Toby Keith'south controversial "Courtesy of the Red White and Bluish"  which warns terrorists that the Uncle Sam is "going to put a kicking in your donkey." Myself, I find this un-PC approach as exhilarating today as it was right after September eleven. Same with Alan Jackson's "Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning."

4  Religion. Of all the major country themes, I enjoy the God songs the least. They tend to be overly sentimental, mawkish or downright theologically suspect. Even so, "I Saw God Today," by George Strait  is so simple and direct that information technology makes a better case for God's existence than many sermons.

5  Drinking songs. State music has a love/hate relationship with the bottle. Mostly beloved, equally in Toby Keith'due south "I Love this Bar  and Alan Jackson'south "It'southward V O'clock Somewhere" ). But sometimes at that place are cautionary tales, equally in Brad Paisley's "Booze"

6 Family unit: There are country songs about every family relationship you can retrieve of, including sisters, brothers, grandparents and of course parents. These tend to be tearjerkers, equally in Bucky Covington's "A Father's Dearest,"  Sometimes they are more rueful. What parent, for example, hasn't felt similar Martina McBride in "Teenage Daughters"

7  The heroism of everyday life. Country music shows that every life has value, not just the most celebrated ones. Jamie O'Neal makes this explicit in "Somebody's Hero"  as practise Brooks and Dun in "Ruby-red Dirt Route."

8  Dreams of Escape: Country music gives voice to the frustrations that people have in their daily lives, equally in Sugarland's "Something more" or their fantasies of escape, every bit in Kenny Cheney'southward "No Shoes No Shirt No Trouble"  and Blake Shelton'south "Some Beach".

9 Modest towns: Country music'due south core audience is rural America and the genre is always ready to pay back some love and celebrate small town values – to a sure extent. In Miranda Lambert'south "Famous in a Minor Town" , you never go alone, just yous also take no privacy. In Rodney Atkins' "These Are My People"  life a small town isn't perfect, but information technology's "real."

10  Sense of humour: What a lot of people don't appreciate is how funny state music is. One-half of country songs takes life very seriously, but the rest seems to imply that life is substantially a cosmic joke and that y'all're ameliorate off playing it for laughs. The humor can be dry out or it can be played for pure slapstick. Two of my favorite humorous numbers are "What was I thinking?" by Dirks Bentley , and "Online" by Brad Paisley

When our family goes on holiday, the first thing we exercise is find the local country music station – considering there always is a local state music station outside New York Urban center. This makes the trip seem more than strange and exotic. We are reminded that not every country song a archetype. In that location's a lot of country schlock and there are plenty of country artists I don't really like (eastward.thou., Tim McGraw, Faith Colina, Carrie Underwood). And I really wouldn't want an exclusive diet of country music. But I really feel sorry for people who have never dipped into country music. At that place's no quicker way to become an emotional rush. These simple songs of nostalgia, longing, regret, acceptance, and hope can bring a tear or a smile in iii minutes or less. It'southward dainty to feel alive over again.

  • Alan Jackson
  • Brad Paisley
  • Darius Rucker
  • Kenny Chesney
  • Martina McBride
  • Rand Paul
  • Toby Keith
  • Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)