Shitty patriot country music has always been a thing and there are still tons of Outlaw country artists right now. This is literally just like those “rap in the 90s vs rap today” memes that ignore the fact that trap has been a thing since the 90s and old school hip hop is having a Renaissance right now
old school hip hop is having a Renaissance right now
Wait, it is? Where?
JPEGMAFIAs newest material is clearly inspired by 80-90s hip hop. As well as 70s jive.
Pretty much all of Griselda and the dozen or so artists under their umbrella. Billy Woods & the rest of the Backwoodz Studios group are incredibly boom-bap inspired, not to mention all the “lofi” artists rn who are pretty much just old school rap. Turn off the radio and stop listening to algorithm-created Playlists and you’ll realize that there are still active artists in pretty much any subgenre of music you can think of
Also wanted to add that I keep lo-fi on at my house constantly at a low volume just to set the mood
Also there aren’t only American artists, listen to artists from different countries and you’ll find a lot of great stuff, some of them even rap in English. I’m biased towards the French scene myself but there’s loads.
That’s true. French hip hop in general is really good, Gasoline’s album A Journey into Abstract Hip-Hop is one of my favorite instrumental albums of all time
Griselda is top tier boom bap👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿 The Butcher Comin!
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I too am curious about this. I still have some old school hip hop that I listen to. Living Legends and their songs “Never Falling Down” and “Moving at the Speed of Life”.
From my other comment
Pretty much all of Griselda and the dozen or so artists under their umbrella. Billy Woods & the rest of the Backwoodz Studios group are incredibly boom-bap inspired, not to mention all the “lofi” artists rn who are pretty much just old school rap. Turn off the radio and stop listening to algorithm-created Playlists and you’ll realize that there are still active artists in pretty much any subgenre of music you can think of
This is also ignoring The Alchemist and all of the artists he works with, who’s basically doing what El-P did in the early 2000s
Appreciate the recommendation man!! Thanks for sharing!
Thank God for this thread. I was floundering for new stuff for my long commute.
No worries, I’d personally recommend Billy Woods’s album from last year Aethiopes if you like more serious and lyrical stuff. It’s one of my favorite rap records of all time since listening to it
God bless
Check out NAS’s Kings Disease 3(my fav). The man is 50+ still putting it down. He even got Lauryn Hill on a track, smh. Dropped another album yesterday and has another one coming soon next year. Crazy
I’m going to see Wu Tang and Nas in a couple of weeks. Until they all die off, I’ve still got hope.
The good stuff is still out there. You just have to know where to find it. Commercial radio and things like that are driven by what the younger generation want to hear, which is fine for them but it’s just not my thing. Im into rap that has substance and lyrical content
I assume they mean new artists using the style?
Yeah, see my other comments. Plenty of new artists in the past couple years have come up with a old school/classic hip hop sound
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TBF, country music hasn’t been country music for a quite a while now
it’s bro country now
It really is, now that you mention it.
Southern Pop
I see hick hop a lot
Southern pop sounded bad, but somehow this easily sounds worse 😳
Okay, I’m taking that. It’s mine now. It’s beautiful.
God that sounds awful already lol
Hey, if you’re in the USSA, that shit’s been blasting in your ears for years, decades even. The only “star” ever created by a vocal talent show was Carrie Underwood,
It’s the american equivalent to Kpop? The thought is putting funny images in my head.
What do they drink now? Since their precious Bud Light gave way to WOKENESS.
Typically other beers that happen to be owned by AB-InBev. That or Coors.
Coors was among the first companies to extend benefits to same-sex partners and was named the Corporation of the Year by the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, despite being a right wing company in general.
Didn’t know that, I was just commenting on what the unhomed Bud Light drinkers drink now. I don’t drink any of that shit because it’s not good beer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They’re still pretty right wing afaik, but it shows what concerted action between employees and the community can do.
For a shitty macrobrew, coors is ok. Like if I have to order one of the big three.
I go Yuengling. Best of ALL. It’s not available in my home state, but they said a year or two ago that they were partnering with IIRC Miller-Coors, got a deal to brew their beer using M-C facilities. And they’d service almost every state. Still waiting for that day. 😔
Yeah, we don’t get that out west :(
Good, I spent several years in PA, it is cheap piss water, that had good marketing…
Stella Artois
Why do I find that so amusing?
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Nonalcoholic Stella’s are the best roadtrip beer!
Heh drinking Wife Beater pretty apt
There’s lots of good old fashioned country out there. You just gotta leave the mainstream behind. You’ll find men in touch with their emotions. You’ll find women who won’t settle down. You’ll find fine American classics. You’ll find new classics waiting to be known. And Mckain Lakey!
The country music community may be problematic, but country music itself is wonderful. And many country musicians are fantastic, unexpected people. If you want country like it used to be, dive into Melissa Carper’s catalogue. She’s the master of the brand new old time song.
I’ll just leave this here…
Sheesh, I’ll leave this here for both of you.
Do yourself a favor and listen to the Americana genre. All the blues and western inspired folk, without the bootlicking!
Heard a lot of this growing up like Seeger, Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, but also Canadians like Lightfoot and Stan Rogers. Lately I’ve enjoyed some of the IWWs compilations of workers’ songs, Utah Philips etc. Phil Ochs is up there too.
My mother’s from an assimilated Mennonite background and it was one of the non-Christian genres that was permissible to her parents, because of the pacifist and civil rights sentiments in a lot of that music at the time. Also it lacked the sex and drugs themes which rock had. “I Aint Marching Anymore” and “Where have all the flowers gone?” I remember hearing quite often.
That’s a solid fucking set list, I Aint Marchin Anymore and Utah Phillips are especially bangers.
Nowadays, ironically some of the best Americana music comes out of Sweden by First Aid Kit.
An absoluteky outstanding song by Cash btw. If you haven’t checked it out, I suggest you do so. Even if you have zero interest in Country do yourself a favour.
Every song by Johnny is a banger.
Very wholesome.
Literally a Cautionary tale, and still one hell of a banger! OUTLAW COUNTRY! WOOOO
Hail Mojo!
Did you know Little Steven Van Zandt coined the phrase “outlaw county” for and, IMO saved country music.
I did not, I’ll be honest i never consumed the genre much before the Archer Vice story line.
OUTLAW DIFFERENT COUNTRY! WOOOO
I know this is obvious, but Cash’s beliefs are endlessly fascinating. The same man who recorded “Ragged Old Flag” also wrote “Man in Black” and covered “Out Among the Stars.” The latter is a song about a kid who commits suicide by cop because he doesn’t feel like his life matters.
His cover of NiN’s “hurt” is so good Trent Reznor sees it as the best version.
All of Johnny’s covers are fantastic. His cover of Tom Petty’s Won’t Back Down with Tom singing backup vocals, for example.
Honestly that song always brings a tear to my eye.
His rendition is a masterpiece.
Tom Waits said much the same thing about his cover of “Down There by the Train.”
Underrated fact
I dislike a lot of country music, but Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson are practically a genre in and of themselves, seperated from even the outlaw country genre they started.
We listened to the song in English class when I was about 14 years old and we discussed it quite a bit afterwards. I guess it was kind of a first transitioning into adulthood for me, seeing how much is going wrong and hurting people. Since then about 95 % of my wardrobe is black. It’s a statement and a reminder for myself and I
wantneed to carry it everywhere I go.Cash may sing country, but he’s always been rock n’ roll.
Someone needs to show it to Oliver Anthony.
I can’t put into words how much I despise modern stadium country. It’s like the opposite of art. I grew up in the south around people who could only stomach country music like that. Everything else to them was too weird, or not white enough.
The closest analogy to country music are the movies fascists made, like the ones Hans Steinhoff and Goebbels directed. Completely banal plots and lack of artistic value. The only reason they were made as to communicate fascist rhetoric and fulfill a quota of cultural markers.
That’s all modern country music is. It’s the music of boring middle class white people who feel uneasy if their specific cultural touchstones aren’t constantly reinforced. There have to be trucks, land ownership, high school football, generic American jingoism, glorification of alcoholism.
The most common thread in this shit music is that anything outside of a middle class conservative white lifestyle is to be mistrusted. The girl from a small town who goes off to college in a big city, but realizes her home was truly out in the sticks. The song about how country values make a person more virtuous or fun. “Don’t go over that hill, don’t go looking for anything further.” It could possibly be a sweet sentiment if it weren’t for the target audience: comfortable white shitheads who drive a $80,000 Ford truck in the suburbs.
At least with propaganda it’s the ruling class messaging the citizenry. In this case, at least for the most part seems self-inflicted and without purpose. People just gravitate to whatever fits their identity.
That’s all modern country music is. It’s the music of boring middle class white people who feel uneasy if their specific cultural touchstones aren’t constantly reinforced. There have to be trucks, land ownership, high school football, generic American jingoism, glorification of alcoholism.
Well written.
Oh no, absolutely not is country music self inflicted. Modern country music is part of the same propaganda network as everything else in capitalism. The whole Nashville and Georgia country scenes have been connected at the hip with conservative money since at least the 1970s where Nixon had a country campaign song. Then there was Reagan showing up at the Grand Ole Opry. It’s a useful vehicle to spread and satiate the thirst for white supremacy.
There’s also Clear Channel Radio (currently iHeartRadio) which is run by ideological conservatives.
Also there’s some kind of money floating around to suddenly promote the odd country song or two, like that Rich Men in Richmond song, or that stupid Jason Aldean guy. Every now and then you’ll see a random headline like “country star fights back against woke-ness in new song.” And that’s the propaganda.
Parasites hopping onto a culture to exploit it for their own gains is not really the same as state propaganda. I don’t think there’s some shadowy group inventing this music to control the masses. Though politicians would no doubt pander to (or even weaponize) a group if they can. And people will absolutely try and profit off it.
It’s just a bit of a leap to ascribe low brow music to some grand conspiracy. Or at least if that is, then every culture is a conspiracy.
I guess I don’t see much of a distinction between those exploitative parasites and the state actors. I’m on the side of Althusser here, where the state is both a structural arrangement and a set of ideological norms. In that sense, you could say all culture is a conspiracy, as in a conspiracy to replicate the content and character of one’s class interests.
I don’t mean to say there’s a shadowy group creating it, rather, there’s a shadowy group that gives a platform and representation to things that promote their own interests. Or something they can flip around and sell back to you. Capitalism is crafty like that, like Che Guevara t-shirts.
Fuck clear channel. They ruined radio across the entire country
At least with propaganda it’s the ruling class messaging the citizenry. In this case, at least for the most part seems self-inflicted and without purpose. People just gravitate to whatever fits their identity.
Don’t forget the record labels. Mega corporations are the ruling class of our society.
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.
Late 80s early 90s. When they started making 80s pop music with slide guitar and a twangy vocal and calling it country.
The final nail in the coffin was when country music radio refused to play Johnny Cash’s Unchained album.
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.
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Twenty hours in and it’s up to me to remind people that Dolly Parton is the full package?
- She’s got tunes, OK ‘I Will Always Love You’ is a bit cloying but the rumour is that she also wrote Jolene the same day
- She supports other women. When porn star Julia Parton was around and telling people that she was Dolly’s cousin, Dolly’s public response was something like, ‘She ain’t my cousin but I can’t condemn what she does… it’s not like I ever tried to hide my breasts. Good luck to her.’
- She produced Buffy The Vampire Slayer through her production company Sanddollar. She kept a low profile publicly but behind the scenes was very supportive of the show because it provided good role models for young women.
- She funds the Dolly Parton Imagination library which mails free books to kids under five.
9 to 5 is also a socialist anthem!
Dolly Parton is a rich theme park owner who has abused her employees and she pals around with mass murderers like George W. Bush.
At a certain point she had credibility. She came from a poor Appalachian background and made music reflecting that. After a certain point though, after decades in the industry, she completely flipped. Her 9 to 5 song used to be a genuine anthem for struggling working class people, then she flipped it a few years ago as “5 to 9” for a Sqaurespace commercial, glorifying the idea of working a second job after your main one.
She’s the exact problem of modern country music. It’s made and financed by people too rich to be connected to humanity anymore.
I’m going to need a reference on that staff abuse allegation, I’ve tried Googling but haven’t turned up anything.
I don’t have a tv so I didn’t catch the Squarespace commercial, don’t know if it even played in the UK.
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True, the only thing I remotely have an issue with is her southern revisionism restaurants.
Like what’s going with that?
Southern revisionism, it was a trade dispute not about slavery. It’s not wrong really just I dunno whitewashed and myopic.
No shirt No shoes No jews… You didn’t hear that
It shocked me the first time I met a real anti-Semite, in real life, in Tennessee. I’ve worked in a lot of places all over the world and I’ve seen plenty of racism. No one else topped that guy in Tennessee. Other places racism was mostly contained to ‘they stay over there and we stay over here.’ Tons of problems but living together but apart was possible. That doesn’t speak to every experience obviously. That old guy in Tennessee wanted another Holocaust, plain and simple. Anywhere else he’d get the shit kicked out of him, there it was tolerated.
Had someone try to sell me on the merits of the Ku Klux Klan while working at a factory in Tennessee, I was a staunch Libertarian at the time so i guess he thought i might bite, he told me how they helped the community out and kept people safe… the guy was dead fucking serious, and when I asked him about them being racist he just changed the subject… Still feels like a fever dream…
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such an odd thing to do.
What happened next? Was he mocking you or telling a joke that he thought you would enjoy?
What a strange encounter
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I suspect the NZ bloke was racist and immediately linked all Southern Americans with racism, so felt comfortable opening up.
Ngl as a non-american if I met a dude in a bar and he’s was from ‘the south’ especially Texas or Florida I would be sitting there expecting some kind of anti-‘woke’, anti-minority, anti-women, anti-brown comment eventually. At least until I had sussed him out for a bit
Can confirm. I’m a 6’4 big bearded mountain looking fucker in the Bible belt, and people REGULARLY think “he agrees with me about this painfully mundane thing so surely he agrees with me that trans people need to shut up and dress appropriately (or whatever)” They’ll often be saying the quiet part to me out loud within 5 minutes of shooting the bull with a total stranger.
Are your cows cute? I would like to pet your cows.
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I drove through Alabama once. That was enough. What a shit stain state? Experience the racism there, even if sort of second hand, was surreal. Sucks I know some people that were forced to move there.
That’s a scarecrow!
In case anyone didn’t get the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7im5LT09a0
Don’t forget to name at least two American brands so you get paid!
Product placement go brrrr
Applebees
KFC
bonus points for rhyming
Product placements go in songs.
Now everyone please sing along.
Applebees
KFC
Haliburton
Lockheed
PF Changs
Starbucks
When will the Prolitariat have enough
Of this system that doesn’t care
No one on earth needs Billionaires.
bah gawd its beautifulTo the tune of We Didn’t Start The Fire
I grab me a Bud,
Get in my Ford truck,
Cuz I’m un-American boahI await my royalties.
I unfortunately see a lot of white guy with a heavy (and fake) country accent does a “redneck” version of a popular rap or hip hop track and seeing other white people say “Now that’s how it should be done!”
Modern “country” is a plague and I hate it. Its the only genre I can’t listen to.
It’s pop music
There’s a YouTube channel called Western AF that has some good tunes that are closer to what country used to be. I can’t vouch for every song but the ones I’ve heard weren’t reactionary garbage.
This banger is how I found out about them.
I’ve listened to this 5 times in a row, absolutely amazing version.
Thank you for sharing, take my uplemms.
I guess that’s just the next evolution. Old country was basically gospel that wasn’t about religion. Country in the 80s and 90s was basically old rock but about cowboys, trucks, beer and being cheated on. I suppose by now you have to transition to the kind of music that was the in thing in the 90s to keep up with being the appropriate number of decades behind.
Eh, there are some gems. Chris Stapleton, Ryan Bingham, Zach Bryan
Is almost the same thing with Brazilian sertanejo. Was once about the bucolic reality in the rural side of the country, now is about bragging about being rich, going to pointless parties and drinking a lot of alcoholic drinks, f-cking everyone…
And listened to by the same people who complain about rap music doing the same thing (in their eyes, anyway).
Plenty of good modern country music out there, you just have to look for it. Tyler Childers and Colter Wall are some famous ones that spring to mind, but there’s many others.
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I mean that’s the case for any genre. Time filters out the bad stuff from the past, the good survives to reach new generations. Now we get to do the filtering for future generations.
Nah, I’m sure there’s plenty of amazing songs we’ll never get to hear. I’m just glad I heard this absolute banger before I died
NSFW I think https://youtu.be/U6zMjIZwbBk?si=54WM9wWCzVSv41S2
Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell too
Corn Lund
Edit: CORB, lol autocorrect
Horse Soldier, Horse Soldier is one of my go-to shower karaoke songs 🎵
I’m guessing you meant Corb? If so, he has the odd song, like The Truck got Stuck, that are more mass appeal. But he has so many amazing songs
Lol yes. He’s a country guy who still sees the medium as a storytelling tradition. Really appreciate it.
I really love “Sarah Shook and The Disarmers” as well. They actually go by River Shook now I think, but the band still uses their dead name.
A bit more on the folk side than country, but “Nick Shoulders and The Okay Crawdads” is one of my absolute favorite bands these days. They just put out a new album too and I can’t recommend it enough.
Brent Cobb has some good songs. Lost Dog Street Band is pretty good too.
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Meh. Depends on band/genre. There’s Green Day is Metallica’s kill em all radio for some reason. I love both bands, but they’re not really related.
There’s static-x and Korn in megadeth’s radio.
If you go to cannibal corpse’s radio, out of 2.5 hrs of music/40-50ish songs, you’ll see 6 songs by cattle decapitation, 4 of which from the same album. For a genre with hundreds of bands, that’s piss poor variety. And ofc bunch of other bands in there there aren’t death metal such as slayer or venom.
Sorry, end of rant.
I wanted to do a “to be fair here, Cash had songs with stupid lyrics, too”, but all I can think of is “Ring of fire” and that one is just a harmless metaphor about love.
I’d argue that Ring of Fire is a metaphor about forbidden love that you know is damning you but the feelings are too powerful to resist.
Rather than a harmless metaphor, I find it an incredibly powerful metaphor about the pain and suffering caused by helplessly loving the “wrong” person.
Plus, there’s an opportunity to make STD jokes.
It’d be a more powerful metaphor if he wasn’t a massive manwhore and his “love” wasn’t any fan with great tits, or his second wife’s sister.
Well, yeah. No one said he wasn’t flawed.
Yeah, that was the point, you nailed it fam.
He didn’t actually write Ring of Fire
He didn’t write several of his songs. That’s really common. Many writers are not performers.
Ring of Fire was written by June Carter, and first released by her sister Anita Carter.
“One Piece at a Time” is less of a country song and more of a novelty song.
Yes, so is “hey porter” or “boy named sue”, but those are sung jokes of a sort which gives them a purpose ;)
And A Boy Named Sue was written by Shel Silverstein, so you can’t really pick on that one.
You absolutly can pick on it and you should, and you’d wholeheartedly agree if you knew the sequal song Shell wrote.
I’m intrigued. Educate me.
Basically tells the story from the dads perspective.
Tldr the dad fucks the boy.
Damn. :(
Ring of fire is my song to sing when I’ve had too much Mexican food and beer.
I don’t think modern country even uses metaphors anymore. Before anyone comes at me, I’m well awair that there’s some fantactic country writers out there.
That’s because modern country is squarely focused on (far) right leaning people and they are utterly deaf, dumb and blind to any sort of metaphor, sarcasm and subtlety.
It’s why these pricks go nuts for songs like Killing in the Name, not realizing it’s a song that explicitly hates on them saying stuff like “some of those who work forces, are the same that BURN CROSSES”.
They only see and hear that title and have no fucking clue what it and the rest of the song is actually about.
Also see: “Born in the USA”.
Way back when Nirvana, Tool, RATM and all the great early 90’s bands were coming up, there was another.
A dingy Swedish band named Clawfinger.
They had a debut, self released album named Deaf Dumb Blind and it’s most well known song was named Nigger.
The song sprung outrage with the conservative right in the US, because back then they pretended they were against racism and the use of that word.
Clawfinger was similar in lyrical meaning with Rage Against the Machine, most of their songs were protest songs.
(guess I’ll link it as I can’t find how to do spoiler tags …)
Rember when Cobain wrote “rape me” becuase he had to hit people in the head with the message because the song “polly” went right over it?
It’s always wise to satisfy the requests of time squirrels. Keeps them away from one’s nuts.
“One piece at a time”
Also still fairly anti capitalism. The whole core is “I worked at a Cadillac factory making cars I could never afford with what they paid”.
That’s a classic, and I won’t hear one word against it.
And it didn’t cost me a dime!
I loved ‘a boy named Sue’ but it was ‘the Man comes around’ that sold me. Heard it first during the OP of “Day of the Dead” remake, and there is no other song that comes close to fitting with this opening
I think Orville Peck might be my gateway drug into country. I don’t imagine there’s too many gay cowboys out there, but surely there’s other stuff I’ll like.
You clearly weren’t there when the mountain broke its back
I don’t imagine there’s too many gay cowboys out there
I always get the sense that there are quite a few. Maybe even most of them.
Chances are they just don’t talk about it
Don’t ask me how I know but there’s at least 18 of them
Oh god. Please. Please explain how you know this.
Let’s just say Ram Ranch really rocks
Ohh. /That/ Ram Ranch.
How the mighty have fallen
