Yelawolf has just released one of the biggest albums in American music at the moment. Love Story came in at #3 on the Billboard Top 200 last week, and where Radioactive flopped, Love Story has bounced. Love Story has some serious ties to country music that can’t go overlooked.
Yes, yes, it’s the age-old complaint that music doesn’t sound as good as it used to, and that the singers of today aren’t nearly as good as the ones we grew up with. Though there is certainly a bit of “old man syndrome” that creeps into this endless debate about the direction of popular music, there is also very specific and irrefutable data that backs up these claims that music isn’t as good.
In late October when the 52-year-old Garth Brooks was getting set to announce he was officially coming out of retirement, Saving Country Music spoke in-depth about how the return of Garth could have a “colossal” impact on the genre. Well apparently, this prediction was a bit too measured, with a massive tour and a big “surprise” coming from Garth soon.
Here at Saving Country Music, we have put ourselves squarely on the front lines of opposing the infiltration of hip hop into the country genre, or possibly, the takeover of country by hip-hop, that seems to be pervading the current mainstream country music landscape. Unlike many others that flee from this fight, I am willing to take the charges of racism and closed-mindedness…
It usually takes 6-9 months for the bloated machine of Music Row to realize and catch up on trends, but no doubt that within the next few months, we will begin to see more and more hip-hop infiltration into mainstream country. The next question will be, will the one artist that sits at the very top of the totem pole decide to lead ahead of that trend, or follow it?
During last week’s Super Bowl, one of the most gut-stirring commercials featured rapper Eminem in a spot for Chrysler, showing solidarity with the embattled city of Detroit which has taken the brunt of the economic downturn over the past few years, and by proxy has become the brunt of jokes that many times unfairly portray the hard work and strength that has come out of that city and its people.
I feel the need to iterate to you some observations for last night’s 2011 Grammy Awards, if only to get them off my chest. This is not entirely going to be a bitch fest. Every year they air the Grammy’s, and every year people are left scratching their heads and feeling hopelessness for music, and so it was to be expected that this year would be no different…
The parade of new lows coming from Music Row in Nashville just keeps coming folks. The pre-Holiday period of 2010 might go down as the worst ever. The latest low blow comes from Jason Aldean, whose single off his album released today called My Kind of Party is a straight up rap song.
I really hate harping on this whole Taylor Swift, Kanye West embrolio. But I feel the need to state in full why some have the opinion that the moment might have been staged. Some have asserted this as an opinion, but that opinion is based on facts and a documented history from MTV and Taylor […]