Accusing someone of “gatekeeping” is just an intellectually lazy, thought and discussion-ending enterprise designed to win arguments online as opposed to addressing the very real and systemic issues.
It’s not just that it isn’t country. It’s that it’s just not good. If this is who you want to integrate country music with, and use to highlight the genre’s Black roots, you will do significantly more harm than good in that pursuit.
Fundamentally, is Gavin Adcock correct when he says Beyoncé’s album ‘Cowboy Carter’ isn’t country?Absolutely he is.Is Gavin Adcock the guy we want carrying water for country music? Absolutely not.
Megyn Kelly. Babe. Take the win. What are you doing acting like an aggrieved party here? Beyoncé’s calling you out on the big video boards of her current world tour? Well congratulations then. It’s free promotion.
The trend of pop projects being pushed to the country market that started in earnest with Beyoncé is beginning to look less like a short-lived trend for 2024, and now becoming endemic.
The Grand Ole Opry’s 100th Anniversary celebration on Wednesday, March 19th was a big hit. The 3-hour special on NBC also did really well in the ratings, despite focusing on legends more than current stars.
We didn’t really know what to expect from the Grand Ole Opry’s 100th Anniversary celebration on NBC Wednesday night (3-19). We hoped it would be a cavalcade of actual country stars singing actual country music.
Tyler Childers apparently wanted to have nothing to do with Ernest and Post Malone while they were hanging with Morgan Wallen, according to recent revelations by Ernest.
Sierra Ferrell is about to have a BIG 2025, so it might be one of your last opportunities to see her in small venues. She’s just announced a slew of new headliners dates under the appropriate title “Shoot The Moon.”
At a time when actual country performers are inspiring pop stars more than ever, it should be those country performers represented in the country categories, not the pop and hip-hop stars they’re inspiring.
The Grammy Awards are supposed to be the one place where the critically-acclaimed, criminally-overlooked, and lifers of a respective genre get the recognition they deserve from a non-profit that puts the art first.
Where the Rock and Roll Hall dominated conversation throughout the English-speaking world, the Country Music Hall of Fame induction was a gross afterthought that slid scandalously under-the-radar.
The NFL spent little time building anticipation in who might perform at this year’s Super Bowl in February of 2025. On Sunday, September 8th, they announced that Kendrick Lamar will be this season’s Super Bowl entertainment.
Try to look cool. This is Dwight Yoakam we’re talking about after all. But forgive folks if they can’t contain their excitement that the modern King of the Bakersfield Sound has another album loaded up and ready to go.
The album captures some of Lainey Wilson’s most impassioned and soaring performances of her career. A lot of great songs and writing also grace these 14 tracks. It’s the production of Jay Joyce that’s disappointing.
Taken as a whole, F-1 Trillion is much more of a contemporary version of pop country than it is anything else, with committee-written songs, little heart, substance, or soul. But this album is supposed to be fun, and Post Malone succeeds.
For the first time in three years, Sturgill Simpson took the stage to perform a full set of music. And for the first time in an even longer period he took the stage with guitarist Laur Joamets, Kevin Black on bass, and Miles Miller on drums.
Clearly the crowd in attendance thought the duet was killer. Most of the reception has been positive. But there has also been quite a few criticizing Tyler Childers for agreeing to the collaboration.
Post Malone’s “country” album “F-1 Trillion” isn’t even out for another month, and he’s already dominating the narrative at a time when country music was finally dominating much of the narrative in popular music all on its own.
Country music, Nashville, and the American public doesn’t exactly know what to do with this guy after strings of incidents where Morgan Wallen has embarrassed himself and country music by proxy.
The 2024 ACM Awards had many pondering the question, is it better for an awards show to be bad for the inadvertent entertainment value as opposed to being so boring you want to gouge your eyeballs out?
Instead of importing pop stars to fill out the performance roster, why not pick up on some of the fast-rising independent stars that are quickly outpacing the popularity of country’s 2nd-tier mainstream performers?
Sturgill Simpson is coming out of pseudo retirement to act as one of the headliners of the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco, CA, August 9-11. He will also be joined by the most legendary lineup of his backing band.
“She clearly was not trying to showcase the talents of black country artists in a real way, which I’m sure is extremely disappointing to the black country folks busting their asses to make it.”