Yet another big name country star is speaking out about the current state of country music. This time it is RCA Records’ Jake Owen. “We need more of those kinds of songs in [country music]. “We need more songs than just songs about tailgates and fuckin’ cups and Bacardi and stuff like that. We need songs that get ourselves back to the format that made me love it.”
We all know them and we all hate them, those ubiquitous and ridiculous pop country songs that make us hang our heads in shame, embarrassed to call ourselves country fans, constantly making us having to explain that no, we don’t listen to that type of country. They pursue us doggedly, on the radio, over the speakers at the grocery store, blaring from a car full of high school kids at a red light.
Yes, there’s always been stupid songs, but I fail to find the historical precedence of when they have been celebrated to this extent. Did Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” or Roger Miller’s “Chug-a-Lug” walk away with hardware on awards night? What the hell is wrong with me not wanting to be embarrassed by country music?
Every once in a while a song comes along in country music that really inspires you. ..and then there’s Toby Keith’s toast to the onset of idiocracy, “Red Solo Cup”. But believe it or not, the song did inspire Bo Phillips, brother of Stoney LaRue, whose video of a “Red Solo Cup” parody called “Blue Dixie Cup” recorded at the legendary Gruene Hall in Texas is making the rounds.
I can’t recall a year with this high caliber of a crop of bad songs. This group can hold their own against the Achy Breaky Hearts and Honky Tonk Bandonka Donk’s of the last few decades. And this year might be the first that songs do well not in spite of being stupid, but because they are stupid.
Following this success and attention to video, many independent artists are making video a bigger priority. And not just one video, but multiple videos, “serial” video releases if you will, of both viral and more conceptualized varieties, to keep their music in the forefront of fan’s minds over a longer period than just an album’s initial release.
Remember the viral song “Friday” by Rebecca Black? When that song blew up, some were saying this symbolized a historic shift in the good music/bad music paradigm, where the song wasn’t popular despite being bad, it was popular because it was bad. we might have the first song taking this paradigm-shifting concept and applying it to a song.