…except country…

  • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    22 minutes ago

    I also consider myself to like all genres of music. Some country isn’t bad. Especially older country. Actually newer country isn’t that bad either, but it’s all often so tied into identity politics it can be difficult to listen to.

  • ViatorOmnium@piefed.socialEnglish
    26·
    4 hours ago

    My parents routinely started listening to several of my favourite bands when I was a teen.

    Do you have any idea how hard it is to be an angsty rebellious teenager when your parents are supportive of your tastes and phases?

  • Juice@midwest.social
    11·
    2 hours ago

    Mark Fisher, the author of Capitalist Realism, in another book called “Exiting the Vampire Castle”, argued that in the history of recorded music, every 20 - 30 years or so there were new genres of music that wouldn’t be recognizable as music to the previous generation. But around the early 2000s this process stopped, and musical categories hardened due to capitalist logic. Record companies just wanted to churn out the same things that they already knew how to market, rather than invest in artists who were cutting edge. He called it “the slow cancellation of the future”.

    Granted I think Fisher is kind of overrated as a practical theorist, all those CCRU research people went crazy, and Fisher is a particularly sad example. His vampire castle book is okay, and that generation was like preoccupied with marketing manipulation (a perspective that arguably was being marketed to them/us).

    But through that perspective this meme is interesting, because the reason younger generations can connect about musical tastes, is because popular music has stopped being subversive. Chances are the band the younger boy is listening to has a sound that was copped from an older group, which is why the young man recognizes it as good. But to the older generations, music was still subversive, the young rejected the older, already explored categories of music, which were themselves subversive in their own time.

    • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      3·
      2 hours ago

      To play the devil’s advocate here: “music used to be subversive but now it’s all the same, nothing original” sounds just like a grumpy old man yelling at a cloud. Old people will find reasons to hate new stuff.

      This isn’t to disagree. I read Capitalist Realism and think the argument works. And personally, I remember how shocked I was to find out that Behind Blue Eyes wasn’t originally by Limp Bizkit but much older and that my mom listened to the punk rock band I liked as a teenager when she was young. My question might be if there ever was anything “new under the sun” but first and foremost, I like the idea as a devil’s advocate.

      • Juice@midwest.social
        2·
        49 minutes ago

        sounds just like a grumpy old man yelling at a cloud.

        Yeah totally agree with you there. The book is actually pretty funny in that regard, he spends most of what I read talking about Tricky and 90’s Jungle, and really, really hating the arctic monkeys. He spent his last years talking about how leftists were too mean on twitter, so he’s like a spiritual influence on the right’s war against “woke”. In response, the twitter left was really mean to him about it. Like there was something to it but he also missed the mark, even though he early on recognized the trend.

        But like I said those CCRU people like broke their own brains. Very sad. Except maybe Sadie Plant but she hasn’t published anything in a very long time to my knowledge

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      3 hours ago

      musical categories hardened

      That seems like nonsense, given how genres slimed together by the late 90s. Everybody was stealing from everybody else and the best we could do was throw around labels like “alternative.” ClearChannel made every genre pull toward country while country became R&B for hwhite people. Meanwhile the electronica scene had discovered computers - a development that took longer than you’d think - and a bunch of dorks styling themselves as DJ [noun] had MP3s all over piracy services. This is right before Youtube, SoundCloud, and MySpace let truly independent artists reach arbitrarily large audiences.

      If we really want to start an argument - there’s people who say anything generated literally is not music. Kids these days are growing up with the ability to drop a diss track on their friend for a faux pas that happened five minutes ago. Formulaic, yes, but immediately distinct from everyone listening to the same ten conventionally-attractive pop artists.

      • Juice@midwest.social
        4·
        2 hours ago

        Actually he wrote a lot about 90s music in this theory, his main example of a subversive musical genre from the 90s was Jungle/D&B.

        I mean I don’t think its complete nonsense, this is definitely something that has always happened regarding the capitalization of popular music, Gramsci wrote about some of the tendencies, in his analysis of italian theatre and how monopolized capital exploited artists and small venues, back in the 1920s. I think the pressures certainly exist, especially because of the examples you mention, like clear channel, but also live nation and ticketmaster. Those pressures to homogenize and commodify music are objectively the result of monopolization of the music industry. Culture and economy are intrinsically bound up in one another.

        But also I feel that he sort of over stated his point, like his analysis is sort of warped by chronic depression and like fiercely hating the Arctic Monkeys.

      • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1·
        2 hours ago

        I think the point isn’t that categories hardened in the sense that they stay distinct but that there are no more experiments, nothing subversive. Stealing and mixing things you know work, is exactly that. Your kid’s diss track will be totally generic with no original idea. That’s the whole point of the comment above, not that it’s exact covers.

  • user_name@lemmy.world
    5·
    6 hours ago

    Actual, classic country is really good. It’s the modern stuff that’s all about loving Bush’s wars, drinking shitting beer, and hating gay people that’s the problem.

    Doc Watson, Johnny Cash, and Marty Robbins are all worth checking out, to name a few.

    • kboy101222@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      4 hours ago

      Some modern country is also great! Tyler Childers has multiple songs about fucking around and being a cokehead in Kentucky (he’s thankfully clean now). Then there’s his Country Squire album that’s very fun to watch videos from while stoned. It’s like some southern Yellow Submarine.

      Zach Bryan released an anti ICE song that I can’t currently remember the title of for the life of me.

      If you want more folk, Haunted Windchimes, The Ghost of Paul Revere, and Poor Man’s Poison are all excellent, with Poor Man’s Poison just straight up having multiple leftist as fuck songs. More mainstream you’d find Noah Kahan, who’s done some excellent music. It’s more pop folk than normal folk, but I’m still a fan personally.

      Basically, just avoid artists like that whiny little bitch boy Morgan Wallen or basically any of the mainstream musicians from the 80s to the 2000s and you can find some actually good shit.

      Also, both are mainstream, but Travis Tritt’s Trouble and John Michael Montgomery’s Sold are both absolute bangers.

      • user_name@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 minutes ago

        Thanks! I’ll check them out; I know I was speaking in a broad generalization. For contemporary country, I’m a fan of Aida Victoria, to name one. It’s just, as OP said, those songs and musicians who produce “Republicunt siren songs.”

    • cm0002@literature.cafeOP
      4·
      5 hours ago

      I find actual classic country to just be boring, but not boring with a beat enough for work music like Classical music.

      The modern country stuff I loathe for just like you said, being Republicunt siren songs lol