>
>I frankly think that what's happening is that the novelty factor is wearing
>off for a lot of the newer country listeners, and they're off to look for
>the Next Big Thing without much concern for whether it's labeled rock or pop
>or something else again. I haven't seen even a whisper of a desire for
>twangier, more hardcore country stuff in the coverage of the CRS that's been
>posted here - and in fact, the positive references to "outlaws" merely
>underlines the point, as the musical content of The Outlaws boom of the 70s
>consisted in large part of "breaking the rules" and "taking risks" by
>bringing more rock influences into the country mainstream.
>
>The best thing that can happen to country music right now is for the
>audience to shrink.
>
Using up my "me too" quotient for the month, I'll say that I think Jon has
this exactly right. The line- dancing-for-yuppies era is pretty well dead
and buried, the suburbanites who embraced HNC in the late 1980s and early
1990s have moved on, as Jon notes, to whatever--Hootie or Lilith Fair or
God knows what--and pop acts like Shania Twain and, er, Shania Twain have
begun to give up any vague association with country music. That's the most
convincing explanation for why the balance seems to be shifting, on country
radio and on CMT, back toward a preponderance of music that we may or may
not like, but that we can all agree, I think, is indisputably what we think
of as country music, unlike some of the more pop-oriented HNC stuff. That's
why Junior and other folks, me among them, are finding it so much easier to
listen to mainstream country radio lately.
--Amy
