> >
> 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
>
I'm still not sure "the balance is shifting." Believe me, listening to
country music radio these days is 50 percent luck. And it has been for
years. If you tune in one day, you just might hit on Gill's shuffle duet
that's getting play, and then maybe Sara Evans or Dwight. But you're just
as likely to pick a day when three or four nice-sounding lounge singers
with cowboy hats begin sappy ballad time. You're more likely to hear it,
unless you're lucky enough to strike paydirt and find a station
that's pickier, or grants the freedom to be pickier. Like Mike's. The thing
is, I've been tuning in to this stuff for a long time, and the minutes
when there's actually something interesting getting play haven't
increased, at least from what I can notice. Of course, there's always the
possibility that the ornery cuss who owns our local country station is
deliberately sabotaging the playlist just to piss me off. - Terry Smith
