This:
The playlists are full of raunchy songs about getting drunk and getting it on with drunk girls in the bed of your pickup truck down some country road. All written in Nashville's version of Tin Pan Alley. Frat boy rock sung by guys with phony accents.
Being the forum's token crazy redneck, I'm with Dave. My accent is so bad that people at work often cannot understand me and both by birthright and design (and carrying around SVT's) I am a walking, talking hillbilly/pro-wrestling looking caricature that seems to have stepped out of central casting. Hank Williams died close to where I was born and the Carter family are first cousins to my late grandfather. My first words were "John Deere" and I was driving tractors at age 5. I can go on, but I digress. In short, I'm the real f$ckin' deal when it comes to being a country boy.
I grew up hating the AOR rock of the Eagles and late 70's Nashville pop. My mother had a single Waylon Jennings record (I think she "got religion" and destroyed all her other records) that I wore out and my father listened to WIVK constantly, which is the #1 radio station in the country (has to be market share) for 50 years. Out of that, I became a bass player (seriously, Nashville in the 70's seemed to be competing with disco funk for low end) and I HATED anything faux or popular (except 80's radio pop), all while growing up on farms and working doing things that the old country songs I DID like talked about. I remember when the 90's brought us the abomination that is Billy Ray Cyrus and 90's "new country," it confirmed every cynical anti-establishment musical impulse I ever had.
In the interim, I had discovered metal, so I stuck with that, got angrier at life over various things and joined a band which unbeknownst to me, was "punk," another genre I sneered at after having dismissed the Sex Pistols (the Supersuckers fixed that for me, so thank them.) With my band, it was funny because in between "Ball and Chain," "53rd and 3rd," "Cherry Bomb" and "Bloodstains" covers, we also played "Wildwood Flower" and "Folsom Prison Blues" when Johnny Cash was still making the first of his "comeback" albums with Rick Rubin ( IOW, 10 years before it was trendy to cover Cash) ...because it was the music we had grown up learning how to play. We were ignored in out hometown, but in Knoxville, the nearest city, we were revered and feared as outlaw cowpunk, and stories of our exploits spread which far outstripped anything we ever actually did (except my bachelor party- that shit happened). Had the guitar player/singer/main guy not quit when we were offered a touring deal, I'd be a road dog right now. At my most virulent anti-everything, I played music which was light years more country than what's coming out of Nashville now, by accident, just because it's what I am.
...but... that's not to say that I hate everything Nashville. Much genre-challenged Nash pop usually has some redeeming value simply because it is a haven for unemployed rockers who haven't changed what they ever played and there is stellar musicianship as the norm. Sure, most of the calories are empty, but then again, so are most Foo Fighters songs, but country? Country isn't what is being branded and sold as "country" and that's OK. It just means I get to keep the good stuff for myself. In meantime, let Eric Church pose to pretend that he even knows a Mötörhead song outside of "Ace of Spades" and Justin Timberlake plays the Grand Ol' Opry. What wets the panties of vapid teenage girls ain't no concern of mine until I'm the one trying to inspire that reaction myself.
