What Bro Country Sounds Like to People Who Don't Like It

[patman]

I like older country music because of the melodies, and sometimes well written songs.  In my mind "Crazy" is right up there with "Stardust"...a well written song with a great melody.

[westen44]

I suspected someone would try to bring in metal, the purity of metal, and that sort of thing.  What I'm trying to say has absolutely nothing to do with that line of reasoning.  That's from the perspective of metal fans who think they have some kind of mission to preserve metal and they don't want it diluted.  I don't care about that.  I'm not a metal fan.  And when it gets down to it, I'm not really a country fan, either.  Just more of a casual country music listener.  But I don't have to have a deep country music knowledge to know that bro-country is outright rubbish.  I find it impossible to take it seriously. But to me this is like someone trying to compare lightweight pop/rock bands to real rock bands like Cream.  No one would be able to do a comparison like that.  And no one would be able to make a comparison between bro-country/fake country to real country.  It's literally a joke if you've been brought up listening to real country music all your life.

That's a good point, though, about the role country music (real country music) has played in the development of rock.  Bob Dylan had something to say in a speech somewhere.  I wrote it down I thought it was so important and here it is.

'The other half of rock 'n roll has got to be hillbilly.  And that's a derogatory term, but it ought not be.  That's a term that includes the Delmore Bros, Stanley Bros, Roscoe Holcomb, Gid Turner and the Skillet Lickers--groups like that.  Moonshine gone berserk.  Fast cars on dirt roads.  That's the kind of combination that makes up rock 'n roll, and it can't be cooked up in a science laboratory or studio."

[Pilgrim]

That's a good point, though, about the role country music (real country music) has played in the development of rock.  Bob Dylan had something to say in a speech somewhere.  I wrote it down I thought it was so important and here it is.

'The other half of rock 'n roll has got to be hillbilly.  And that's a derogatory term, but it ought not be.  That's a term that includes the Delmore Bros, Stanley Bros, Roscoe Holcomb, Gid Turner and the Skillet Lickers--groups like that.  Moonshine gone berserk.  Fast cars on dirt roads.  That's the kind of combination that makes up rock 'n roll, and it can't be cooked up in a science laboratory or studio."

The Dylan quote says it...where did Elvis, Bill Haley, Ritchie Valens and others who helped move rock & roll mainstream come from? Their backgrounds included gospel, folk music, "hillbilly" music, etc. Add a smidge of blues, mix well, out comes rock & roll, which begat rock.

[Dave W]

First, let's back up. Bro-country has absolutely nothing to do with trucker songs like Dave Dudley's Six Days on the Road. Not even remotely related. Trucker songs have always been a part of country music.

Bro-country is all about retarded goobers whose life supposedly revolves around partying in the back of their pickups with barefoot girls in cutoffs. Sung with fake accents.

You can watch old country shows on YT. Porter Wagoner, Wilburn Brothers, Bobby Lord and many others. You'll find that the hosts and guests talk the same way they sing. That's a big deal to me.

Whether bro-country or any other "modern" country, when I hear someone with no particular speaking accent put on a ridiculous exaggerated drawl, I cringe.

Bro-country in a nutshell: Maddie and Tae's Girl in a Country Song. Brilliant takedown. I saw them on the Today Show when this came out. Two Dallas teenagers with no noticeable accents.

[Dave W]

While I'm at it, here are some of my old favorite country trucker songs.

From the 50s, covered many times since.




Two from the 60s.

[westen44]

Dave, that was quite a response.  You have summed it up perfectly.  Retarded goobers in the back of pickup trucks singing with fake Southern accents.  The Maddie and Tae video is something I had never seen before.  But I was literally laughing out loud immediately.  That one video may be the biggest F U to bro-country which has ever existed.  I thought the video I posted was funny, and it was; but the Maddie and Tae video was hilarious.  Just those facial expressions alone were priceless.  Sarcastic humor can sometimes be more effective than anything in making a point.  You just have to have the talent to pull it off and those girls did. 

[uwe]

I never for a second wanted to put either Truck Stop or Dave Dudley anywhere near fake country! Although, by Dave's definition, Truck Stop never could or can be authentic or even credible (they've been playing C&W music in Germany since the early 70ies at least, in various line-ups, I even saw them live once when they were still singing only English) because when they sing English they of course adopt a country drawl, but amongst themselves and in interviews they speak German with a Hamburg accent (note: Hamburg is not known for either a sizable cowboy or Native American population, never has).

It wasn't clear to me that the "lived-in" accent thing is so pivotal to you guys. Germany is awash with Bayerische Volksmusik artists that sing like they were raised on a remote mountain farm near the Austrian border a hundred years ago with guttural rrrolling 'r's, yet who change to fluent high German in off-stage life. Likewise, an Australian like Keith Urban who sings North American country-tinged pop (or whatever you want to call it) can then by definition never be the real thing. And didn't The Beatles sing an Americanized English on their songs yet revert to their Liverpudlian accent the second they stopped singing? Dare I mention Blackmore's Night where a Jewish-Polish-American Princess from Long Island sings her take of late medieval/Renaissance English?

And then there are girls in cropped or knotted tops, torn leg cut jeans shorts plus cowboy boots, all looking like they jumped from a Playmate pictorial where they explain how they grew up on a farm, love animals, and want to become veterinarians once they are done with 'modeling'. But really, is there any crime of dumb sexist depiction of females through the male lens that fake country/country pop has committed that has not been perpetrated a thousands times over in 80ies Rock and Hair Metal or  Rap/Hip-Hop vids? It's a male fantasy world that is being created there, a caricature of rural life, beer drinking in the sun on the back of a pickup truck and 24/7 sexually accessible + available 'babes' writhing about. Seriously: What else is new? I doesn't really say too much about the music, does it? Sexist connotations/presentations and popular music go (and always have gone) together like ham and cheese.

[westen44]

Once again, I have to say that I speak more as a commoner and definitely nothing else.  I grew up all around people who liked country music.  But even as a youth the only country artist I liked very much was Hank Williams.  This was all personal.  No one told me to do it.  But even when I was very young his music affected me.  It's kind of like to me Hank Williams is the Beatles of country music.  Then several years ago, I heard Amber Digby for the first time.  She is no Hank Williams, either.  But her music affects me on an emotional level in a similar way.  Amber and Hank are the real deal.  Many others are, too.  But those are the only two country singers I can actually say I'm a fan of.  As noted before, I'm mostly just a rock fan. 

I do this with a straight face when I mention existentialism.  But if you've read people like Kierkegaard and Sartre, this line of thinking can apply.  The real country singers are functioning in an authenticity.  They're very much real.  They sing from the heart.  But the bro-country and some of the other more modern artists are not authentic.  They're fake and definitely unappealing to me.  They are operating in what Sartre would call "bad faith."  I care nothing for their feeble attempts to try to pass themselves off as real country artists.  That's why I find the Maddie and Tae video making fun of them so amusing.