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

[westen44]

[uwe]

I'm not qualified to comment on this.

[westen44]

I'm not qualified to comment on this.

To be honest, I'm not really, either.  But it's referring to the horrifying "country" music which came out around fifteen years ago or so.  To people like Dave who are true country experts, it's abominable.  But it is to other people, too, including myself.  I will go so far as to say I actually hate it.  Bro-country as a genre is boring, formulaic, stupid and dominated by male singers, some with atrocious fake Southern accents. 

[uwe]

Their accent is mostly fine, a bit on the North German side. What can you do when you're from Hamburg.



Actually it was based on their hit that Dave Dudley became a household name in Germany, he then toured with them.

[westen44]

Thankfully, it can be said that neither that Hamburg band nor Dave Dudley had anything to do with bro-country. 

To clarify this bro-country situation, someone could post some examples of it.  But I don't want to do that and I doubt if anyone else does, either.  Goodness knows I wouldn't want to listen to any of it on purpose.  Besides that, that parody video is probably good enough to illustrate what it is anyway.  This topic has been discussed on the forum before, but I don't remember the context at all. 

[Dave W]

You lose 5 points of IQ every time you have to listen to a bro country song, so I won't post any.

[westen44]

Talking to an attractive woman can also lower a man's IQ--at least temporarily.  But at least that would be something way more fun than listening to bro-country.


https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dating-and-mating/201605/does-talking-attractive-women-make-men-dumber

[uwe]

I had to look it up, so this is the song that supposedly started it?



I don't get the negative excitement. It's a few country elements rocked up in instrumentation, arrangement and rhythm which has been going on for 50 years and more. With a silly earworm chorus hook and a vid consisting mainly of  'babes', an aimlessly driving around pickup truck and occasional glimpses of The Stars & Stripes. Not more excessively dumb than ZZ Top's 80ies vids which have all reached unwarranted cult status by now or lyrically more superficial than what The Beach Boys sang about in nearly all their hits. Praising weekend hedonism ain't exactly a new thing either whether it's Sam Cooke's Another Saturday Night or Loverboy's Working For The Weekend. So what exactly is so heinous about it? That it's made up of stolen ingredients and banal? I always thought that was one of the pillars of pop and rock music! 😂

[westen44]

Once again, Dave is the one to be talking to about this.  Whether he even feels like it, I don't know of course.  I'm beginning to regret I even posted the topic.  To people who hate bro-country it's a funny video.  But to people who don't or aren't familiar with it, it might not be.  I realize all that now.  But the one thing I will comment on is the fake Southern accent in many of these songs.  Often the songs are by people with real Southern accents.  However, when they sing these songs, they are forcing the accent, making it sound artificial, exaggerated, forced, etc.  As someone listening to real Southern accents every day, these bro-country songs just grate my ears tremendously.  I honestly can't stand listening to this crap.  That parody video is funny to me, but bro-country itself isn't funny at all.  I can't even imagine how real country music fans feel about this.  Because I'm just a casual fan, being far more familiar with rock than country.  But if even I'm offended, I'm sure others are offended much more. 

[uwe]

Get over the accents! More than half the British Invasion faked American accents (or what they thought American accents were) - The Beatles included - and when they didn't you monolingual Yanks thought they were singing in another language (---> Small Faces). Likewise, a lot of Yank bands faked British accents, to the eternal amusement of the British music press. And there is no region on Earth where an English or even American dialect is spoken remotely like what John Fogerty fantasized bayou lingo to sound like. Or does anyone think that Robert Plant grew up in a household where "love" was pronounced "luuuv'" and adults referred to each other as "babiiieh"? Rrrubbish! (For the avoidance of doubt: pronounced "roobbish".)

[westen44]

I can't get over accents.  This is something I'm very opinionated about.  There is so much I could say, I hardly know where to begin.  Starting with English, though, my favorite is the Irish, followed very closely by the Scottish.  As for American accents, I don't much like them.  I'm stuck with speaking one, though.  And not only that, but a Southern accent which is often stigmatized.  Nevertheless, I'm not going to be fake and change it into something else. 

I think I've mentioned this before on another topic.  But here it is again.  When I was in Frankfurt, we ended up going to Munich one day.  As I was sitting in the train station, my mind was registering a huge WTF???  The German in Munich was so different than what I heard in Frankfurt and central Germany as a whole.  To make a long story short, I liked one German accent and disliked another.  Several years ago, when I ordered a German course, I was extremely disappointed that the teacher was speaking Austrian German.  If I'm going to try to learn such a difficult language, it sure as hell isn't going to be Austrian German.  That was actually a very good course, but a waste of money for me personally. 

Getting back to English, though, the bro-country fake Southern accent really does bother me.  I don't think there is anything I could do about it even if I tried hard.  But it isn't just the accent issue, there are many negative things about bro-country which, honestly, I could discuss, but there are others who could do a better job of explaining this.  Obviously, Dave, but possibly others, too. 

But there is one thing I will add, and this is kind of spontaneous.  Real country music makes me feel something.  Much of the time it's very emotional.  Bro-country, simply put, does not. 

https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/i-can-will-say-florida-georgia-line-aint-country/

[uwe]

I don't think a band like Florida Georgia Line was ever out to win authenticity contests. Their music is a commodity.

Did Bob Dylan betray folk music when he picked up an electric guitar? Were Police a bunch of posers because none of them came from Jamaica and they were somewhat lightly hued?

I'm always skeptic of self-proclaimed guardians of a certain type of music.



Bring on the country influences!

[westen44]

I'm not really the guardian of anything.  Country music purists might be.  I'm not even a real country music fan.  What I object to is how phony and totally unpleasant bro-country is.  I just freaking don't like it.  Plus, even though there is no way I could explain this like Dave, I know beyond doubt that bro-country isn't even real country.  But I'm not trying to set myself up as an authority.  Justice Stewart said he knew porn when he saw it.  I can say I know country when I hear it.  I think sometimes people mistake my sincerity with something else.  That's unfortunate, but I can sometimes have a problem with being articulate.  It's much easier in person and face-to-face for me.  But in today's world that's often impossible. 

BTW, just a few minutes ago, it occurred to me where some of this had been discussed before.  It was on some topic about the Mona Lisa Twins who, of course, are from Austria.  I've listened to them several times since then.  Here is something I ran across a few days ago.  An interesting take on an old Lovin' Spoonful song with John Sebastian himself participating. 

[Rob]

You lose 5 points of IQ every time you have to listen to a bro country song, so I won't post any.

[uwe]

Michael, would I have ever put you in the same league as Manowar/Joey DeMaio, seriously now?

It's perfectly ok to prefer more authentic C&W music, but I don't see the point of faith wars because C&W's influence is felt in other genres too + gets adapted for their uses. Isn't that preferable to it dying a death in shuttered-off seclusion? Elements of it inspire a lot of people and that is a good thing in my book.

Country music is together with Blues one of the progenitors of rock, what's wrong with a little cross-pollination? It's not like incest and C&W are worlds apart ...