I was driving from Virginia to North Carolina yesterday, listening to the Y2K Country SiriusXM station. This station plays country music from 2000-2010, which is, in my opinion, the last decade of great country music.
Country music has mutated quite a bit over the years, and it’s often hard to classify. It’s a little bit cheesy, and a little bit goofy. It’s sometimes slow, and sometimes fast. But the lyrics are often witty, telling relatable stories that other genres of music don’t tackle. Some of the songs are excellent; some are life-altering or life-affirming. But this all changed… in 2012… with Bro Country. Florida Georgia Line, the purveyor of bro country, is the band that single-handedly destroyed country music.
In 2012, Florida Georgia Line came out with their debut hit, “Cruise.” There had been bad country songs before, but their popularity had been short-lived. But Florida Georgia Line’s debut song, “Cruise,” was an earache that stuck around for far too long and somehow made a ton of money for Nashville. It was the first diamond-certified country song. Nashville likes money, and didn’t want to go back to the risky but successful “Redneck Woman” or “Low Places” type songs of the past. They were in it for money, not to make great music.
Some of the bro country singers of the last several years include Chase Rice, Jake Owen, Luke Bryan, and Jason Aldean. But the band that slaughtered a musical institution with milk-toast forgettable bandwagon pop crap was, of course, Florida Georgia Line.
Never again will the country music station be happy respite from other genres. Now, every country hit song from after 2012 sounds exactly like “Cruise.” But Florida Georgia Line isn’t the only band to blame for the disastrous unraveling of such a solid genre. Other bands, like Lady Antebellum and Justin Moore and Thompson Square, were already pumping out crappy songs, starting in 2011. 2011 was this painful hybrid year of change. In 2010 every country hit was excellent, and in 2011 about half of the songs were “ok.” By 2012, there was no “hit” song that was truly remarkable. (Excepting Tim McGraw, who stayed solid and true and put out great hits until 2015, when he, too, drowned beneath the Brothers Osborne and Cole Swindell and Dan + Shay of this destructive teenage decade.
A handful of country singers started out great in the mid 2000’s, but then sold out around 2012 and went bro! For instance, Dierks Bentley put out the excellent song, “What Was I Thinking,” in 2003, but then went Bro. And Blake Shelton, put out “Austin” and “Ol’ Red” in 2001, but he too eventually went bro.
Today, country music is a thin resemblance of what it used to be. Many great country singers have died in the last 20 years, including as Merle Haggard, Troy Gentry, Don Williams, George Jones, Chris LeDoux, Waylon Jennings, and of course Johnny Cash, and maybe they sucked the life out of country music when they died. New singers have no resemblance to these legends.
It’s been nearly a decade now since I’ve truly enjoyed new country music. I keep listening, because the genre has to eventually evolve again. We might not go back to churning out legends – I don’t think a 3D printer is going to create another Johnny Cash. But it has to change. I’m hoping it changes into something that I enjoy, but if not then I’ll have to continue listening to older country, and maybe some Austin and Outlaw country. I just hate that so many people listen to such crappy music. But then again, mainstream music has always been awful. I grew up in the 1980’s, and back then I hated pop music. Some people loved the Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston type music of the 1980’s, but to me it was pure torture.
Please, Nashville, stop churning out crap!