FirstNationalBastard: ...and they didn't even mention Hank Jr.'s post-9/11 reworking of "A Country Boy Can Survive" into "America Can Survive", or Charlie Daniels' "This ain't no rag, it's a flag".

Charlie Daniels has transformed from long haired country boy to fatass ultra rightwing douchebag. Something ate his brain.

EvilEgg: Now instead it's either uber patriotic or maudlin crap about shoes or some such shiat.

Now with "the stage rigging killed all my fans" goodness!

There's only one thing dumber than country music and that's a country music fan.

For me it's a toss up between these two timeless classics:

I love drinking and race cars and big 'ol fat women
And Jesus is awesome, he rose on Thanksgiving
I eat onions and tater tots
I kill squirrels with my gunnnn

--OR--

I saw the ugliest woman I ever did saw
Face like a turnip and an under-bit jaw
Inbreds from inbreds then inbred again
If ugly was pretty then she'd be a ten
She was so damn ugly
So I got drunk and farked her in my truck

It's country music. You are required to sing about Beer, The USA, Jebus or some dead/dying family member. Toss in the occaisional bitter woman song and you can make the radio waves.

yeah Jake..um ..thanks for that...anyway, where I live if that song comes on in a bar, that is usually followed by an audible groan from me, and that is followed by threats of bodily harm, or questioning of my patriotism/citizenship. I counter that we live in a country where I am free to hate bad music. 'Butterfly Kisses' of country songs....lmao

EvilEgg: Country music used to be good music. People rode trains, drank whiskey, and had their dog die. Now instead it's either uber patriotic or maudlin crap about shoes or some such shiat.

Not only that, but it's cheap rural white pop music for bigots. Country/Western used to have some real talent in it. But as soon as the Southern Strategy kicked into gear, it became a pandering rally cry for jealous rural whites who were stuck in a rut. So instead of changing (keep the change hurr durr) or adapting, the music now solidified their 'community' and made excuses for their bullshiat. That's why country went from Johnny Cash-style talents that anybody with good taste could relate with to this pathetic mishmash of glorified bigotry and rural conformity. There is no country as it was originally known anymore, it's all just jackasses in button-up Wrangler shirts biatching about their Lifted-Up Ford Rangers while preaching the same old social standards. The whole thing is a gigantic symbol of white insecurity, male insecurity, and rural white male insecurity. It's embarrassing.

Country music is what is wrong with America.

They missed one. Or maybe not.

Eric Church is the only country artist worth a shiate at the moment. I saw him with Toby two weeks ago and with Jason Aldean earlier in the summer and he stole the show.

Just wish his newest album was a little longer.

Do people on Fark like anything besides Jeff Bridges and Arrested Development?

Jeez

Toby Keith brought it all down with "Red Solo Cup." An absolutely stupid Country rap which nevertheless digs into your brain like an Alabama tick, the part where it plays annoying songs over and over in your head.

It's the hats, I think. They look out of place and have lately become a simple way to hide receding hairlines. I see the hat and the getup and think "if the video doesn't have them roping steer or herding cattle, then it's just a poseur".

I liked Charlie Daniels and a lot of country back in the 1970s and 80s. Like the poster said it was about simple things: Beer, fun, divorce, marriage, sex, beer, telling stories about sad stuff in life, crying in your beer, or tales about Old West gun battles. It was a homegrown version of the blues in a rural milieu. Now it's an excuse for obnoxious dumbasses to try and inject derpy political commentary - not that musicians haven't done that before in other genres - but it just makes their idiocy all the more pronounced.

I'm not saying ban it or anything. I just don't have a real frame of reference, which is why I don't listen to rap. Just give me Mozart, Ray Charles, Leon Redbone, Billy Joel, MC Chris, Metallica and Weird Al and all is right with my world.

Country is music for inbred morans

Jake Havechek: I hear people sayin'. We Don't need this war
But I say there's some things worth fightin' for.
What about our freedom and this piece of ground?
We didn't get to keep em' by backing down.
They say we don't realize the mess we're gettin in
Before you start your preachin' let me ask you this my friend.

sorry jake but that song only applies when a republican is president

Jake Havechek Is that real? Holy God that's terrible. Good thing there are people fighting and dying in the middle east so that I can express that opinion.

They missed one.

Link (new window)

Country songs like these are to music what Larry the Cable Guy is to comedy. It's gotten so bad that it's practically self-parody. They're like Christmas carols if Christmas was about the living embodiment of every Foxworthy, "You might be a redneck" joke. Seriously, I get the feeling that most of these people not only didn't learn to read until their 20s but are actually proud that they held out that long.

I don't know why I even read that, since I haven't really listened to country music in the past 10 years. I do have to agree with the writer that Brad Paisley is awesome, even (especially?) when he's not singing. The guy is hilarious.

Country Boy Can Survive has to be on that list. It's a series of menial tasks revered like some difficult and noble rituals. "I can skin a buck!" Well, whoodee farking do. I and every other able bodied human could probably learn that in a few hours. While I'm sure there's some nuance and technique, it doesn't really rise to the level of heart surgery. Heart surgery is something you can brag about in a song, but not "run a trot line" which is just a series of fishing hooks strung across a moving body of water. Again, while I'm sure there's some technique to it, I don't see the pride in bragging about it.

That song should really be changed to "I live in the sticks and I swear I'm happy about it because I believe various stereotypes about the perils of cities".

It may have been out for a while, but I just heard a countrified remake of Sara Smile by Hall and Oates for the first time. Disgusting.

Toby Keith has written more than 5 songs...

Also,

Where were you when they built the Ladder to Heaven?
Did it make you feel like crying?
Or did you think it was kinda gay?
Well I for one believe in the Ladder to Heaven
Ooh yeah yeah yeah, 9-11
I said 9-11 9-11 9-11 9, 9-11

schubie: Jake Havechek Is that real? Holy God that's terrible. Good thing there are people fighting and dying in the middle east so that I can express that opinion.

What a beautiful song (new window)

natural316: Do people on Fark like anything besides Jeff Bridges and Arrested Development?

Jeez

I think people on fark like making fun of retarded things, like "patriotic" country music. You have to admit it's an easy target and most farkers are lazy. So, there you go.

Jake Havechek: I hear people sayin'. We Don't need this war
But I say there's some things worth fightin' for.
What about our freedom and this piece of ground?
We didn't get to keep em' by backing down.
They say we don't realize the mess we're gettin in
Before you start your preachin' let me ask you this my friend.

Chorus
Have you forgotten how it felt that day,
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell
We had neighbors still inside goin through a livin hell
And you say we shouldn't worry about Bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

They took all the footage off my TV
Said it's too disturbin for you and me
It'll just breed anger is what the experts say
If it was up to me I'd show it every day
Some say this country's just out lookin' for a fight
Well after 9-11 man I'd have to say that's right.

Chorus
Have you forgotten how it felt that day
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell
We had neighbors still inside goin through a livin hell
And we vow to get the ones behind Bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

I'v been there with the soldiers
Who've gone away to war
And you can bet that they remember just what they're fighting for

Have you forgotten
All the people killed
Yes some went down like heroes
In that Pennsylvania field
Have you forgotten
About our Pentagon
All the loved ones that we lost
And those left to carry on.
Don't you tell me not to worry 'bout Bin Laden

Have you forgotten?



This is on the list of songs that make you want to smash the closest object.

I hate to admit it, but I kind of like Toby Kieth. The song series in the article (and they're right, he does just churn those out) are in fact clearly pandering and written in 5 minutes for the paycheck, but a lot of the rest of his stuff is pretty tongue-in-cheek self-parody. Especially if you watch the music videos.

Good As I Once Was (new window)

Let's face it, most of Fark probably fits this song. At least the ones who ever left the basement before coming back to it.

Wow! The urban liberal hipster disdain douche baggery is strong in this thread!

jaylectricity: Pocket-fulla-shells: Wow! The urban liberal hipster disdain douche baggery is strong in this thread!

Says the commentor with a throwaway term from a Rage Against the Machine song.

I was going to post this exact thing, then I figured I should refresh first.

mastethom: Seriously, I get the feeling that most of these people not only didn't learn to read until their 20s but are actually proud that they held out that long.

Guntram Shatterhand: So instead of changing (keep the change hurr durr) or adapting, the music now solidified their 'community' and made excuses for their bullshiat. That's why country went from Johnny Cash-style talents that anybody with good taste could relate with to this pathetic mishmash of glorified bigotry and rural conformity.

I applaud each of you. Let's go out for a beer at a non-country bar. I'll buy the first round.

The only thing worse than country music is the Christian rock crap.

Steve Earle is country music's Bono, with his douchemeter running in the red consistently, but anything post '90 is about right.That's when pretty boys in party hats took over. A good country singer should be as ugly as a mud fence (male) or have giant breasts and giant hair (female).

Oh yeah, and stick to 3 chords and the truth

Link (wrote it when he was 12!)

Link (do they come any better?)

Link (Bakersfield at its best)

Link (just so farkin adorable!)

Link (more recent)

Link (morer recenter)

God Bless the USA deserves its place on the list, but there should be an honorable(?) mention for the cover-slash-filk of it that went around the DC area shortly after 9/11. It's worse. Much worse.

The cover/filk of Chumbawamba's Tubthumping from the same time period was even worse, but, not being country, it's out of scope. I can't blame them for not including that.

We don't have no plastic L.A. Frynds,
ain't on the edge of no popular trend.
Ain't never seen the inside of that magazine GQ.
We don't care if you 're a lawyer, or a texas oil man,
or some waitress busting ass in some liquor stand.
If you got Soul
We hang out with people just like you

My hair's turning white,
my neck's always been red,
my collar's still blue,
we've always been here
just trying to sing the truth to you.
Yes you could say
we've always been,
Red, White, and Blue

Ride our own bikes To Sturgis
we pay our own dues,
smoking camels, drinking domestic BREWS
You want to know where I have been
just look at my hands
Yeah, I've driven by the White House,
Spent some time in jail.
Momma cried but she still wouldn't pay my bail.
I ain't been no angel,
But even God, he understands.

My hair's turning white,
my neck's always been red,
my collar's still blue,
we've always been here
just trying to sing the truth to you.
Yes you could say
we've always been,
Red, White, and Blue

Yeah that's right!

My Daddy worked hard, and so have I,
paid our taxes and gave our lives
to serve this great country
so what are they complaining about

Yeah we love our families, we love our kids
you know it is love that makes us all so rich
That's where were at,
If they don't like it they can just
get the HELL out!

Yeah!

My hair's turning white,
my neck's always been red,
my collar's still blue,
we've always been here
just trying to sing the truth to you.
Yes you could say
we've always been,
Red, White, and Blue

oh..oh..Red, White, and Blue....

Red, White, and Blue

oh..oh....Red, White, and Blue

/philistines, the lot of you

There are really only two country songs of any merit whatsoever: "Eastbound and Down" or "Westbound and Down," depending on which direction you're traveling in.

/if you're going north/south, you're a goddamned disgrace.

Guntram Shatterhand: EvilEgg: Country music used to be good music. People rode trains, drank whiskey, and had their dog die. Now instead it's either uber patriotic or maudlin crap about shoes or some such shiat.

Not only that, but it's cheap rural white pop music for bigots. Country/Western used to have some real talent in it. But as soon as the Southern Strategy kicked into gear, it became a pandering rally cry for jealous rural whites who were stuck in a rut. So instead of changing (keep the change hurr durr) or adapting, the music now solidified their 'community' and made excuses for their bullshiat. That's why country went from Johnny Cash-style talents that anybody with good taste could relate with to this pathetic mishmash of glorified bigotry and rural conformity. There is no country as it was originally known anymore, it's all just jackasses in button-up Wrangler shirts biatching about their Lifted-Up Ford Rangers while preaching the same old social standards. The whole thing is a gigantic symbol of white insecurity, male insecurity, and rural white male insecurity. It's embarrassing.

Eh, that's a big portion of it to be sure. Expanding on that though, after spending the last few weeks on the road with a co-worker who likes New Country, I have assembled a list of the main archetypes for 80% of the songs I heard on his choice Country station:

- Ladies Should Date Me Because I'm Unashamed About Being Trailer Trash
- I'm A Lady Who Likes to Date Unashamed Trailer Trash
- Our Marriage is Great Because Jesus
- I Should Stop Drinking And Treating My Wife Like Crap
- It's Simultaneously Sad and Awesome that Your Son Died Fighting a War
- The Big City is Crap Compared to Living Out Here in the Middle of Nowhere (I actually agree with that one)
- Crappy B-Grade Rock Song With Violins and/or Banjo Thrown In

Of the remaining 20%, a little more than half actually had some content that wasn't trite and recycled. Those songs I enjoyed. The rest was like being slowly suffocated by a man in an American Flag jumpsuit.

Clash City Farker: The only thing worse than country music is the Christian rock goth crap.

Pocket-fulla-shells: Wow! The urban liberal hipster disdain douche baggery is strong in this thread!

Hey boys, looks like we found us a country music fan. Git im'!

So Country Music has turned into a right-wing ripoff of 1960's hippie music. Conservatives; not an original idea in their rancid little heads.