Even after 18 hours, my brain still hurts.
I don't know if many people know this, but for the past couple of months I've been keeping a couple of Copper Country stations owned by the same company as us programmed, just like I do here in Marquette. One's a metal station, and the other's country. I know little (if anything) about metal or country, but I do know how to program a radio station, so it's been...interesting.
Yesterday I was going through things on the country station, to tighten up rotations and make sure the music clocks were playing the songs they were supposed to play. I also went online to check out several new songs that might be added; five of them, in fact. And it was after listening to them that my brain started to hurt...
If only because all five of them dealt with a guy, a truck, and a girl the guy wanted to get in the back of the truck.
Not only was the lyrical content the same, but all five songs pretty much sounded the same, as well. A lot of country music these days sounds like rock music of 25 years ago, and all of five of them had the same big beat, slightly rap-y vocals, and double entendre lyrics. Some people will describe Nashville (and the country format as a whole) as a music factory; after checking out the songs yesterday, I think I can safely say that factory is in mass production mode these days.
I'm not ragging on country music; it's one of the most popular formats in radio, and if you look deep enough there are artists putting out some amazing work these days (check out Kelsea Ballerini's “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat” if you don't believe me). Unfortunately, that amazing music doesn't always translate to a hit on country radio, if only because it doesn't have a big beat or reference a pickup truck (or is done by a woman, a story for another day). In pop radio, work like that can break through to a mass audience.
In country, not so much.
I keep saying that my life is weird, that I never know what's around the next corner. And I'm pretty sure that if you had told me a couple of months ago that I'd be spending a couple of hours every few weeks listening to songs about guys & their trucks, I just would have scoffed.
I would have been wrong, but I still would have scoffed.
8-)
No comments:
Post a Comment