'Get Off My Lawn': Readers Respond to Country's 'Image Problem'

Last week’s column drew comments from readers in such disparate country music hotbeds as Australia and Brazil. Citing recent critical comments about current country music from some of the format’s own stars, including Zac Brown and Gary Allan, the column raised the question “Does country have an image problem or, worse, a music problem,” particularly in light of its recent glut of songs about trucks and other country lifestyle tropes.

Last Saturday night at Nashville’s Bluebird Café, one of country music’s hottest current songwriters, Shane McAnally, unintentionally weighed in on the debate when he performed a hilarious anti-truck-song-song he wrote with another hit songwriter, Brandy Clark. Among the lyrics to “Songs About Trucks” were, “I’m getting drunk, but not in a pasture.” The song is a single for artist Wade Bowen.

Zac Brown, Kacey Musgraves on Confronting Country Music’s Image Problem

Here’s a sampling of what our industry readers had to say in response to last week’s column, beginning with our favorite email of the week.

“What a bunch of cranky old farts we’ve become, shaking our canes and yelling at each other to get off the lawn,” writes Penny Mitchell, assistant PD/music director of WestwoodOne’s Mainstream Country format. “The people who wish to continue with more traditional-sounding country need to keep making it. The people who wish to push the envelope need to proceed unabated. The public will decide where it wants to spend its money. In the meantime, I can’t help but remember what I was like when I was younger, eagerly devouring every new kind of music I could get my hands on. I’d rather err on that side of the equation than someday wake up and realize that all my favorite country artists can be seen performing only in Branson.”

Shane Media’s Pam Shane writes, “I’ve been complaining about the lyric similarity and failure to address the values and real-life experiences that attract people to country as a meaningful genre for about 18 months now.  Several of my clients have commented that Gary Allan and Zac Brown have been listening in to our music calls . . . This small town, drive around, have fun and dance on the tailgate [theme] is not a new idea. However, it used to represent only one or two titles out of 40.

“As Kacey Musgraves and Zac Brown have each pointed out, enough is enough,” Shane continues. “There’s so much more to life, and country used to be the format you could count on to sing about all the other aspects, including the dark, negative ones. Now, it’s all ‘happy, happy, country, country,’ as Jack Ingram pointed out several years ago.  

“Country radio doesn’t have a simple image problem, and it’s not all the fault of the big labels, although most of them would rather have success in the pop marketplace than in the country one because it’s ‘hip,’” Shane adds. “The reality is that the radio system now rewards celebrity and sameness instead of innovation and creative vision.” 

Veteran artist manager Dan Harrell, who reps EMI singer/songwriter Eric Paslay through his firm, Fore Artists, maintains that, “Country music doesn’t have an image problem [but] that doesn’t mean there aren’t things that need to change or be fixed.”

He continues, “I don’t think anybody’s waking up every day going ‘Let’s just do it bad.’ This town has some of the most talented people, but a lot of times that talent is forced to fit in something because it’s driven by a certain format . . . It is the music business, not music not for profit.

“All the great creators—writers and producers, the label people, the radio promotion people, and radio—everybody has in the back of their mind that nagging thought ‘This needs to work.’ So from time to time, that causes the music to fall into a sameness,” Harrell adds. “But the creative community always will be part of correcting that.”

Finally, country radio consultant Jaye Albright tackled the topic in her blog last week, responding to comments from Brown and Allan by concluding, “[An] open attitude to diversity of sound, borrowing generously from what’s ‘hot’ and adapting fresh ideas is the very thing that keeps country growing. It’s regrettable when any of us who understand the business disparages artists, songs, radio stations or companies. A bit of the mud, when that happens, splashes on all of us.”