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Country’s Transformation

Sasha Frere-Jones looks at the music of Luke Bryan and Eric Church and comments on Nashville’s shift to a more pop-like sound.

Released on 08/18/2014

Transcript

(crowd cheering and applauding)

(slow electric guitar music)

♫ They're the in crowd

♫ We're the other ones

♫ It's a different kind of cloth that we're cut from

♫ We let our colors show

♫ Where the numbers ain't

♫ With the paint where ain't supposed to be paint

♫ That's who we are

[Sasha] Hi, this is Sasha Frere-Jones.

I'm the pop music critic for the New Yorker Magazine

and we're talking about Country music,

specifically, Eric Church and Luke Bryan

who have very, very popular albums this year.

♫ Our women get hot

♫ And our leather gets stained

♫ And we saddle up and ride 'em in the pouring rain

♫ We're the junkyard dogs

♫ We're the alley cats

[Sasha] Country has become sort of this wide,

in many ways, this hip-hop,

which is a word that frankly doesn't mean very much anymore.

You've got some couple of traditional acts in there,

but there are a lot of people like Church and Bryan

who are using many different kinds of music in their Country

and what makes it Country

is becoming a smaller and smaller variable.

It's almost like a sticker on a sandwich.

Something about Church, he's a bit more ambitious

than Luke Bryan and his new album

is the biggest country album of the year so far.

The title track, The Outsiders

has a bunch of different parts.

Kind of a Queen vibe to the whole thing

with the big hand claps and the backing vocals

and then it ends on a almost a classic metal riff.

But it wouldn't have qualified as Country 10 years ago.

But, you know, Eric Church is a Country artist.

Country is a very open-minded genre,

but there are a couple of things about it

that still make it Country.

Now Cold One by Eric Church is interesting

because it's on an album with these more adventurous tracks

but Cold One is pretty much classic Nashville

in that we're gonna have a real clever lyric,

double entendre, it's a cold one.

In the video, we have a beer delivery man

and he's talking about a cold beer

but he's also talking about a woman who cut him off

without much ado.

♫ Out of my life

♫ That was a cold one

♫ I never will get back

♫ Yeah, she had to leave

[Sasha] The music is pretty straight Country

except it's on the Southern Rock side,

then it's got a wacky Bluegrass breakdown.

Closer to what we would have seen in Country 10 years ago.

A little bit schizo and it's fun.

(fast bass guitar music)

Now Home Boy is an example of something

where Country has been ahead of other genres.

I'm gonna say Country has not been scared of talking about

social issues.

If there's a cartoon of Country,

it's sort of the inverse of the truth, which is...

We have the Dixie Chicks singing about domestic violence.

We've got Garth Brooks talking about gay rights.

Country music is about the social situation

in all of its manifestations.

So this song, Home Boy,

he's addressing this family member,

a brother or cousin,

getting a little bit culturally mixed up.

Acting like the wrong kind of badass.

♫ Wish one day

♫ You were sitting on gate of a truck by the lake

♫ With your high school flame on one side

[Sasha] Now, is the point that this kid is acting Black,

or is the point that he's acting like a fake gangster

and it's really not so much

about culturally-racial part of it?

That he's saying there's a kid in the family

with an identity crisis

and he's solving it through these cultural means?

It's interesting that a popular music form

is taking this on.

The entire genre is it to remain abstract or personal

and never say anything this concrete.

And I just find that interesting

and useful whether or not I agree with it.

♫ In the yard

♫ Man it seems we were just catchin' snakes

♫ She had a cross around her neck

♫ And a flower in her hair

[Sasha] Luke Bryan is a classic Nashville singer.

His songs come from all the different writers.

He is just the pretty face, not really the song writer.

If you break it down to the melody and the mood,

this could be a Taylor Swift song.

This could be anybody singing this song.

And I find that interesting is that Country has fused

with the rest of Pop music and the hit-making machine.

And now there's really no formal difference between this

and a big Pink anthem.

This could really be anybody's song.

In that way, Bryan is representative

of another part of Nashville

where it's simply blending into the rest

of the Pop landscape.

I mean, what makes this Country?

I would say barely anything makes this Country.

♫ Kind of feeling

♫ Would last longer than that week did

♫ Blown away and barely breathin'

Starring: Sash Frere-Jones

Featuring: Luke Bryan, Eric Church