Pop goes the Cletus...

From David Cantwell's review of some recent CD's in Pitch.com:

The knee-jerk equating of crap with pop doesn't add up, aesthetically speaking; the former is an evaluation of ends, and the latter merely describes means. Worse, it ignores that the tension between old-fashioned and newfangled is the lifeblood of tradition. As historian Richard Peterson reminds us, country has always moved from "hardcore" to "soft shell" and back around again like clockwork. This unbroken circle perpetually returns a changed genre to roots that have changed, too. Think of the way Buck Owens prompted the "traditionalist" revival of the early 1960s by playing rock and roll disguised as honky-tonk.

I've traded some emails with Cantwell in the past, and you know what? On some levels, I agree with the above. But there is a FATAL flaw to what he's saying.

Country can and will withstand, and even benefit from, an "injection" of pop music from a purely musical standpoint. But, the lionshare of pop in Country today is not there for musical reasons. It's there to deliver the female demographic to Country radio. As an example, just look at Cantwell's use of Buck Owens in the above quotation. Country was in the midst of the Countrypolitan nonsense of the Nashville Sound when Owens plugged it back in and returned some of the grit to it. But he did that because that's who he was, it was his version of Country, and it was what was making him a huge success on the West Coast. He was trolling for hits like anybody else, BUT, if he cranked up a Telecaster and blasted the wall of strings out of the recording studio, it was because he'd been doing that in a bar in Bakersfield for about ten years. If he was "disguising" anything, well, it was only a matter of degree. I guess I take issue with "disguised."

And now, the issue is the PROCESS. I've said many times that you can point to individual songs by individual singers in the mainstream and say, "well, that's not selling out." Of course. But, they're in the mainstream because the PROCESS is screwed up. People get label deals because they can sing relatively in tune, and they're good looking. The songs--as is very much the case for Brooks & Dunn--will be supplied to them. It's almost IMPOSSIBLE to find a more manufactured group than Brooks & Dunn, two guys who didn't know each other from Adam, that were put together by the marketing reps from two labels who were having a drink together and thought the two might match up well. The PROCESS is designed to provide pop songs, "disguised" as Country to radio, so that women between the ages of 25 and 45 do not turn off the radio during the Tampax commercials.

The final joke, as always, is the obligatory mention of Joe Nichols, Dierks Bentley, and Gary Allan. They get mentioned every time. It's a hallmark of country-pop apologists to finish their review, article, essay, or master's thesis by mentioning the "New Traditionalists," Nichols, Bentley and Allan. And why are these three guys the new traditionalists? I can name about a hundred acts that were new traditionalists several years before they came along; the answer is, quite simply, these are 3 handsome men whose wardrobes and haircuts we can control, who came to Nashville, and now are scared to leave. They'll ride this wave of test-marketing that the labels are doing with them, but then the cold iron bell of reality will ring. Mark it down, the next articles you read about these guys will be about how they lost their label deals because they wouldn't sing about babies, angels, or babies turning into angels after dying from an incurable disease, while at the State Fair with their high school sweetheart parents, who probably married too early. "Man," they'll say, "Nashville just chews you up and spits you out."