Sammy Kershaw: “Country Music Hates Itself”

sammy-kershawIt’s been a working theory for years here at Saving Country Music that country is constantly trying to apologize for itself, and explain away all of the stereotypes of the genre to garner wider acceptance. Country spends all of its energy trying prove that it’s not a bunch of rednecks and racists and old people’s music, instead of educating people on the beauty of country in both its traditional and contemporary forms. I remember a couple of years ago when Jason Aldean said right before the ACM Awards,

 Country music still kind of fights the stereotypes a lot of times. And here we’re having a country music show, and it’s in one of the glitziest cities in the world, so it just shows you that were not still sitting on hay bales passing out awards at these shows.

And you see this attitude play into the production of country music’s annual award shows and other large events more and more as time goes on. They invariably start off with the most non country performance as possible, attempting to lure viewers in by proving how not country the genre really is. This was especially evident during Tuesday (8-5) night’s broadcast of the CMA Music Fest special on ABC. There was little to nothing country about it. It came across as nothing more than an infomercial about how non-country the music of country really is. Dierks Bentley spelled it out before the night even started when he said, ““It’s a young, current, hip thing that’s happening that deserves to be in a downtown city center that’s new and growing and feels vibrant and just feels ”¦ represents the music properly. You know, this is not like your grandfather’s country music anymore.”

In an interview with Country Weekly, classic country artist Sammy Kershaw, who’s promoting his new Do You Know Me? George Jones tribute album had some poignant things to say about country music’s poor self-esteem.

Look, I’ve always said country music is the only genre that hates itself. It wants to be everything else, but country music. I’ve been in it for a long, long time and I’ve seen the changes, but it always comes back. But now, I don’t see it coming back. It finally found a route to go.

Hopefully Kershaw is wrong about country music coming back, but what he’s most certainly right about is country music wanting to be everything else than what it’s supposed to be. Whether the circle is truly broken forever, or it will eventually come back around again like it has done before in the past, there’s no doubting country is farther out on the loop than ever before.

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