Collin Raye: Country Has Become “Dumbed Down”

collin-raye

Country music artist Collin Raye’s career accomplishments can fly under your radar if you’re not careful, because he was never as flashy as some of his contemporaries like Garth Brooks. But with sixteen #1 hits and five platinum albums earned after becoming a solo artist in 1991, Collin Raye is a more decorated artist than most.

The singer recently released a memoir called A Voice Undefeated, and in the book he speaks candidly about his detest for what is currently happening in country music. “They’ve largely abandoned the reality-based moral message for the common man that made country music a strong cultural force for good,” Raye says, and then continues to say how he’s worried some of the most gifted people in Nashville are watering down their talents to appeal to the lowest common denominator just to sell records.

In a recent interview with Fox News (see below), Collin delves even further into his dissent about the direction of country music.

I’m passionate about it because I love our genre. I got into country music not to make a buck. I did it because I love it … I grew up at a time when Merle Haggard was writing stuff like “Mama’s Hungry Eyes” and “Sing Me Back Home”. Kristofferson was writing “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “Me & Bobby McGee” and stuff like that. It was poetry. Country music has never been about the chord progression or the complexity of the music. It’s always been about lyrics and stories, and real life slices of life. And the one common thread has always been poetry. It’s like American Shakespeare in a way, and that’s what it’s supposed to be. From Hank Williams, to before Hank Williams on up, that’s this beautiful thing we all love so much, and so many of us got into the business knowing we could never be as great as those guys, but we always tried to live up to that standard that they had set.

And I’m really depressed in how it has dumbed down to basically a one-dimensional “Let’s party in the truck, gonna drink some cold beer!” There’s so many of those, and I’m not begrudging anybody their living. It’s not really the artists I blame, and it’s not the songwriters I blame because they’re just trying to make a living. It’s the gatekeepers quote unquote that we used to have in Nashville which are the label heads who used to decide what was good enough to put out and what was not. And now they’ve just totally given into that.

Collin Raye is not known for traditional country music, but for very contemporary-sounding country, including some music that made use of keyboards and synthesizers. But the lyrics still achieved a standard that is virtually vacant on today’s country radio.

The topic of Collin Raye’s book also raised eyebrows on Clear Channel’s syndicated morning program The Bobby Bones Show in late March. Bobby Bones, while professing his fandom for Collin (they’re both from Arkansas), diagnosed Collin with “old man syndrome” for criticizing current country music. “Luke Bryan—you can see things you shouldn’t be able to see on Luke when he dances because his pants are so tight.” Bobby Bones said. “And that’s not trashy, that’s juts how he does it … That’s just the culture now … It’s called old man syndrome. It’s that group going to the next group.”

Or it speaks to the steady decline of culture that Collin Raye seeks to raise awareness about with his comments; a decline that has seen the general erosion of the value of country music to deliver something more than catchy lyrics and an infectious beat.

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