As the criticism of the country music industry at large continues to pour in following the aftermath of Morgan Wallen’s N-word video, his Dangerous: The Double Album spends its now fifth week firmly atop the Billboard 200 for being far and away the best selling and streaming album in all of music.
None of this is real ladies and gentlemen. From the fake controversies, to the gaming of the meme culture and social media to make 30-second snippets somehow compete with actual songs on charts, to the paying for streams to create false positives on breakout hits, the malfeasance in the monogenre space with country music as the heel…
The reason so many can make so much money on the secondary market is because there is way more demand than there is supply. And by performers not ramping up their supply and only playing one, or maybe two shows in a market that could potentially support four or five, they’re allowing the secondary market to thrive.
Chris Stapleton got another crack at a national audience on Saturday, January 16th when he took the Saturday Night Live stage, but after the NFL matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Arizona Cardinals ran 45 minutes later than normal, some were worried Stapleton’s opportunity would be scuttled. However according to television ratings, the opposite […]
Over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a topic more beset with assumption, conjecture, and sometimes, idiocracy. Whether Taylor Swift uses Auto-Tune in either the live or recorded formats is not an opinion. Either she does, or she doesn’t, and the evidence we have to make those conclusions in many cases is obvious.
To say the song “Mean” by Taylor Swift has legs is a the grossest of all understatements. Since Saving Country Music’s coverage of the song has been limited to the context of criticism and conjecture, I though I would lay out all the facts about the song once and for all to see if we can discern who “Mean” is about.
“Mean” might be the worst track on her Speak Now album. It is the most “country” song on the album, but it is not catchy, or clever, or well-crafted. Calling someone “Mean” is just such a base accusation. This isn’t punditry, it’s name calling. Maybe this song would have worked if she delved into the psychology of why people are mean, or even created some sympathy and understanding for her bullies. But instead she descends into the same “Mean” mentality herself…
I am quite astonished with this in so many different ways I don’t even know where to start. Actually I do. How about with the fact that Gwyneth, across multiple platforms, including movie, radio, and performance, and from a critical and commercial standpoint, has already failed in country music. The movie “Country Strong”, which is the impetus for this whole country music career, was a colossal critical and commercial failure.