The summer is heating up, and so are the disturbing stories surrounding the behavior at mainstream country music concerts. In 2014, concert conduct became a big concern as statistics and specific stories flooded in as the summer rolled on, and 2015 is shaping up to be just as concerning, if not more. A suspect from Nevada County, California has been arrested in connection with a rape at a Brad Paisley concert.
The recently-split duo is now set to release a new album…though they’re completely open about the fact that they’re not even speaking to each other. How is a music fan, or specifically a Civil Wars fan supposed to perceive this? How can you submit to their music when you know there’s open tension between the two, especially when their music has depended so much on the intimacy in their singing and lyricism?
We all know them and we all hate them, those ubiquitous and ridiculous pop country songs that make us hang our heads in shame, embarrassed to call ourselves country fans, constantly making us having to explain that no, we don’t listen to that type of country. They pursue us doggedly, on the radio, over the speakers at the grocery store, blaring from a car full of high school kids at a red light.
Love ’em or hate ’em, it’s hard to dispute that the CMA Awards are the most important night in country music every year. The nominations announced last week had a few interesting wrinkles including Kelly Clarkson for Female Vocalist of the Year, so let’s take a in-depth look at what’s coming up on November 1st and make some predictions.
Country and folk music have a long history of joining forces to create infrastructure to help support music, principally in festival gatherings. And as the corporate music world continues to crumble and is able to support fewer artists, while capital and infrastructure to develop upcoming acts continues to contract, hip-hop and indie rock bands have been flocking to traditional roots festivals for support.
First country sold its taste, then its heritage to keep the dinosaur corporations that run country music afloat. Now it has sold it’s greatest the asset that has always given country music a distinction from the rest of popular music. It has sold its values, and is creating a generation of knuckle-chucking assholes in Affliction T-Shirts, and the girls who love them.