The Fraud of Pop Country EXPOSED !!

We always talk about Nashville and pop country being ‘fake’ or ‘plastic’ and I’m sure some people see these words as being figurative. But no, pop country is fake, FAKE! In the truest sense of the word.

Don’t believe me??

From an article about ‘Pro Tools’ from the Nashville Scene:

/“So what is this demon Pro Tools? It’s a digital recording system at the center of the debate about how technological advancements affect the sound and creation of music. The most heated issue involves a specific device, the auto-tuner digital computer software that allows a note that’s sung off-pitch to be corrected or, as common parlance has it, “fixed in the mix.”

“In the bluntest terms, auto-tuning allows a singer or instrumentalist to flub a note and later have it mended digitally by a computer. An imperfect vocal performance can come out sounding like every word was sung perfectly .., even if the performer couldn’t sing an entire song in tune to save his or her life.

“Some see this as cheating. Even worse, some believe the music industry has entered a “twilight zone” in which marginally talented yet attractive performers can be packaged and turned into mega-stars. Meanwhile, truly gifted yet less magnificent physical specimens are left to struggle in the shadows or are pushed aside altogether.

“Then there’s the related question: Does modern music’s obsession with “perfection” process out the peculiarities that, in the past, resulted in some of the best-loved records and most revered artists in popular music? Imagine Johnny Cash being auto-tuned. Or Hank Williams. Or, for that matter, Mick Jagger, Louis Armstrong and Bob Dylan. All of them sang off-key at times; some of them rarely, if ever, hit a “correct” note. Each of them typically hit the “right” one, though: Their performances are legendary, despite or maybe because of their imperfections. In modern-day Nashville, though, perfection is definitely the goal. No wrong notes here. (Well, not many.) And each artist has his or her own way of attaining that goal.

Yes my friends, you read correctly. Maybe not all, but certainly a lot of Nashville and other pop singer’s couldn’t carry their tune inside a bucket, whether it has a hole in it or not.

I stumbled upon this when I was doing research about the Bob Dylan / Hank Williams unfinished songs controversy I wrote about HERE . Like I said at the time, that story has many tentacles, and one of them was that Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs) was one of the people who was recruited by Dylan to help finish at least one of the Hank Williams songs.

Well Jack White also helped Loretta Lynn put out an album Van Lear Rose. I’ve heard some say great things about it, and others pan it. But according to the Nashville Scene article:

” . . . he (Jack) refused to work in any of Music Row’s state-of-the-art studios. “We weren’t going to use Pro Tools or any kind of trickery to make it sound perfect,” he said. “I wanted it to be soulful. I didn’t want it to sound like a modern Nashville country album.”

I’m beginning to like Jack White more and more. But still not nearly as much as Dale Watson:

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