Thomas Rhett and Maren Morris
I was born into country music. I grew up in country music. I live and breathe country music.
Yes, I love my boy bands, pop music and rock and gangsta rap, but country music has been a part of my life since the beginning.
Over the past few days – since the ACM awards – I’ve seen comments on various Facebook posts. Those posts talked about Florida Georgia Line and the Backstreet Boys performing and while the vast majority of the comments are positive, there’s always the few country music fans that blast anything that doesn’t wear boots and twists their knee while playing an acoustic guitar.
“It ain’t traditional country. Go to another awards show if you want to play that mess. It ain’t country.”
Yes, one comment from a Facebook post said that. There were also comments like that on posts about Thomas Rhett and Maren Morris’ performances of “Craving You.”
Guess what people? Country music has been changing since people began naming this type of music country.
When people start complaining about this stuff, I get a little twitchy. I mean, REALLY?
Florida Georgia Line are different than Rascal Flatts and Rascal Flatts are different than Diamond Rio. Diamond Rio was different than Sawyer Brown and Sawyer Brown was different than Alabama. Alabama was different than the Oak Ridge Boys and we could go on and on.
People thought Johnny Cash wasn’t country when he first came out. JOHNNY CASH. You know, the man in black. People thought Willie Nelson couldn’t sing and that’s why Patsy Cline recorded “Crazy.” People thought Tanya Tucker was a little more pop than country when she came out, yet people say Taylor Swift isn’t traditional country.
You want to talk about traditional country? Traditional country music is The Carter Family, Hank Williams Sr., Roy Acuff, Little Jimmie Dickens and we could keep going. It’s the people that created a radio show called The Grand Ole Opry that slowly became a stable in the music genre.
Music is about evolving and country music is a part of that.
People thought Garth Brooks was “pop” when he came out – a man that walks around in a 10-gallon Stetson and cowboy boots. Because he was influenced by Chris LeDoux and Billy Joel, he wasn’t “country.”
If you knew anything about Troyal Garth Brooks, you know that he is country. There is nothing more country than Garth Brooks.
Music is like the world… if it doesn’t evolve, nothing changes. It gets stale. Music needs something new, and whether that’s bringing in a boy band who are all from the south and grew up on country music, then so be it.
