Opinion: Modern country is the worst musical genre of all time

@akg_ca Well don’t you just make a newcomer feel welcome.  
Good thing the post-# police are out, keeping watchful eye on how many posts people have made, and then strongly advocating silencing people whose opinions they don’t like - “too bad that the AGON blocking feature doesn’t include the forum posts yet.”

If I find myself in the unfortunate position of being exposed to the stuff that comes out of speakers when someone is listening to a contemporary “country” music station, I know what pure, unmitigated agony is.
I can at least, on an abstract level, conceivably understand eating Easy Cheese (well, even that one’s a stretch…), watching The Bachelor or Emily in Paris, or watching curling or NASCAR.  
No such understanding with this aural experience.  

It is disingenuous to conflate criticism of this aural experience with criticism of, say, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Mickey Newbury, or Townes Van Zandt.  
As others have noted, there may indeed be plenty of good music today that would be considered “country.”   
Again, conflating a criticism of such with criticism of the average, everyday contemporary “country” music station is disingenuous.

@coltrane1 “Jazz is the most complex music ever, by black people no less.”

Sweet Martha.

Simply repugnant racism aside, you think fancy chords and improvisational acumen makes “Ellington and Parker” (we could throw in Monk, Mingus, and Coltrane to name a very small few more) “more complex” than Bach, Stravinsky, Bartók, Boulez, Schoenberg (to name a very small few)?  
Musical “complexity” is far more nuanced than your gross oversimplification suggests.

The noted advantage most top jazz instrumentalists possess in improvisational acumen does not make the music of jazz, necessarily, “more complex” than classical.  
If a top-shelf classical instrumentalist may be, at times, a fish out of water when “sitting in” and trying to hold their own in a top-shelf jazz ensemble, the inverse may also be true.  
Plop the most complex, demanding classical score in front of an all-world jazz player, and their inability to play it on sight with impeccable precision and perfection on the very first go may indeed be exposed. 
Just because versatility in instrumental acumen across all ensembles may arguably favor the jazz instrumentalist, this does not necessarily make jazz music, as a whole, “more complex” than classical.
 

@onhwy61 “Musical labels are for record companies and radio stations marketing efforts.”

Thank you.  
I feel people have inherited, internalized and accepted this stuff.  
Music journalists don’t help. The way they describe music is just an exercise in hyphenation. Contrived balderdash to sound like they know what they’re talking about.

@clearthinker Once again, you’re just flat out wrong.

The race of an artist, or group of artists, of a particular time/place, was completely irrelevant to the argument at hand. Yet, you inexplicably interjected such into your argument. By no means did you (as you’re now trying to characterize) effectively “merely point out the fact that jazz was created by black people.”  
Again, even if that was indeed “all you did,” this was completely irrelevant to the topic. An inexplicable choice.
But, of course, this was not “all you did.” 
You said, “jazz is the most complex music ever created, by black people no less.”  Clearly suggesting (‘…,no less.’) that it is “surprising” or “remarkable” that black people would create something exceedingly sophisticated.
That’s racist.  

“How many here can argue the complexities of “jazz.” Frankly, unless you’re a musician educated in jazz, who can truly play, it’s beyond your comprehension. So in essence, there’s no argument to be had.”

Goodness gracious me. 
Once again, you’re just flat out wrong.  

This oversimplified, grandiose bluster (perhaps betraying an insecurity more than anything else), this foisting of a qualification for one’s legitimacy of opinion, is not merely a shovel; it’s a JCB 5CX backhoe with which you’re digging yourself a deeper hole.

1) Simply pointing to a transcription that has a glut of chords listed over the top of each bar, chords with titles 8 characters long, marked by 11ths, 13ths. 13#11ths, augmentedness, diminishedness, and general harmonic esoterica, does nothing to prove that the transcription is “more complex” than that of, say, Le Sacre Du Printemps, or the countless microtonal pieces written over a span of multiple centuries preceding the existence of jazz (and concurrently during the existence of jazz), or the general complexity of an orchestral score that goes on and on and on, page after page, written for a dozen-odd different instruments.

An instrumentalist may, in jazz, display virtuosic improvisational acumen, doing so seamlessly while negotiating exotic harmonic structure, esoteric shifts in modes, key, and time signature.  
This doesn’t make the music, necessarily, more “complex” than classical.

2) To suggest that it takes an educated, trained, fluent-in-music-theory-person to recognize the relative complexities in jazz and classical is untrue.

Sure, such a person may be able to boast of their knowledge of fancy musical jargon.

Sure, a person outside of any particular field may not be able to hold their own in a room full of folks actually in the given field, if attempting to speak authoritatively on the subject.  
A classy expert, secure in their knowledge and competence, would not need to flippantly dismiss the entirety of the “outsider’s” opinion on the subject. This more-knowledgeable person may indeed take what the outsider has to say with a grain of salt given the outsider’s relative ignorance, but wouldn’t need to protect their own ego by hiding behind insider-jargon, a supercilious, elitist perspective, and an outright, wholesale dismissal of that “outsider’s” opinion.

When I perform music, whether solo as a piano-vocalist, or a guitar-vocalist, when I arrange scores for and perform with orchestral and jazz ensembles, when I play music of virtually any kind (and I do), I may indeed, at times, have an attitude of, “anyone who doesn’t like this is an ignorant rube whose opinion is inadmissible.”  
That’s me needing to protect my ego against any less-than-effusive opinions others may have of my music. It’s not good.  

Being true to one’s self with no regard for appeasing and pandering is good.
Being a dismissive, arrogant elitist is bad.
 

@clearthinker I am extremely sorry, clearthinker.  
Those words of mine were NOT intended for this user, they were intended for coltrane1, it must have been the “c” thing when I fat-thumbed my response.  
Big mistake.  
I am very sorry.  
clearthinker had nothing to do whatsoever with this conversation.  
A lesson to me on careful selection when directing my forum responses. 

 

@clearthinker I appreciate your grace and understanding.
 

@clearthinker said nothing about jazz, and said absolutely no racist things.

@thespeakerdude One could could argue that a love of music may inspire those that share such to express dismay at powerful forces in the music industry continually, perhaps even aggressively, eschewing originality and intelligence in favor of pandering, exploitation of dubious notions of “authenticity,” and embracing wholesale unoriginality for maximized profits at the expense of high-integrity, original artists who may have otherwise enjoyed those allocations of time, energy, dollars, marketing and distribution.  
These are choices the top labels make, and thusly the drivel that makes it onto the top stations and secures the highest levels of exposure is what the average kid, the average listener is most likely to be exposed to initially.  Should one love music, it may be disheartening to see some kid receiving this type of thing as “the #1 thing” when it could have been something much higher-quality.  
For me, “genre” thing has nothing to do with it. I think bad music is bad music. I think the excretions that ooze out of speakers when someone listens to the average modern, contemporary “country” station is aesthetically offensive. Putrid.  
This criticism of mine has nothing to do with records released over the past 5 years by Colter Wall, James McMurtry, Ian Noe, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.
 
 

I could give a hoot n’ heck about “genre.”  
In regards to terrible music, I know it when I hear it.  
The stuff that hits my ears after emanating from speakers, stuff that is sourced from “contemporary country” stations, is ceaselessly, almost savagely, terrible.

It’s really irrelevant to bring up canonical songs by Carter Family (very nebulous attribution of ‘authorship’ here, but I think it’s fair to say a mixture of originality and traditional-recitation occurred here, and the profundity of the influence of these versions remains difficult to dispute), Jimmie Rodgers, Red Foley, Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, Eddy Arnold, Lefty Frizzel, Bob Wills, Hank Thompson, Bill Anderson, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Mickey Newbury, Dolly Parton, Jerry Jeff Walker, Townes Van Zandt, Kris Kristofferson, and Billy Joe Shaver.  
That is completely separate from this current stuff.  
There should be no more conflations of this current stuff with the above stuff.

The familiarity factor, or perhaps even the nostalgia factor may indeed have caused the notably higher positivity in responses.
Obviously this statement I’m about to make is entirely subjective, but I would posit that the music of the artists I listed is 20x better than that of Kenny Chesny, Brothers Osbourne, Eric Church, and music of that ilk.
That may also contribute to more positive responses.
The “iteration of genre” point you made is moot.
Every musical thing is a “new iteration” of what preceded it.
It just so happens that this new iteration really, really, really sucks.