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Country At a Crossroads?

DavidEduardo said:
"Go out and purchase"? Wrong decade. Nobody "goes out" and purchased "records" and nearly nobody has for going on two decades.

Country does not need any "new" old artists. Chapman is 50 this year, and would have to compete with a slew of interesting young artists, ranging from Blacks and Hispanics to "weight challenged" with some awfully good songs.
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Chapman can write circles around any of them. I guess you don't believe in artists getting paid for their music. "Buying" music can include modern methods other than vinyl or CDs...
 
tbolt909 said:
Chapman can write circles around any of them.
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For her audience in her style. That style is not country, and it definitely was not country when "Fast Car" came out, which was the Garth Brooks, Randy Travis, Alan Jackson, Laurie Morgan and friends period with steel guitars, banjos, fiddles and twang.

The country station I was managing in the 1989-1992 period even did some research; it had been playing stuff like The Everly Brothers and we pulled it all because it was no "country" enough.

And there are people who don't consider Chapman "great" in any way in regards to her music (with her lifestyle having zilch to do with it). I am a significant classical music admirer and "fan" but give me most 20th Century composers like Mahler and Stravinski and I'm gone. Bye.

My favorite composer is Rafael Escalona whose story telling is as poetic as Cervantes or Dickens. You would likely not like his work, his stories or his life in general. That's why there is a Latino saying of "to accommodate tastes, they made colors."
tbolt909 said:
I guess you don't believe in artists getting paid for their music.
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Where in this world and many nearby ones did you jump, unfettered, to this conclusion?? (Two question marks on purpose).
tbolt909 said:
"Buying" music can include modern methods other than vinyl or CDs...
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None of those methods involve "going out" which is what you said. In my community there is no RedBox where I can "go out" and download songs onto, I dunno', my iPod. I can't think of any music delivery system that requires "going out".

Hoist on thy own petard, right?
 
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DavidEduardo said:
tbolt plays agent provocateur quite admirably on occasion,
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Talk about nitpicking. "Going out" simply means looking for music out of one's comfort zone. Yeah, you can buy it from home. Combs has chosen to introduce his audience to a song that many had likely never heard before. Chapman wrote it and will bank the profits. She didn't need a "squad" of writers like the Aldean song.

I've yet to see anyone here condemn Wallen. Too many people think it's fine that he's being rewarded. Country fans just double down when confronted about racism. Just play the Aldean track even more often. It's really kind of sick...
 
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tbolt909 said:
I've yet to see anyone here condemn Wallen. Too many people think it's fine that he's being rewarded. Country fans just double down when confronted about racism. Just play the Aldean track even more often. It's really kind of sick...
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Wallen definitely made a pretty stupid mistake. Drunken redneck throws around the n-word in an era where everyone has a device that records video? Not a good look.

Is he being "rewarded?" I look at it more like "record label desperately trying to recoup their investment." Whatever reward he may get is incidental. They make their money back by rehabilitating his image. He does the apology tour. "I have black friends" and what not. He's got the "hot hand." He's the star of the show at the moment, so of course his employer is going to give him a break. Happens with "controversial" sports stars in the NBA, the NFL and MLB all the time.

Reminds me of that scene in "The Godfather" when Fredo is like "yeah, Mo knocked me around a little bit, but he didn't mean nothing."

The fans? They just want a song that makes them feel better about themselves and their life.
 
Fast Cars by Tracy Chapman was pushed when it came out. I was programming a country station in Texas at the time. We added it out of the box at the prodding of our record rep and our audience loved it. In fact, for about a week we weren't sure if Tracy was a man or woman.
 
tbolt909 said:
Talk about nitpicking. "Going out" simply means looking for music out of one's comfort zone.
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Nice obfuscation.
tbolt909 said:
Yeah, you can buy it from home.
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Yes, that is what I said.
tbolt909 said:
Combs has chosen to introduce his audience to a song that many had likely never heard before. Chapman wrote it and will bank the profits. She didn't need a "squad" of writers like the Aldean song.
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Combo song writers go back to the years of Tin Pan Alley. Think of all the team compositions by folks like Rogers & Hammerstein and Bachrach Y David or Lennon & McCartney or Barry, Robin and Maurice Gib or Boyce & Hart or Goffin and King or Holland, Dozier and Holland. I could go on and on, but there is a huge amount of collaborative music. Who cares if it is done as a team or all alone?
tbolt909 said:
I've yet to see anyone here condemn Wallen. Too many people think it's fine that he's being rewarded. Country fans just double down when confronted about racism. Just play the Aldean track even more often. It's really kind of sick...
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You are doing the most "racist" and biased thing I can think of which is to say all members of a group are bad. What is sick is your attitude that anyone who does not agree with you is wrong: solo composers must be better than teams, country music fans are racist are two things you have stated in just this thread.

As Deus Ex Machiato said, "the fans? They just want a song that makes them feel better about themselves and their life."

Here is one that will surely short circuit your mind: I love country music, my first wife was 100% indigenous and both of us loved songs by Lennon & McCartney.
 
I don't recall. That was what, 1980 or early 1981? I was in an isolated market so I don't know how it did elsewhere but my audience including lots of oil field workers liked it.
 
b-turner said:
I don't recall. That was what, 1980 or early 1981? I was in an isolated market so I don't know how it did elsewhere but my audience including lots of oil field workers liked it.
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Did you get direct record label service, or buy one of the small market "currents" services that gave you all the stuff on every label?
 
It should be known that Tracy hasn't released a new album in 15 years since 2008's "Our Bright Future", so people who are just discovering her could breeze through the eight albums she made from 1988-2008. I doubt this will spur her to put out a new album or EP, but maybe Elektra/Atlantic could put out a new compilation, or just re-release her 2015 one. Then again, EMI didn't put out a Kate Bush hits album to capitalize on the success of "Running Up That Hill".
 
DavidEduardo said:
And in that era, stations had to get serviced from the label. If the label did not send a song to their list of country stations, the country stations did not get it or hear it.

Small stations that did not get label service would subscribe to new release services, but each was specific to a single format.

Of course, a station could buy the song at a record store. If that ever happened, there should be some kind of memorial engraved stone placed on the sidewalk where the store used to be located.
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Just curious, when John Mellencamp's "Jackie Brown" got to #83 on the Country chart, was that a result of Mercury sending it to the format?
 
radio2023 said:
Just curious, when John Mellencamp's "Jackie Brown" got to #83 on the Country chart, was that a result of Mercury sending it to the format?
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Not necessarily. That number is from Billboard, and at the time they didn't have a separate chart for country airplay, It included sales. The R&R chart was airplay only, but it was only a Top 50.
 
TheBigA said:
Not necessarily. That number is from Billboard, and at the time they didn't have a separate chart for country airplay, It included sales. The R&R chart was airplay only, but it was only a Top 50.
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True, but it did make "Significant Action" on R&R with 15 stations on it.
 
radio2023 said:
doubt this will spur her to put out a new album or EP, but maybe Elektra/Atlantic could put out a new compilation, or just re-release her 2015 one. Then again, EMI didn't put out a Kate Bush hits album to capitalize on the success of "Running Up That Hill".
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If the majority of music is being streamed or downloaded where you can choose which individual songs you es t to listen to or purchase, do “best of” compilations have the same allure to record companies when consumers can basically create one on their own?
 
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