What Killed Country Music & How To Save It

A decade or so back I invented the term "Popify."

The word refers to when the music industry sets up a simple formula for a genre of music so they can quickly crank out tunes like a factory and make lots of money.

I'm all for making lots of money.

Unfortunately, they ruin some great music when they do this.

County music used to be known for its stories.

Now, it all sounds the same.

A few years ago the YouTube page SirMashalot took 6 country songs and blended them together to show that, in fact, they could all be the same song.

You can hear this disaster in the video below.

There is another YouTube page called There-I-Ruined-It, that decided to take the parody approach to illustrate the problem.

They took a country song and just clipped out the buzz words and made a new song out of it.

The video is below.

It's funny, and all too real at exposing the problem with popified country music.

What bro country sounds like to people who don't like bro country

This is not to say that there is nothing good out there.

It's just that we have to search past the crapy popified music to find the few great tunes.

As long as the general public keeps listing to the popular popified crap the music industry will continue to crank it out.

It's cheap and fast to produce and makes them a lot of money.

To make my point I'll go back a few years to a song that was probably one of the best stories ever written for country music.

Below is Poncho & Lefty, performed by Willy Nelson and Merle Haggard.

This song has great lines like

Pancho was a bandit boy
His horse was fast as polished steel
He wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel

Also, one of my favorite verses...

Lefty, he can't sing the blues
All night long like he used to
The dust that Pancho bit down south
Ended up in Lefty's mouth

This song is some of the best wordsmithing poetry I have ever heard.

The only way we can return to the great music that used to be written is to stop listing to popified crap.