Friday, March 28, 2014

Rock And Roll....and Bro Country

There's no mistake in thinking that new music today is absolute garbage, but perhaps the biggest nadir is the onslaught of autotuned rap country songs that have been swamping the locally Cumulus owned country station for the past year it seems.  There hasn't been one time that going to Theisen's to encounter some piece of shit song Luke Bryan or Florida Georgia Line has up, driving potential customers out of the hardware business.  Never have I thought of somebody so low that the mare mention of his name would make my skin crawl and give me hives as that What Makes Corn Grow song and to follow it up with That's My Kind Of Night.  But let us be fair, Bryan isn't the only one that is lowering himself to meth redneck standards.




Jarrod Niemann has been a journeyman country artist at best, his best known single a cover of a Sonia Dada song Lover Lover and from I remember from his first album Jarrod Niemann and the hung jury, it was actually, for country standards a fairly good although flawed effort.  His second album flopped and now for number 3 and desperate for what's left of CD sales or radio airplay he has dropped off a turd of a new album High Noon, which is everything that is bro country and what I despise about country today. Whatever Jarrod had for his first album is now thrown out in the window.  This is the kind of crap that even makes the Peach Pickers sound more like the Brill Building, complete with bathtub liquor and meth in the back.  We all knew this was going to be bad even before the new Jarrod Niemann video popped up on GAC, which has their own version of Party Down South, the trainwreck unreality show on CMT.  You really can't tell the difference especially when GAC shows the same 7 videos from various bro country acts.

For the past winter since it was too cold to do anything outside, I spent the 2 oclock hour watching the new videos from GAC and basically all they did was reshuffle the same videos over and over again.  And you couldn't tell the difference between any of them, be it Luke Bryan, or Brantley Gilbert, Blake Sheldon, Eli Young's I'm Drunk Again, and Eric Pasley, a unknown but his Friday Night bro country video seems to get more airplay than Florida Georgia Line, which seems to falling out of favor recently.   Unlike K hack, 98.1 and KISS country which don't play the female singers outside of Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood, GAC does throw in some girls, Kacey Musgraves Follow Your Arrow was in regular rotation and some doe eyed female singer which I never heard of always is the last one before the top of the hour.  But most of the time GAC just sticks to Truck Yeah, the odious Tim McGraw number, a Zac Brown number that gotten so many plays I change the channel and of course, more Luke Bryan, or Jason Aldean, the new Willie and Waylon as they say. Real bad ass outlaw country, Riiiiiight.

Upon checking the top 20 videos of the week, we have some kind of disagreement on what's on the chart and what is on the GAC Bro Country Hour and no difference between Niemann doing shots with two other creepy looking dudes or Thomas Rhett's Get Me Some Of That, to which video hero guy gets drunk, gets knocked all over the place by other bro country dudes, falls on the floor and then gets a hand up by his love interest to which they make out and have sex before the video is over. Take me where this bar is at folks, I want in.  Then it's Luke Bryan again, to which another Video studmuffing, passed out on the front of the frat house, gets slapped in the face by a pissed off girl and then proceeds to drink it up and getting hugs and kisses from scantly clad college chicks that could be Playboy pin up dolls.  Wish I could go to this college too and party all day, get drunk and play mean guitar and get laid soon afterward.  This is has gotten so far out of hand that Sheryl Crow, who tried and failed for the country market on her last album was on Twitter saying.......

 Would someone please play a woman on the radio? Any woman. Doesn't have to be me but if I hear one more bro country song I'm gonna vomit!

I will always disagree with her stance on toilet paper but this time out I got her back on this. Unfortunately, this is what sells on country radio and it's worse than passing through a hog farm on a humid summer day after somebody fed them hogs with Taco Bell.  And sad to say this is not going to get any better anytime soon.   The women just love Luke Bryan to death, maybe to the point that maybe they do listen Conway with T Pain.  With a right amount of southern rock, heavy metal guitar, a mohawked bass player and references to Waylon or Willie and chicken catfish dinners and love of trucks and getting drunk, this is what sells.  Really no different to the old honky tonk songs of long ago and far away mind you but musically it's more today than Bob Wills yesterday.  I'm sure Florida Georgia Line have no clue who Bob Wills is anyway, but they both know who Garth Brooks is since they stole his microphone and use it for their live shows.

Female country singers have always been slighted on country radio throughout their history, but perhaps the reason why they been slighted in this decade is that they're smarter songwriters and singers than the Bro mites that dominated GAC or KHAcK.  Miranda Lambert and Miss Underwood have been one of the handfuls that somehow gets their videos shown or played on the radio and while one hopes that Kacey Musgraves can keep her foot in the door, the future doesn't seem to be that bright for her (but I'm rooting for her to make it).  Lesser knowns such as Jana Kramer and Cassadee Pope will become footnotes. And Sheryl Crow was too late to the party anyway but nice try.  She'll always have the backing of Cumulus and Clear Channel on her hits of the 90s on KTOF where you'll hear First Cut Is The Deepest or All I Want To Do on regular rotation.

Eventually the dire hope of songs of trucks, getting drunk and being drunk and passed out in the back of your pickup truck will finally have its run and be regulated to the junkyard once and for all but you can't take back 25 plus weeks of Cruise at number 1 last year that got the major labels to cast their lot with Bro Country.  Which is why we still have our own source of music to listen to and not have to deal with the Catfish Dinner and namechecking a rapper to a country artist from yesterday.   Sad to say we can't pick the right time to go to a hardware store, or eat at the Pizza Ranch and having to deal with Jason Aldean or Bryan's song coming on to make us lose our appetite and make a 50 yard dash out the door not to hear such shit.

But as for Jarrod Niemann, neither a new crappy video or a sell out album to the Bros isn't going help his career at all.  He may have to settle to be an opening act to Luke Bryan or Mr. CS Cole Swindell on the Bros helping Bros out tour 14. 

Besides he's too old anyway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnjBVj0z-Ro&feature=youtu.be

 

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