But the truth is, bluegrass had been around for only about 20 years at the time.

And of course there was the great “folk scare” of the 1960s, which threatened to kill off traditional bluegrass. Willie and Waylon ushered in a more hard-core “outlaw” country in the late ‘70s, but then in 1980, John Travolta rode into town on a mechanical bull in “Urban Cowboy,” and traditional country music took another hit. Now it’s considered a groundbreaking classic. Traditionalists got bent out of shape in 1962 when Ray Charles recorded “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,” which took the genre and transformed it into something more approachable for a mass audience. Ever since the Carter Family made their famous Bristol recordings in 1927, people have been arguing about what country music is, was and should be. How did we get to this strange, alien land where there’s a country-awards show that honors pop-music teeny-boppers and a lot of the songs aren’t really country by even the stretchiest definition? It didn’t happen overnight.

In 2009, Steve Tuttle wrote for Newsweek that country today just isn’t the same: University of New Hampshire Professor David Finkelhor dubbed the phenomenon of the current generation freaking out the next generation is weak or not what the last generation was as Juvenoia.Ĭountry music has their own version of Juvenoia: a fear the next generation of country music isn’t really country or not what it once was.

That’s not too shocking, as nostalgia overwhelms objectivity. Billboard and so many others say that Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” is not a country song.įor nearly as long as country music has existed, critics have lampooned that today’s country isn’t really country. Somehow that’s not enough to make it country. The most popular song in America features country artist Billy Ray Cryus and is about riding a horse, overcoming opposition and longing for home.

Big rich town who wrote this song