Though we have come to expect countercultural themes in most mainstream genres like pop and rap, country music has seemed to hold out as long as possible, retaining traditional values in most content. This is certain to change if Billboard has its way.How is Billboard trying to force counterculturalism on good God-fearing Americans? Tell us, NewsBusters.
The main article of its “Beat” this week focused on Kacey Musgraves, a country music artist that in 2014 won CMA’s Song of the Year award for “Follow Your Arrow.” Billboard writer Jewly Hight described the song as a “toast to conformity-bucking, pot-smoking and same-sex affection.”So the song in question has already won one of the top Country Music Association awards, and it's from an album that hit #1 on the country charts, but writing about it now is forcing it on people?
Oh, but, see, it's about queers and wacky tabacky, so it's really, really bad:
Musgrave’s music sounds every bit like all the other country out there, but her lyrics are certainly different: “if you save yourself for marriage you’re a bore,” “kiss lots of boys or kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into,” and “when the straight and narrow gets a little too straight, roll up a joint.” How original.And now we get to the gist of Billboard's plot to destroy Western civilization:
The real question, however, is why Billboard would resurrect this song months and months later to write about in a beat column.Um, maybe because Musgraves has a new album coming out in two weeks, as the cited Billboard article notes, and Billboard is just doing what all entertainment-oriented magazines do when a star has a forthcoming project, which is to review the life and career highlights of that star?
No, it can't possibly be that, according to NewsBusters:
Of course Hight’s take is that Musgraves is “confronting entrenched notions of what mainstream country could sound like or say today.”Yes, comrades, you must yield to the forces of weed and same-sex kissing, which are being imposed on you by this trade journal article! House-to-house searches will be imposed shortly to enforce your purchase of Musgraves's new album! (Streaming through an authorized site such as Spotify will also save you from the gulag.)
No doubt she’d like the rest of country music to follow Musgraves’ arrow. That progressivism is entrenched in pop and rock isn’t enough. Country must toe the ideological line.
Um, wasn't Willie Nelson (with whom Musgraves has toured, according to the Billboard article) proselytizing for weed while singing country music forty years ago? And didn't he record a pro-gay song almost a decade ago?
No -- the legalized-weed-and-gay-marriage juggernaut is unstoppable, and it's all the fault of this one Billboard article.
Her song is very pleasant and very "country," and - GASP!!!! - very inclusive.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't hurt her sales that Kacey - besides a terrific songwriter and singer - is very, very attractive.
I guess conservatives would prefer she not soil her simple little-lady country song writing and singing self with nasty un-conservative thoughts.
Yeeeesh....
Listen to them them cry out, as their hateful, exclusionary philosophy is being drowned in a toilet by their own children.
ReplyDeleteSuch sweet music. Billboard oughta write about that.
kd lang apparently never recorded any music either?
ReplyDeleteThese MRC guys don't get out much. The country culture wars were over before they were even born. The capital moved to Austin in the late 70s after Gram Parsons and company kicked Nashville's tight white asses in the late 60s - early 70s. Early anthems of the era include "I'll fix your flat tire Merle" and "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" A personal favorite of mine was always "Lonesome Cowboy Burt" from Zappa's 200 Motels.
ReplyDeleteWhen did country music become a bastion if "traditional values?" Have these people ever listened to Johny Cash (Cocaine Blues, Folsom Priison Blues, etc) or Loretta Lynn (Now I've Got the Pill)? Or Waylon Jennings turning 21 in prison doing life without parole?
ReplyDeleteCountry music used to be every but as rebellious as Rock and Roll. What the hell happened?
I'm just going to leave this here. -
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrU7dCKehVA