Does Country Music Need Saving, Does Radio Matter and The Rise of Americana

There have been a few pieces on the country music blogosphere about whether or not country music needs saving. And whether or not country radio matters. And the rise against mainstream country in the form of Americana.

I draw a huge distinction between country music and country radio. Country music is alive and well, just not on country radio. If you are reading this, you have access to the Google machine and can find all the country music you want. Just turn off your radio and do five minutes worth of digging. It's there.

Country radio is the labels playing a game of three card Monty. Find the good song among the utter and absolute garbage. Keep listening. We'll play it eventually. In the mean time, here's a steady diet of crappy EDM and puke-inducing creepy misogynistic tripe. But you'll keep listening, until you won't. And that's happening more and more.

Fred Jacobs wrote an interesting piece on the power of the passion of music. And he's 100% right. There is a morning show that I like locally. There is no passion in the music they play. In fact more than one cast member has admitted they don't really like the music the station plays. I have six presets on my radio, whenever they play music, I find another station.

Gone are the days when a DJ can make a hit out of a B-side like they did in Detroit when a DJ flipped over a KISS 45 and played "Beth". Think of the power radio had then. Now it's just background noise.

When the people playing the freaking music would rather be playing something else, what does that say? I don't understand how radio works, but that seems to be a bad model.

That being said, is it any wonder why this week Americana outsold country? And I don't even really know what Americana is. It seems to be older country artists, country artists who are not signed to major labels and older and recent singer/songwriter types. Whatever, most of it is good.

When I don't post about new music here, it's not because there is no good new music coming out, it's because nothing has really touched me. The past two weeks have had some great releases, but nothing moved me to write. That also doesn't mean I won't find something later that was released the past two weeks. I can only listen to so much.