Joe Nichols Shares His Thoughts About The Current State of Country Music
With the rapid mainstream growth of country music, the genre has gone through quite the change in recent years. However, the debate rages on… bro-country verses traditional country?
Recently, hitmaker Joe Nichols spoke to the Phoenix New Times about the current state of country music. “As a genre, we’ve forgotten who loves our music, and for the most part that’s middle America, just regular people,” he shared. “I think in an effort to be cool, the fashionable thing, the hip thing, we’ve kind of forgotten that that’s our bread and butter. We’re country music; we represent the common man and woman.”
He continued, “To me, [country music] gotten a little fickle. The music has gotten a little bit redundant at times, which I can’t really complain about because I try not to do what everybody else is doing and try to stick somewhat close to traditional country music because that’s the kind of artist I am, so I can’t really complain that much. There’s hills and valleys in all genres and I think we’ve kind of brought this on ourselves with not knowing what’s going to happen next year, what’s going to be popular.”
The “Sunny and 75″ singer goes on to applaud George Strait, saying that the legend’s longevity and likability has a lot to do with his innate ability to tell a story. “I think country was built on that kind of thing — storytelling and what your average day is like, weekend is like — and for me I think the lyric has to be meaningful to be a country song,” he explained. “I think it needs to sound like a country song from a country singer, believable as a country song. If it can fit in other genres 100 percent of the time, then you should probably look at what that really is.”
With the debate constantly stirring up heated emotions from fans, it’s interesting to hear an artist’s perspective. What side of the debate do you land on?
