Country Music is Authentic. Well Sort of.

So as the end of the semester approaches I like to look back and remember classes. I do this to see if I have truly learned anything or if I forgot everything after class. The one class that stood out to me was the music day. Sure we talked about Vanilla Ice, The Beastie Boys, and Eminem. I think everyone got out what they had to say about being authentic and whatnot. I know of these artists, but that’s where it ends. I don’t listen to them. So I did not have much to say. Towards the end of class we started talking about country music. This is my kind of music. I completely agree with the fact that country music has changed. It’s not as twangy as it used to be. Cowboy Troy and Colt Ford are rapping cowboys. I don’t have the words to describe them, but I am kind of embarrassed. Cowboy Troy was part of the music mafia Big & Rich deal, which was the worst thing to ever be played on radio. Colt Ford is just Colt Ford. These two are fake as hell to me. What they are doing is not country music and it’s not hip-hop. It is just there. I am not going to listen to someone rap about driving through the country or playing chicken with a train.

On the authentic side of country music there are a few artists that I believe are truly authentic. Love and Theft, Josh Thompson, and Luke Bryan are just a few to come off of the top of my mind. To me an authentic country artist is someone who first of all writes there own music or has some hand in creating it. To me you can’t call yourself an artist if you don’t have something to do with the creation process. You simply become the singer of a song. Another thing with authenticity is I have to be able to believe the artist. Luke Bryan doesn’t sing about the hood of Leesburg, Georgia. He sings about Rain being a good thing and riding in trucks. I can see him doing this if he wasn’t who he is.