Country Pop-i-fied is Not Country at All

The newest song from country duo Florida Georgia Line is called “H.O.L.Y.” — “high on loving you.” It’s No. 21 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, right up there with Drake, Justin Timberlake, and Rihanna.

“Country music is the new rock ‘n’ roll,” Steven Tyler told Ellen DeGeneres.

At Wednesday night’s CMT Awards, we saw Cheap Trick singing “Surrender” with Billy Ray Cyrus, and Pitbull took the stage to sing his new song, “Messin’ Around.” Fans were left bewildered and angry about the lack of actual country music.

And on Thursday, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler confirmed details of his upcoming country album, “We’re All Somebody From Somewhere.” It’ll arrive on July 15. Oh, and Cyndi Lauper has just started touring with her first country album, “Detour.”

What is happening to country music? From Jessica Simpson to Hootie and the Blowfish’s Darius Rucker to the closing song at the CMTs — Little Big Town’s “One Dance” featuring Pharrell — country just ain’t what it used to be.

Not that country music should be dismissed as all twang and tractors or prison and parole woes, but the beloved genre has morphed so much over the years that today’s top songs are likely to be way more pop than they are country — or what you may fondly think of as real country.

“Country music is the new rock ‘n’ roll,” Steven Tyler told Ellen DeGeneres on her show Thursday. “It’s not just about porches, dogs, and kicking your boots up. It’s a whole lot more. It’s about being real.”

But it’s really about selling records. It’s rock, it’s pop, it’s hip-hop, R&B, and rap. These days you have to pick your kind of country, as the subgenres keep pushing the parameters.

If you look back at the county music’s history, it has always been evolving. There was a time when honky-tonk ticked off purists in the 1950s because the lyrics brought up cheating and loose women, as opposed to religion and family. Outlaw country in the 1970s brought a grittiness to the genre that hadn’t been there before, startling some fans with its honesty. And then pop country entered the picture, with Glen Campbell and John Denver making it mainstream and paving the way for the Taylor Swifts of the music world.

“I grew up with traditional country music,” Lulu Roman, 70, a regular on the 1969 TV show “Hee Haw,” told LifeZette at this week’s big CMA Fan Fest in Nashville, “and the funny thing is when I first started ‘Hee Haw,’ I was a hippie kid. I knew nothing about country music. Not one thing. Didn’t know who Minnie Pearl was, nothing. What I did was I learned to love the people and then I learned to love the music.”

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Her favorites? “Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, [and] Roy Clark, of course,” she said.

What sets traditional country music apart from the pop country of now revolves around heart, said Roman.

“There was something about a melody in a song that has a story to do it, and that melody line would follow that. There’s a high and a low, you know, in good songs. And the traditional stuff was just plain old – I’m giving you my heart. Today it’s wah wah wah and if you find any heart in there, good luck.”

For Linda Blake, classic country is the best, too. “I was born in Georgia,” explained the 73-year-old homemaker, who was sitting at the Durango Music Spot stage at Nashville’s Music City Center waiting for veteran singer Jeannie Seely, who was about to do a set. Blake now lives in South Dakota; her favorite singer is Loretta Lynn.

Blake says the old country songs were about “things that were more touching — family, country, and God. I don’t think a lot of the new ones sing about that.” Still, she names “Shelton and Miranda” as two of her current favorites. “There’s something for everyone.”

Pat McGuire, 32, who works at Home Depot in Nashville, grew up listening to country music stars such as Randy Travis, John Michael Montgomery, and Garth Brooks. “I would say they’re traditional country.” Pop country, he says, is more of  “a production — that studio sound, as opposed to a fiddle and a guitar and the twang in the voice. You start to realize that now it’s not popular. A twang is not what people want to hear.”

Jenna Bradley, 28, from Boston, has been to several CMA Fan Fests. She’s a big country fan, naming Rascal Flatts as her favorite group. But she admits that country is all over the place musically. “Jason Aldean is country rap. And Sam Hunt is rap, too — some songs he just talks, but I like him. I think the most country pop star is Taylor Swift and I hear she’s not welcome in Nashville anymore.” 

After all, when Swift’s “Shake it Off” came out in 2014, it was pretty clear that Swift had left Nashville behind.