{"id":7035,"date":"2016-02-07T23:44:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T05:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/?p=7035"},"modified":"2016-02-07T23:44:54","modified_gmt":"2016-02-08T05:44:54","slug":"on-bro-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/2016\/02\/07\/on-bro-country\/","title":{"rendered":"On Bro-Country&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In August 2013, New York Magazine published Jody Rosen\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vulture.com\/2013\/08\/rise-of-bro-country-florida-georgia-line.html\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> about the rise of \u201cBro-Country.\u201d If you\u2019re like me, you haven\u2019t heard of Bro-Country, but you probably have a pretty good guess as to what it is. Rosen defines Bro-Country as \u201cMusic by and of the tatted, gym-toned, party-hearty young American white dude.\u201d <em>Shots fired<\/em>. He wastes no time in condemning the lucky artist who topped the <em>Billboard<\/em>\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.billboard.com\/charts\/country-songs\" target=\"_blank\">Hot Country Songs<\/a> for 22 weeks in a row (breaking a record that has been in place since 1955): Florida Georgia Line with their song \u201cCruise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Florida Georgia Line - Cruise (Remix) ft. Nelly\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bmZ9xRO7M9M?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Rosen describes the song as an average-looking guy in a bar talking to the hottest blonde girl in the room, loudly laughing at his own jokes, and after crashing-and-burning with lame pick-up lines, pulls out his iPhone, asking \u201cHave you heard this awesome song?\u201d while simultaneously \u201cdial[ing] up the video for Florida Georgia Line\u2019s \u2018Cruise.\u2019\u201d Are you laughing yet? This guy is pretty harsh, but I think he feels the way a lot of traditional country fans do when they see that auto-tuned sounds like those of Florida Georgia Line top the charts and ring in the big bucks.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, here\u2019s the part you\u2019re going to hate\u2026. This phenomenon isn\u2019t news, nor is it shocking. Throughout music history, we have seen different genres and subgenres arise that some people have labeled \u201ccrap,\u201d while others really find to their liking. It was only a matter of time before we had a new reason to complain, honestly.<\/p>\n<p>Much like many young millennials enjoy the sounds of Florida Georgia Line and Luke Bryan, so the youth of the 1980\u2019s enjoyed the beginnings of Grunge. Just as this new \u201cBro-Country\u201d tends to err on the riskier side with lyrics and themes, Grunge challenged the norms of fashion, responsibility, and acceptable topics. Many people thought that Grunge was a blemish on the face of alternative rock, but that didn\u2019t prevent it from sky-rocketing in popularity\u2014even <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mtv.com\/artists\/nirvana\/\" target=\"_blank\">MTV <\/a>picked it up and was exposing its viewers to the new sounds. Even my dad (the music snob I wrote about in my first blog post, <a href=\"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/2016\/02\/02\/the-conflicting-interest-blues\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cThe Conflicting-Interest Blues\u201d<\/a>) said that popular Grunge band, Nirvana, \u201credefined everything.\u201d (Does this count as a primary source?)<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Official Music Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hTWKbfoikeg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Some of you might be thinking, \u201cBut Grunge isn\u2019t nearly as bad as Bro-Country\u201d or \u201cHey! I like Grunge.\u201d Well, I agree with you (I can\u2019t stand to listen to songs like <em>Cruise<\/em> and I love <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AFVlJAi3Cso\" target=\"_blank\">Pearl Jam<\/a>). But, it\u2019s time to recognize that our tastes in music and what we can relate to is different than people younger than us that the country music industry is now catering to. And apparently it sells, so why wouldn\u2019t they keep doing it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In August 2013, New York Magazine published Jody Rosen\u2019s article about the rise of \u201cBro-Country.\u201d If you\u2019re like me, you haven\u2019t heard of Bro-Country, but you probably have a pretty good guess as to what it is. Rosen defines Bro-Country &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/2016\/02\/07\/on-bro-country\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,57,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post-3","category-bro-country","category-country-subgenres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7038,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7035\/revisions\/7038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}