Scott Chaffin, aka The Fat Guy, in comments to this post:
George Strait's awards are the tee-tiniest of head-nods from the Nashville establishment that everything else wandering around that stage is, for the most part, useless, soulless fluff used to sell trucks and tampons.
Word, my brother. I can't argue with even a syllable of that. The head-nod was even bigger in 2000 when that same organization voted "Murder On Music Row" the Vocal Event of the Year. I'd love to know what the individual CMA voters who cast their ballots for that song thought about the trends at the time — off the record, of course. (You could never have gotten them to speak honestly on the record because it'd likely as not destroy their careers and make them radioactive in the industry.) It'd be interesting to know exactly what the trend-setters at the time thought of that as well. I'm sure that on the record it'd be little more than mealy-mouthed platitudes to the effect that "it's good to respect the past, but the genre must evolve..." Which is true, but it seems to me that they use the word "evolve" as code for "sound more like '70s rock or what gets played on '90s-2000s Contemporary Hit Radio." I'd argue that with some exceptions, the REAL natural evolution of the genre lies in what's going on down here in Texas, while Nashville's basically the center for "country music for people who don't like country music." While I don't automatically turn up my nose at everything that comes out of Nashville, still I don't see how anyone could deny that mainstream country music has been watered down for the sake of mass appeal. And it sucks, but at least we have more choices now than we did ten years ago, what with the advent of satellite radio and the rise of the Texas scene.
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