Murder On Music Row

I don't like country music, but I don't denigrate those who do. And for the people who do like country music, denigrate means "put down."
—Bob Newhart

In what the reactionary me considers the good old days of Nashville, Johnny Cash "shot a man in Reno just to watch him die." In 1968's "Mama Tried," Merle Haggard "turned 21 in prison doin' life without parole." George Jones once sang, "If drinkin' don't kill me, her memory will" and lived what he sang, routinely missing concerts and earning the nickname "No Show" Jones. This was the country music that country people like me listened to when I was growing up in rural Virginia.

Here's what I hear on the radio today when I'm driving my Jeep through the streets of Washington, D.C.: songs like "Watching You," which tells the gritty tale of a little boy making a mess of his McDonald's Happy Meal after his daddy hits the brakes too hard ("His fries went a-flyin' and his orange drink covered his lap"). It makes me turn bright red with shame every time it comes on, which is often, because it was Billboard's No. 1 country song of the year in 2007. The group Lonestar had a hit not too long ago with these hard-core lyrics: "There's a carrot top who can barely walk, with a sippy cup of milk." It had another big song called "Mr. Mom."

I could go on, but you can see where I'm going with this. Country music just ain't what it used to be. That might be good or bad, depending on your outlook, but it's bad. When CBS airs the 44th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards this Sunday from Las Vegas, the parade of hot bodies onstage will rival the Miss America contest. If past concert appearances are any indication, the nominees for vocalist of the year will be dressed in skintight, revealing tops, some with long, flowing blond hair and deep golden tans.

And that's just the men. Miranda and Heidi and Taylor and Carrie—all four gorgeous, all four blond, all four real names, all incredibly talented—will be vying for the top female prize. There are still some throwbacks, however. Somehow, Lee Ann Womack, also beautiful, also sometimes blond, managed to become the fifth nominee, even though she actually sings country music and is more than twice the age of 19-year-old Taylor Swift, today's Nashville "it" girl.

How did we get to this strange, alien land where there's a country-awards show that honors pop-music teeny-boppers and a lot of the songs aren't really country by even the stretchiest definition? It didn't happen overnight. Ever since the Carter Family made their famous Bristol recordings in 1927, people have been arguing about what country music is, was and should be. Traditionalists got bent out of shape in 1962 when Ray Charles recorded "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music," which took the genre and transformed it into something more approachable for a mass audience. Now it's considered a groundbreaking classic.

Willie and Waylon ushered in a more hard-core "outlaw" country in the late '70s, but then in 1980, John Travolta rode into town on a mechanical bull in "Urban Cowboy," and traditional country music took another hit. And of course there was the great "folk scare" of the 1960s, which threatened to kill off traditional bluegrass. But the truth is, bluegrass had been around for only about 20 years at the time.