NYT Profiles Country Youth Movement
Whitney Duncan
New York Times writer Jon Caramanica puts the crosshairs to Nashville’s country music youth movement in an article titled, Country’s New Face: It’s Young and Blond.
Ms. Swift, 19, who has sold more than seven million records in the last four years, has proved to be seismic in Nashville. And thanks to the pop crossover success of Ms. Swift and Carrie Underwood, 26, who has sold 10 million albums, notions of where a country star might fit in are being rewritten almost daily.
Ms. Swift was among the first country artists to aggressively use online media to promote herself. “That helped apply a lot of pressure to radio, or helped them notice her, depending how you look at it,” Mr. Ross said. But country music still lags behind other genres in its use of the Internet. Music Row recently began publishing a chart tracking Twitter followers of country acts. Apart from Ms. Swift, Ms. Cyrus and her father, Billy Ray, no country artist has more than 100,000 followers, a threshold crossed by several major and minor stars in other genres: Justin Timberlake, Moby, Matisyahu, Jim Jones, even Jon Secada.
Read the full story [New York Times; Country’s New Face: It’s Young and Blonde]
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Disappointed
It’s official! Quality no longer matters!!! Hurrah!!!!! As long as they are young, blond, and able to financially support their own career (ala their father or someone else in their family who’s loaded) throw them in!!! Who cares is they actually have talent! Make sure they are model hot; Throw their voices through an auto tune, have a REAL adult write the tunes and presto!!! Here come the hits!!!
Country music is the new Paris Hilton!!! Blonde, dumb as a box of rocks, and talentless.
Makes you wonder how Garth sold all them albums don’t it?
ha! you must be the brunette not wanting to work hard for your career, just waiting for something exciting to happen in your life. All these girls have worked their butts off, especially an unsigned artist who can make any head turn, and somebody like you says daddy’s money is all it takes to get there… Obviously, you are distant from the music industry, and you need to think twice before flapping your gums. You sound like a bitter artist, wishing bad upon artists doing their way in the digital age. Welcome to country music.
In response to “Dissappointed”….you said a “REAL adult” writes their songs. WRONG. These kids are part of the “Hey, I can do that!” bunch of artists out there. A product of the dumbing down of the whole market. A generation of newbies who are being raised on musical crap and are convinced they can write more of the same crap…..only (as shown in the picture) they can also play electric guitars that aren’t plugged in. “Hey Dad…look at me!”.
As for you “not disappointed”
ha! you must be the brunette not wanting to work hard for your career, just waiting for something exciting to happen in your life.
I can assure you that is not the case. I am a working Country musician whose career is doing just fine (thank you very much. Don’t ask who I am because I aint saying. The row is a small place.)
All these girls have worked their butts off, especially an unsigned artist who can make any head turn, and somebody like you says daddy’s money is all it takes to get there…
Really, so playing 5 shows a year (more often than not that also includes singing the National anthem) and having your father (or some other individual who finances your career) is “working hard???? Obviously, you are distant from the music industry, and you need to think twice before flapping your gums.
Obviously you are someone with something to lose. Taking my comments a little close to heart??? Truth hurts. You sound like a bitter artist, wishing bad upon artists doing their way in the digital age. Welcome to country music.
I am Hardly a bitter artist. I don’t wish bad on any “real” artist(and when I say real please don’t think I’m speaking exclusively about artists like George Strait) . If any one of the so called artists you seem to be defending really did the work to get what they got great!!! I would do anything I could to help them grow. But that is increasingly not the case. More often than not new artists are being churned out like so much product. Diluting what it means to be an artist’s until the word completely loses meaning.
And as for the comments made by “Vader”
I completely agree there is a lot of “crap” out there today. But, check the credits of your new favorite artists. More often than not it’s a “real” musician who has written what is coming out of their mouths. Hey, a good song will always be a good song. George Strait has had over 50 #1’s and he never wrote a note of them. But what he brings to the table (like IMHO artists like James Otto do) is life experience. Something the core country audience can connect with. I see the “youth movement” in country music being a good thing in the short term that is going to have bad repercussions in the long term. Have we not learned the lessons of the past from other genres of music when this happened? Youth is a great thing, but also a disposable thing. It ends up being the spark that fades fast, leaving the music in a far worse off state than it found it in.