See, it's very basic economics that if you have a lot of demand and the supply stays constant, the price will go up. Similarly, if you keep the demand constant and increase the supply, the price will go down. And you might not believe it, but a similar conceit applies to music - if you have an influx of artists who are making similar versions of the same basic genre and no added increase in demand, how much people care about said artists will decrease. And if you think I'm kidding, think back to the boy band explosion of the late 90s or the crunk boom of the early 2000s - there might have been a few standouts, but the music industry pumped out a lot of very similar artists in order to capitalize on presumed trends.
And really, that's one of the few explanations I have for the current massive influx of male country acts on the pop charts right now. As of now, there are about twenty unique male country acts occupying spots on Billboard's Hot 100 - that's a fifth of the chart. In comparison, there are precisely two female country acts (Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift) and I have a hard time calling either of them pure country acts!
So how to explain this sudden influx? Well, if I were to hazard a guess, I suspect it might be partially linked to the indie rock explosion last year, where a more organic sound and 'greater authenticity' became more attractive to the mainstream public in the aftermath of the club boom. So at some point the industry executives looked up from their cocaine buckets and thought, "Well, we could go into the indie or folk rock scene and find some new acts - but oh man, they have distortion and a grittier sound and occasionally challenging subject matter and that just makes my brain hurt!" And then some bright young jackass in the board room thought, "Hey, what about those country guys? They're inoffensive and easy enough to market - we've been doing it for years, after all - and the country music scene is so polished it's practically pop anyways! Let's leave the folk rock to Mumford & Sons and Phillip Phillips, leave Kurt Vile twisting in the wind, and force Kacey Musgraves to tour with Kenny freaking Chesney if she wants to build any buzz! See, problem solved!"
Ugh. So there you have it, folks, the reason why we have over a dozen practically interchangeable male country acts dominating the charts. Sure, there's a few bright spots - Tim McGraw and Brad Paisley routinely have a fair amount of quality, and Lady Antebellum and the Zac Brown Band will always get a few crossover hits - but certainly not many. The pandering insincerity of it all makes me sick, even if it doesn't surprise me.
And speaking of acts that don't surprise me and also kind of make me sick, let's talk about Luke Bryan.
Now let me qualify this a bit and say Luke Bryan is better than the majority of his peers. For starters, he actually has a personality, some charisma, and a distinctive voice that has country flavour. I wouldn't quite say he has a sense of humour in the vein of Brad Paisley or Toby Keith, but he's sincere enough and his delivery tends to be believable. His instrumentation is a bit more of a mixed bag, but occasionally can have some real texture and rock energy. And better yet, he doesn't tend to engage in the heavy-handed political moralizing that taints acts like Jason Aldean and Justin Moore, preferring to have a much smaller, more intimate focus (there is still some southern pandering, but it's a modern country album, there'll always be that out of Nashville). Hell, I'd even argue that he's a reasonably talented songwriter, at least on a technical level.
Here's my big problem, though: Luke Bryan can really be an asshole, sort of in the same vein as Adam Levine from Maroon 5. He's not nearly as catty, but there definitely can be that undercurrent of leering douchebaggery that really rubs me the wrong way, mostly because of the delivery and framing of the songs. Take 'Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye' from his album Tailgates and Tanlines (which is just an album title that tells you more than you ever needed to know about Luke Bryan's priorities), which is basically 'One More Night' by Maroon 5 with a country twist. It's a song about a toxic relationship that only works when Bryan and his partner are having sex, but it's set up as being so romantic, when it reality it's unrealistic, sleazy, and a little misogynist, all traits that are amped to eleven on 'Country Girl (Shake It For Me)'. And look, I like my share of rap and hair metal debauchery, but when Luke Bryan tries to fuse in a call list of items of southern pride, it sounds both pandering and leering in the worst possible way. And then, of course, there's 'I Know You're Gonna Be There', where Luke Bryan cheats on his wife/girlfriend in plain sight of her just to make sure she still cares about him, with no consideration for his wife or the other girl (who he flat out admits he doesn't care about), and it's another song that's framed as him just testing her love. I honestly shouldn't have to explain everything that's wrong with that. (EDIT: I'm been informed by a trusted source that my interpretation of 'I Know You're Gonna Be There' is likely incorrect, with Bryan not referring to a current relationship, but an ex-girlfriend he's not over. I'm still of the opinion it doesn't make things better.)
But with all of that being said, I took a look at Luke Bryan's newest album Crash My Party, curious to see if some of the texture and good songwriting I liked made it over and the asshole behaviour had been dropped. For once, did I get lucky?
YouTube review after the jump
