Why does Europeans never want to listen to country music?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qjNyHsWD7g

Whoever moved this thread I haet you because you're making me read ILM. Also I just tried to post 3 times and couldn't figure out why I only got a blank screen.

SO ANYWAY. That Pussycat song is great, AND youtube tells me they're playing in Brooklyn in May...??

The skiffle-style beat is way prevalent in country music up until the last 30 years or so.

Friend of mine linked this on Facebook the other day. More Country & Irish hotness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KulZbuZFet4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8HnzjBXG9k

IT'S NOT THE SKIFFLE, IT'S THE LACK OF SWING. Although thanks for all these youtubes because they are a treat.

Country clearly came from the Irishes and Britishes that settled in Appalachia a couple centuries ago, right? Especially Irishes. It's no wonder there are a lot of traditional Irish touches in early American country, and it still carries over in some smaller ways now.

Yeah, I take Appalachian clogging and highland dance classes, I am somewhat aware of these ties. :D

Oh, that wasn't directed at you, but rather a general statement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHfp78kOjkk

I WILL SPARE YOU REDNEX

Country clearly came from the Irishes and Britishes that settled in Appalachia a couple centuries ago, right? Especially Irishes.

yeah, a lot. but there's German elements too - polka, for ex.

Totally forgot that Steps originated as a line-dancing thing. That was huge in Ireland in the '90s too.

i mean, there is a reason that the bear family exists in germany and not here. they are addicted over there.

hm, I assumed a lot of those European roots-oriented labels (Bear Family, JSP, Charly, Snapper, Proper) were just trying to reissue stuff without having to worry about American copyright litigation & import their products to the US to sell at (with the exception of Bear Family) budget prices. I wonder how their album sales break down w/r/t American vs. European audiences.

country + glossy Scandinavian chartpop = bliss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHirD3BfzMg

isn't country music pretty big in Norway? Wikipedia names Heidi Hauge and Bjøro Håland as a couple of popular country acts their, but I don't know how closely their music resembles modern American stuff.

Bjøro Håland (born 6 October 1943) is a Norwegian country singer.

He was born on Håland in Norway and grew up in Audnedal with five siblings. In 1960 he emigrated to the USA. He worked as a construction worker and sang in bars. He moved back to Norway in 1966.

Håland has released 22 records which have sold four million copies.

yeah, country is huge there. not too surprising, since the ruralist and patriotic themes resonate well with norwegian life and culture.

i buy shakey's basic contention - with a thousand caveats, but still: yes. american country is somewhat unique in its resistance to transfiguration through export. i mean, all musical genres come from somewhere, a specific point in time, place and culture. but most become plastic as they move out from that point. they usually bear some authenticating stain of the ur-culture that bore them, but they adapt to the needs of other times, places and people, even eventually recolonizing the land of their birth in new "foreign" guises. this has been true to at least some extent of the blues, jazz, rock, funk, punk, disco, dub, metal, etc.

doesn't really seem to have been true of american country. country is probably appreciated all around the world, but it hasn't often been successfully recreated in mutant form, recreated to suit alien needs. its core identity, the way it symbolizes a specific culture and its ethos, seems resistant to this sort of creative meddling.

maybe this has something to do with the fact that country is the symbolic voice of america's dominant (white) culture, and that america herself so dominated 20th century pop. like country is somehow too strongly tied to an ostensibly indomitable white-american-ness to ever surrender comfortably to other hands. does this make sense? i ask myself, i guess. why would rap, for instance, be less "indomitable" in this sense? perhaps because rap cannot claim to so easily speak for dominance, for specific power. it therefore becomes more easily metaphorical, suited to the needs of those coming up from under other sorts of oppression.

this analysis doesn't sit well with american country's long history of outlaw/outsider/rural-as-underclass posturing. that's probably another argument though...

Isn't there at least one middle aged bloke in every English town who calls himself "Tex", wears a Stetson, listens to country music a lot and dreams of a cowboy life while driving around in his Mondeo?

Or is this a television sitcom thing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abmrAf0evgk

with a thousand caveats, but still: yes. american country is somewhat unique in its resistance to transfiguration through export. i mean, all musical genres come from somewhere

Hmmm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMr6SSHP-A0&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm4v_A7E7zU

doesn't really seem to have been true of american country.

now that i've said this, and in light of the last few posts above (note chilli on ruralist & patriotic norwegian country), i've got my doubts. maybe american country is better integrated into world pop than i thought. and maybe the difference is not that country resists this kind of transformation, but that america is not interested in transformed country. we sometimes accept the mutant versions of rock and even rap that arrive from distant shores, but we keep country sacred. it must be authentically american even to exist.

otfm

Just commenting to nth the observation that country in many forms, from early Johnny Cash to sons of Mayo putting on fake American accents singing about corner forwards, is massive in large tracts of rural Ireland.

http://www.glasgowsgrandoleopry.co.uk/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-8EOf8GlnI

"i ask myself, i guess. why would rap, for instance, be less "indomitable" in this sense? perhaps because rap cannot claim to so easily speak for dominance, for specific power. it therefore becomes more easily metaphorical, suited to the needs of those coming up from under other sorts of oppression"

Personally, I never thought to American country and folk as inextricably tied to an expression of white American political/cultural "dominance". I love Johnny Cash, Lefty Frizzell, Marty Robbins, Porter Wagoner because their songs have an universal emotional power, and I guess it's the same for lots of other people.
If Europeans who love country can't really grasp it or recreated it, maybe its because a) it is not an easily manageable musical form and b) still has strong, intense cultural connotations rooted in American reality.

Country's hugely popular with older people across Europe. It's also absolutely massive throughout the West Indies, again mostly with older people but it's very widespread. If you walk into a mall or supermarket in Trinidad, there's a decent chance that they'll be playing Nashville pop-country over the PA.

Despite all of this evidence of Country's euro-popularity, time and again here, when we discuss some huge song like "Before He Cheats" or "Need You Now", some poster writes something like "But I have never heard of this song because I live in Europe."

Before He Cheats made no impact here but Need You Now was a top 10 hit across Europe.

I also wouldn't underestimate the pull of country mythology and its crossover with the mythology of the Western film genre. As mentioned upthread, there are lots of guys in Middle England watching John Wayne films and dreaming of big skies and steer-ropin'. The Western has, to a degree, been adapted to domestic realities when it has been taken up abroad but there's a fixed classic vision that mirrors a lot of the themes in the kind of classic country music European singers seem to love replicating.

You could also argue that most countries already have their own form of humour-laden, anti-authoritarian traditional music (whether it's folk ballads or calypso) and hybridisation is either unnecessary or so natural as to not be noticed.

xpost
I work in a record store and certainly big country stars are not popular here (with the exception of Shania Twain): there is anyway a consistent audience made of loyal aficionados who regularly buy records from artists as different as Brad Paisley, Faith Hill or Dierks Bentley.

"also wouldn't underestimate the pull of country mythology and its crossover with the mythology of the Western film genre. As mentioned upthread, there are lots of guys in Middle England watching John Wayne films and dreaming of big skies and steer-ropin'"

This totally otm.
Especially immediately after World War II, western films and actors like John Wayne (regularly pronounced Yon Vayne) were immensely successful here and shaped a new interest for real and mythological American hystory (one of the reasons behind the spaghetti western phenomenon and the way Morricone handled country music, by the way).

history, even.

Country clearly came from the Irishes and Britishes that settled in Appalachia a couple centuries ago, right? Especially Irishes.

By Irishes, you mean Ulster by and large... and that's not quite the same thing

Country music is huge on the Norwegian countryside. The Norwegian country audiences tend to prefer an even more watered down kind of Norwegian country music, partly influenced by Swedish "dancebands", over the American equivalent though, and the more pop oriented Nashville country that has dominated the Southern US market since the early 90s has never really caught on here (although "Achy Breaky Heart" was a bit hit).

xp to Tom D

True, and, as has been pointed out many times already, Country was huge in Ireland until the late 80s/ early 90s, but it's now a shadow of what it was: younger folk outside the cities, that were once its staple audience went, almost as one, over to cheesy rave and techno and never came back. The exception is Ulster - the province as a whole, and not just the 6 counties of Northern Ireland, where country is still mainstream.

Some examples of hugely popular Norwegian country acts, selling hundreds of thousands among not very educated people in the Norwegian countryside, hated with a passion by critics, music geeks and virtually all Norwegians living in more urban areas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETgFd0-1DWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETgFd0-1DWE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeDpBljiO2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig0RUj3WN9s

It should also be added that Jim Reeves is one of the bestselling singles acts ever on the Norwegian market.

(Second link was supposed to be this one):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VwfGmsb93g

selling hundreds of thousands among not very educated people in the Norwegian countryside

*chuckle*

Note that these are all really horrible, and probably part of the reason why country is not being taken seriously as a music form in Norway.

I discovered Marie Fisker (from Denmark) through her appearance on last year's Trentemøller album. Highly recommended alt-country in the Patsy Cline lineage. The album Ghost of Love is pretty good, but this earlier recording plays up the Cline influence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDkzzyW_qyE

some of those alt country people play to large audiences in the UK but mean next to nothing in places like France or Germany. I've been waiting five years for Lucinda Williams to tour Europe. still waiting.

Bjork has spoke often about her affection for Dolly Parton's songs.

http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/4561/spurdersteine.jpg

alt country was kinda big around europe around the turn of the century. Uncut was basically a fanzine for alt country at the time.

man, that's for sure. all those friggin' magazine sampler CDs i got with lambchop and whiskeytown tracks on them.

brits still love the eels a lot? you can take that guy if you want.

Son Volt! Damien Jurado! In this month's Uncut!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJAjIq4OSB4

Uncut was basically a fanzine for alt country at the time.

It still is. It covers all kinds of other music as well, but Americana is what its accompanying CDs tend to be about. They have added a retro/baby boomer element to their coverage, but there is still a whole lot of Americana.

alt country was kinda big around europe around the turn of the century

I would say this was true of the UK only, not continental Europe at all.

Now it's getting even more complicated

FWIW I don't think there's a great deal of awareness of contemporary mainstream country here in the UK. When I tell people (music enthusiasts or generalists) I am interested in country, 99% of the time they say something like "oh Dolly Parton and stuff yeah?". Taylor Swift's pretty well known, past that I don't think anyone has much of a profile (a few really switched-on people will have a sense of Toby Keith as the dude who was all "put a boot in your ass it's the American way" but not many of those would have heard the record).

That's not to say there's no following for contemporary stuff - it's a big global pop music and that spreads through the usual channels of Vimeo and so on, people get to hear stuff, people like stuff. Kacey Musgraves's audience (maybe 300 people)at the Bush Hall the other month was mostly an enthusiastic and young pop crowd, and she's booked to play the (2000-ish?) Shepherds Bush Empire this month. Think she's getting some love as the next thing to listen to if you're into Taylor.

Nevertheless, it's my view that "country" as a concept still means as steel guitars and rhinestones to the massive majority over here, and much of what's in the country chart just wouldn't code "country" to British ears (if Jon Bon Jovi has a hit single here with a song that's charted Country in the US (this may have happened for all I know), virtually no-one would recognise that sound as country music. The fact that Lionel Ritchie gets on the country charts is met with genuine surprise and sometimes incomprehension!

Ronan Keating, bless his boring cotton socks, had some hits some years back covering the more ballady end of the country charts in pretty similar versions. Again, those records just wouldn't code as country over here as far as I can tell.

Please note: the above may be completely wrong in repect of under-25s, I don't know any of them.

AN ERITH singer is ‘on cloud nine’ after winning a national competition for the second year running.

Wayne Jacobs, Riverdale Road, has scooped the National UK Country Music Award again after getting the top gong last year.

The 51-year-old discovered he had won with song I Want my Daddy on Saturday (September 7) at the ceremony in Derby.

Mr Jacobs wrote the hit based on a true story about a firefighter who was hit by a truck on a highway in Kentucky.

strange last words for a 51 yr old firefighter but im not gonna judge we'll all be there or thereabouts someday and are like to say something as bizarre in such circumstances i'm sure

ctrl-f Mumford gives me no hits on this thread, so I'll just say that there are reasons we try to keep non-Americans away from banjos.

(not that Americans are all that reliable with them either)

Billy Connolly was damn handy on a banjo. My dad saw his and Gerry Rafferty's folk act The Humblebums many a time

Garthmania hits Ireland

Country music singer Garth Brooks starts a world tour this July with five sold-out concerts at Croke Park. That's 400,000 tickets - or nearly one for every 10 Irish citizens. Why does Ireland love Garth so much, asks comedian Colm O'Regan?