I watched the Luke Combs video. Then I watched the Snap Track Video. They sound pretty much the same to me.

Yes, one has perhaps a drum kit, but there's nothing interesting going on. The beat is just about the same.

Caaron, now might be the time you want to ignore me as a modern country hater. I wear the arm-band proudly.

The prevalence of the old-school RnB snap-track in the supposed country songs is downright funny. I think the guy that made the video is on-point, except he points to Luke Combs' song as being refreshingly different than the snap tracks. Just listen to Luke Combs' "Houston We Have A Problem" - there's the drum machine for you with the listless snap-track beat.

It's not the drums that are better in the Luke Combs video he uses - Combs' lyrics are just a little bit more interesting than the last 10+ years of bro-crap-rock of cutoff shorts and pickup trucks and parties in the woods or down by the river. However, in 'Houston...' it's like he is just name-checking country culture checklist points.

But quite honestly, country got crappy WAY before snap tracks. Snap tracks have been crappy for decades no matter what the genre. The crowning clever thing that the snap track video guy did was put one over top of Allison Krauss' vocals. Almost, just almost, makes her sound like crap. And the guy writing to his pastor over a slow-jam snap track - that is quite creepy; not just because his point that the snap track is the fodder of seduction songs from 30+ years ago, but that this made it past all the gates of review and potential rejection at the record company. Was ANYONE listening to the lyrics? Or were they all slow-jam dancing in the review room as they listened?

As for great storytelling, mainstream country lost it's way decades ago. There have been some clever lyricists in country recently; one that is easy to recall is Kasey Musgraves' Space Cowboy. That chorus line is one of the best turn of meaning in a phrase in ANY music that has become popular in a really long time. It makes me smile each and every time I hear it. But, dang - it's so rare in all of pop music, let alone country which did use to stand for storytelling.

So much of modern country is just plain manufactured schlock replaying the same old stories. The stuff on the fringes is the only interesting stuff. I'll take Junior Brown telling about trouble with the law over Keith Urban's haircut every time - at least he can rock the tele/pedal/whatever that thing is that he plays. Some of what Junior does just tickles the funny bone, all the while taking virtuosity - not unlike the great Roy Clark.

The bro-rock pickup truck theme is as old as 1992, and maybe older than that. I'm pointing to Chattahoochee (sp?) by Alan Jackson. The beer party in the woods theme goes back at least that far. At least that song wasn't warmed over rock, but the lyrical theme is there. Maybe someone here more drenched in the genre can point to an earlier example than Chattahoochee?

The problem goes way beyond country however. It's all music that is tracking on any billboard charts in the top 100. You could take any genre and do the same kind of analysis that this guy did in snap track prevalence in what is now called country. It's all going to have commonalities that stand out the way factory manufactured music works.

For example, the music that I play the most live - modern worship - which charts just as high as these other genres these days - has a really disturbing trend primarily amongst some of the female singers - it's called indie girl accent or something like that. It's where words like Jesus, which most Americans pronounce something like 'Gee-Zuhs', accent on the first syllable. Well, indie girl accent turns it into an exercise of using every possible dipthong that is available, so it becomes 'Gee-ah-zoo-iss'. The word 'Good' becomes 'Goo-uh-eed'. It is all over recorded modern worship music. There's one girl, Lauren Daigle, who sounds like Adele - which is both good and bad, but she does these ridiculous dipthong exercises on so many vowels, that it distracts from the meaning of the lyrics. Adele does it some, but not as noticeable as what is happening with LD's voice.

You can hear the indie girl singer pronunciation with any of the singers on American Idol or The Voice, where the judge says something like 'you took that classic song and made it your own'. It sounds like a cat meowing.

Oddly enough, one of the persons who has been likely most ridiculed for this is not a female singer, but male pop star Sean Mendes.

Here's a scholarly article on indie girl voice with all kinds of examples:
https://www.acelinguist.com/2018/10/dialect-dissection-indie-girl-voice.html

Copycat behavior of ridiculousness is not limited to modern country snap tracking. It's everywhere, and has been part of pop since pop became a thing. Think of how silly doo-[*****] all sounds the same. Or the prevalence of the straight, non-vibrato 'aaaaah' harmony vox of Elvis' 'Hound Dog' days. Tapping guitar solos of the 80's after Eddie started it. Snare drum sounds of 80's music. Press-roll snare after Coldplay made it popular. Farty tuba basslines in Banda music. It goes on and on.


Now, one thing I did learn that I had never noticed before by watching snap-track guy's video: Dolly Parton could play a gut-string guitar with inch and a half long fingernails on her FRETTING hand. That's impressive! I had never noticed that before. I don't know about you, but my classical guitar has a table-top flat fretboard, and I'm not sure I could fret the correct note EVER with nails that long without just a little bit of radius.

Thank God for the internet and fringe country as well as Goodwill stores where I have amassed my George Strait collection (never was a fan back in the day - but like Tom Petty, he's grown on me in my older age).

Old man rant over.

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