“Why would country music reportage describe a still successful portion of the music industry as suffering for its success? Why would journalists start to predict, then write, about an ‘end of the boom,’ showing how country music must pay the price for its popularity? Why would early 1990s coverage celebrate the ‘new’ country music as being more authentic, traditional, and adult-oriented than other forms of pop music, and late 1990s coverage tell mournful tales of how country music had lost touch with its tradition, its roots, and its ‘living legends’?” (Jensen 2002, pp183-184)
This is a section from the introduction of a chapter entitled Taking Country Music Seriously by Joli Jensen out of the book Pop Music and the Press (editor Steve Jones) published in 2002. This chapter goes on to try and explain why media and reporters cover country music the way they do. Journalists use statistics, quotes, and performance details to back up what they think country music used to be, how it is changing, and what it is now because of the changes. Within country music coverage the past is always present. Throughout time, country music has always been more real/traditional than other music genres and can be seen in performances, record sales, clothing styles, etc. and has always been important to country fans. This ‘real/traditional’ aspect causes tension in the commercial country music because artists want to stay true to country music, but yet still be successful. This tension is clearly seen in the coverage by the ever so familiar question almost ever journalist asks – Is the popular style of country music really country? People and fans will argue for both sides of this argument. Journalists, however, cover country music is such a way that they draw from “a psychic and aesthetic discourse that is fundamentally evaluative – What is good and bad country?” (Jensen 2002, p185). Journalists can cover country in two ways. The first is to distribute information and therefore evolve audiences’ tastes and desires (like reporting about the boom of country music in the 1990s). Secondly, they are to critic the music and “deliver cultural products to markets that they themselves construct and define” (predicting and analyzing the consequences that could/would come about because of the boom) (Jensen 2002, p195).
In order to figure out why coverage is like this we music understand that it is a form of cultural and social criticism. The problem with this is that we really don’t know how to “understand and evaluate the commodification of culture…which does not allow us to understand that country music has always been commercially constructed” (Jensen 2002, p196).
“Music reportage could explore the contradictory roles of the mass media as attempts to address and capitalize on tastes and trends; it could consider how fashion cycles promote both innovation and imitation. It could also acknowledge and question the assumed dichotomies between authentic and commercial, natural and constructed, traditional and innovative. Instead, the 1990s country music coverage keeps telling the same story, over and over. What is gained from yet another version of how “commercial forces” challenge the integrity of country music? Who benefits from continuous warnings that the genre itself is in peril? Why write about how ‘true’ or ‘good’ country music cannot survive forces of the marketplace?” (Jenson 2002, pp197-198 )
With all of the media being concerned about commercial music, country music artists could easily change their style to conform to the commercial style, but they refuse to ever fully ‘sell-out’. To the artist it is staying loyal and true to the home and family which makes it truly country music. So the real question is, “Can music journalism offer new, more complex ways to tell the media/culture story, or will we continue to circulate, and congratulate ourselves with, the same self-serving one?” (Jensen 2002, p199)
-Natalie Boyce
