re: No genre of music understands it's audience better than country.

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Now since the songwriting is so bad, It is all you hear.

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That's because the music industry (particularly that which you hear in advertisements, hollywood, mainstream tv, and fm radio) is not about producing quality music that consumers want to hear. It is about crafting consumers that are easy to sell goods to. Music has always been a marketing tool, but now, it is also used as a mass social engineering tool. The goal is to create demographic bubbles that each have their own music, fashion trends, and associated brands and products. Then, allow those human groups to social shame and clique behavior to keep people from radically switching niches. That way, each American consumer is easily fitted into one of a handful of different consumer boxes.

It's not about making music you might like. It's about telling you what to like in order to belong. These country songs aren't just there to pander to audiences and tell them who the performers are. They exist to tell the audience how the audience should identify THEMSELVES. They are telling the AUDIENCE what it means to identify with COUNTRY niche and how to be one. Then, it provides a list of products and fashion trends for them to consume.

Similarly, hip hop is doing the same thing to its audience. It is telling them who to be to be considered "gangsta". It is telling them what to wear, what to say, what to buy, what the trappings of success are, etc. It is putting people in a box by bludgeoning them with the same messages over and over again until they start to identify with the concepts they are being indoctrinated with through music.

Modern popular music is not entertainment so much as mass social engineering and marketing.

quote:

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That's because the music industry (particularly that which you hear in advertisements, hollywood, mainstream tv, and fm radio) is not about producing quality music that consumers want to hear. It is about crafting consumers that are easy to sell goods to. Music has always been a marketing tool, but now, it is also used as a mass social engineering tool. The goal is to create demographic bubbles that each have their own music, fashion trends, and associated brands and products. Then, allow those human groups to social shame and clique behavior to keep people from radically switching niches. That way, each American consumer is easily fitted into one of a handful of different consumer boxes.

It's not about making music you might like. It's about telling you what to like in order to belong. These country songs aren't just there to pander to audiences and tell them who the performers are. They exist to tell the audience how the audience should identify THEMSELVES. They are telling the AUDIENCE what it means to identify with COUNTRY niche and how to be one. Then, it provides a list of products and fashion trends for them to consume.

Similarly, hip hop is doing the same thing to its audience. It is telling them who to be to be considered "gangsta". It is telling them what to wear, what to say, what to buy, what the trappings of success are, etc. It is putting people in a box by bludgeoning them with the same messages over and over again until they start to identify with the concepts they are being indoctrinated with through music.

Modern popular music is not entertainment so much as mass social engineering and marketing.

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I don't think it is nearly so sinister as all that. It's just mostly a matter of numbers. Imitators outnumber the innovators by a large margin. Everything just clicks along in the same boring way, until something comes along to change it.
There's great new stuff being written, but the people who are in positions to push it, they are making great money already. They just ride the current wave, and try to find a hit for tomorrow, that sounds like the hit from yesterday. They don't rock the boat.