Northern Country Music

My exposure to country music has been very very limited. In fact, when Nick mentioned country music, my thoughts jumped to Miley Cyrus. But I think just that jump from country to Miley points to a change in country music. If you had asked me what I thought of country music before 2006 (when Disney Channel debuted Hannah Montana), my first thought would be Elvis Presley. His song Guitar Man easily was my definition of country music. Now I think of the overplayed song The Climb.

While the song is still pretty sentimental, I can't seem to reconcile this change in my thoughts. To redefine a genre's personification from a legend to another artist who is nowhere near that status in the field makes me question why I had the Elvis personification as a boy in the first place. The only answer I can come up with is the media I had been exposed to. When my family first came to this country, my dad bought an enormous collection of songs. Anything that was American and would help us get acclimated to this new world. Among this collection were some of Elvis's songs, which was my first exposure to country music.

However, lately my sister has been blasting Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus songs in her room since my junior year of high school. Somewhere down the line, Elvis morphed into Miley. A disturbing picture, I agree. However, I think that it is also an accurate picture. While the classics will never die out, they are slowly starting to be replaced by songs of the newer generation. Unfortunately, that means more loud music that isn't as heartfelt as the olden days. Sorry Nick. Seems like country music is taking a definite turn towards toward the contemporary and away from the classics that you enjoyed so much.

Akshaya Srivastava