Now let me begin by saying that I am no fan of contemporary country music. You have to go pretty far back to find many country songs I like at all (think Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton). But this video does not demonstrate a valid reason to hate country music.
"But it PROVES that all country sounds alike, Nena!"
No, it doesn't. All it proves is that these six songs are all in the same genre, they contain similar themes in their lyrics, and the person who put this together is really, really good at electronic mixing (like, REALLY good - this is super impressive). That's it.
I don't know all these songs; like I said, I don't like contemporary country. But I feel pretty certain that in order to get this mix, this person had to manipulate tempos and keys, and make very precise cuts and splices. These six songs most likely are not actually identical.
Why do these songs fit together so well? Because they are all country. There is a reason we classify music into genres; it's because music of the same genre has consistencies among the different tunes. That is what makes it recognizable as country, rock, pop, classical, baroque, rap, Irish traditional, etc. Once you are familiar with a particular genre of music, you can recognize it very quickly, even if it's a song you have never heard. And if you have a very sensitive ear and a lot of patience, you can do a mash-up like the one in this video with almost any genre of music ever.
I'm serious. For example:
Or how about this...anyone want to claim that Beethoven was just a hack and all his stuff sounded the same?
My point is, yes, popular music today is becoming very canned and lazy. But don't base your judgement on one cleverly constructed mashup. There are tons of reasons to hate [insert music genre you dislike here]. Rant about one of the real reasons.
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