RIP......and country music slips away from it’s roots just a little bit further.
On a related subject, last CMA show I watched looked and moreover sounded like redneck hiphop to me and I don’t even like country all that much, but dadgum, it was bad. I just kept telling my wife “that’s not the country music my parents listened to when I was a kid”.
Goodbye Merle, you will be missed.
This is how bad it really is, literally all of the songs sound the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o
I doubt that there ever will be REAL country music again because the lifestyle from which it grew is long gone. How can someone under fifty possibly comprehend how it used to be? You have to have seen the chain gang working on the dirt road that led to the nearest two lane blacktop while you walked behind a plow listening to the Bluebirds sing. You have to know what it means to take a ten minute break under a shade tree to drink water from a Mason jar while the salty sweat makes your eyes feel burned out. You have to remember when a serviceman in uniform could stick up a thumb and tires would squeal as people competed to see who could have the privilege of offering him a ride. You have to have known the kind of people who, although rail thin and looking hungry, would rather go another day without a meal than accept a handout. You have to be able to listen to one of the greatest of all country songs, “I’m Busted” and know what it really means. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8kRsoAZjpM
#20 Merle Haggard may have seen a recent country music award show and that is what killed him.