Continuing the theme from the last couple of days of country songs that touch on lost love and that don't suck, today's song is "The Future Is Not What It Used To Be" by Ronnie Milsap.  Some might find it surprising that I like anything by Milsap considering that just yesterday I decried the inanity of contemporary country's "pop with a fiddle" mentality.  Ronnie was one of the original crossover artists and sang songs that didn't sound like traditional country long before it was fashionable to do so, so you might be wondering why I’m not bellyaching about him getting away from his country roots and how I could possibly recommend any of his music. 

The thing is:  I don’t have a problem with people like Toby Keith because they lean more toward pop than traditional country.  I couldn’t care less about that.  The boundaries people attempt to erect between the different music genres have always amused me.  Those boundaries are a relatively recent innovation.  They weren’t really there until the 1960s.  Up through the 50s, artists regularly sang whatever they wanted (check out Elvis’ many country hits and Hank Williams’ many blues numbers, for example), and no one thought anything of it.  The rock, blues, and country genres had considerable overlap, and artists typically associated with a given genre often released songs more aligned with others.

The thing that I don’t like about the “pop with a fiddle” movement is that it is affected.  By “affected,” I mean that it’s not authentic.  It’s a put-on designed to sell records by people who would otherwise have trouble doing so.  What you have with people like Toby Keith and Garth Brooks are pop artists who didn’t make it in the pop genre, so they throw on a cowboy hat, add a steel guitar or a fiddle to their band, and call themselves country.  They are failed pop stars.  And they’ve found an incredibly large audience among people who don’t know any better.

Toby Keith (née Toby Keith Covel) grew up in Moore, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City.  His country roots go about as deep as anyone else’s who’s grown up in the suburbs of a large city.  He wears a cowboy hat for appearance’s sake, not to keep the sun out of his eyes, and he has probably never broken a sweat actually being a real cowboy—herding cattle, running a ranch, harvesting a crop--things of that nature.  He’s a “drugstore cowboy,” as my mother-in-law likes to call ‘em.

The lyrics to his songs are insipid, shallow, and pandering.  They’re rife with that sickening variety of pseudo-patriotism that sells so well with people who don’t actually think about the issues.  He’s flat out embarrassing.  I wish to heck I could watch an OU home game without the camera panning over to show him on the sidelines.

Garth Brooks went to college on a javelin scholarship and majored in advertising.  Yes, he has a marketing degree—not that surprising, is it?  If he knew anything, he knew how to market himself, how to move product, as they say.  But his songs were formulaic, mawkish, and unoriginal.  Like Toby Keith, he wore a cowboy hat for stylistic reasons (and to cover his balding head), not because he is anything resembling a real cowboy.  Until he made it big and bought the massive ranch that all country music stars who make it big must buy, I’m willing to bet he’d never done a day’s work on a real ranch.  He might sing a good song about it, but I’ll bet he wouldn’t know a hay hook from a hoof cleaner.

So, I don’t like these guys and their ilk because they’re phonies.  What they do is affected; it is made up.  It is inauthentic.  I don’t so much care about whether a guy wears a cowboy hat, but, if he does, it had better be a part of who he is.  I actually grew up on a farm.  I know a real cowboy when I see one.  Don’t be a fake.  Be yourself and be true to yourself.  Don’t pretend to be something you’re not just to sell records.  Try to do original work.  Grow as a musician.  Don’t latch on to the first thing that comes along that might make you a hit with the masses.  Be patient and be a real artist.  Brooks and Keith and people like them are more about selling records and being stars than making music, and that sickens me.

Ronnie Milsap, by contrast, has always been what he is.  He never wore a cowboy hat to impress an audience.  He has always sung a mix of different styles of music.  He loves rock and roll and has never made a secret of that.  He played piano for Elvis, he sang in a 50s doo-wap band, and he is a classically trained musician.  All of his experience and influences come together in the music he does.  It might be a gem of a country song like the one I’ve linked above, or it might be a rock ‘n roll number like 1983’s “Stranger In My House,” for which he was ostracized by the country music community because it had an electric guitar solo (!)

Ronnie is genuine, and he puts on no airs.  And that’s more than I can say for Toby Keith, Garth Brooks, and the rest of the “pop with a fiddle” movement.  I keep hoping this saccharine country pop fad will run its course and return to a time when real musicians made real music about real things, but, for now, we are stuck with Branson-style American pop retreads.  We’re stuck with people who often can’t play an instrument and sometimes can’t even carry a tune singing songs their record label bought for them and crowding out anyone with real talent from the country music scene.

I’ll dedicate "The Future Is Not What It Used To Be" to my high school sweetheart.   The words fit her (and us) perfectly.
 

For the last 45 years, Ken Henderson has been a world-renowned philanthropist, star of screen and stage, international playboy, and all-around good guy.  He starred as "Vida" in last year’s off-Broadway revival of “To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” and can be seen regularly in the PBS series Breakfast with the Farts.  In a past career, he was a popular talk show host, an astronaut, and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War.  He currently splits his time between estates in Plano, Texas and Irving, Texas, and lives with his girlfriend of six weeks and their eighteen cats.  In his spare time, Ken writes blogs no one cares to read and participates in medieval battle reenactments.  He also occasionally enjoys ballroom dancing and clogging and is world-famous for being one of the few people who can do both simultaneously. He may be contacted via email at file13@khen.com.