What is This Horrror Called "Bro Country?"

Image from source, LA Times [click to embiggen]

It's not like I can't appreciate the imagery of a hot, dumb redneck with some brews on a moonlit night, goodness knows. It sounds like half a dozen classic gay porn videos of yesteryear. Well, except for the ubiquitous girl with the painted on jeans. She's gotta go.

But seriously, even though I don't listen to country music, like at all, on those occasions that a bit has filtered through, it's been all pretty much the same. And all pretty much stupid as hell. What is going on in the genre, anyway? I'm sure country music has always had trucks, beer, girls, moonlight and whatnot. But that's not all it had. These days? Like I said, my samples are small, but it's all I've heard, when I've had occasion to hear it.

Last time I was at the dentist, I spent an unusual amount of time just waiting in the chair, and then the usual amount for the cleaning. The entire time--maybe an hour and a half or so--a popular country station was on. And every song. EVERY. SONG. Every song was about that list above, with various levels of fakey-sounding country drawl, and differing amounts of studio polish. I recognized Blake Shelton's voice, from, well, The Voice on one of them. And here I thought he was one of the "good" ones.

Well, typing this on Thursday night, The Late Show with David Letterman had on some hick in a baseball cap (are those replacing cowboy hats, finally?) named Cole Swindell, which sounds like a porn name, singing "Chillin' It."  It was in the exact same style, but I'd put it on the low end of the quality scale, though this is a very short scale. And I was kind of amazed that these kind of hits apparently just keep on coming. It's dreadful. And it's apparently called "Bro Country."

[Excerpt]

Are bro-mantic songs taking over country music?
 
Female country singers are complaining that their music is being pushed off the airwaves by a new crew of young, male, “bro-country” musicians singing interchangeable songs about dirt roads, pickup trucks, girls in tiny cutoff jeans and beer, lots of beer. . .

Read more at: LA Times