Country Music Subgenres 101– A Beginner's Guide to Modern Country

[Music] country music is a broad broad genre and any country fan will be able to tell you that at some point they have gotten into a debate with one of their friends about what country music actually is and honestly I think that's fine I think arguing about the genre is part of the DNA of the genre from Waylon Jennings singing I don't think Hank done it this way to aaron watson saying he'd rather be a fencepost in texas than the king of tennessee little bit on a string to George Strait and Alan Jackson saying that

corporate greed has slowly killed a tradition in murder on Music Row [Music] [Applause] country music has always questioned its own identity and paradoxically the industry has always celebrated those questions I mean murder on music row was given the CMA Award for vocal event of the year by voters on music row in Nashville the exact city that that song was attacking it's weird I know and that debate about the state of country has continued to this day you know there are some people that think Florida Georgia line have been really important for growing the genre and

there are just as many people that think they're ruining the genre some people think Old Town Road should have been left on the country chart and just as many people say no that's a rap song plain and simple but for every person that wants to argue about what is and isn't country there are just as many people that would say we don't have to have this debate we don't have to call everything country that's too broad of a term why don't we just use subgenres yes subgenres you know those little hyphenated terms like pop punk

or mumble rap that describe deviations from the standard sound of their genre why don't we just do that with country well actually we do we do it a lot because we're humans and we like categorizing things and it's how we make sense of the world and it's how we talk about stuff just look at the Wikipedia entry about country music and you will see that over the years that has had innumerable names and subgenres from the times that it was called hillbilly music to the times that Country and Western were considered entirely distinct types of

music what kind of music do you usually have here oh we got both kinds we got Country and Western but I know it can be extremely confusing especially if you're a new fan of the genre so today's video is going to be my very basic attempt to name all of the subgenres of country that are notable and popular right now what are they about what do they sound like who the key players very very basic stuff think of this as subgenres 101 musicologist this might not be the video for you you might find this annoyingly

simplified but I'm just trying to make something that's a basic overview if you are dying for a more in-depth comprehensive history of country music I would say get a book like this which is the companion piece the Ken Burns documentary that aired earlier this year which even at 16 hours some people said was not thorough enough with all that said let's get started okay so what is country music here's my broad definition it's an American style of music with its roots in the South in the 1920s that's connected to a working-class rural way of life

it's generally known for its simple melodies its stringed instruments like guitar steel guitar banjo and fiddle and folksy lyrics that often showcase a sense of place and character-driven storytelling that's the umbrella that all of what I'm about to talk about kind of falls under so if that's where we're starting the whole rest of this video is gonna split into two parts I'm gonna say mainstream which I'm basically calling stuff that plays on the radio country music has always been very centered around radio play and it still is to this day and then I'm gonna call

it kind of as a catch-all everything else indie whether or not it's actually indie that's just kind of the parlance people use so let's start on the mainstream side bro country is the most infamous and defining sound of country music in the 2010s it's the fusion of country rock and hip-hop and it's known for its themes of parties hookups and alcohol you might call it Chad music this was defined by Jody Rosen in New York Magazine as music by and of the tatted Jim toned party hardy young American white dude some of the most popular

songs that you might recognize or things like Luke Bryan's that's my kind of night Jason Aldean's burning it down and the crown jewel of the bro country sound Florida Georgia line's Cruz [Music] and keep in mind I'm just talking about songs there that doesn't mean that these artists are only confined to that little sub-genre I'm just saying those songs are a good example of the sound boyfriend country is the new infamous style of country music on the block this one is influenced by pop and R&B it features piano and acoustic guitar and it's known for

sweet love songs that often actually worship women you might think of it as ideal first dance songs at a wedding some examples of the boyfriend country sound are Bret Young's in case you didn't know Thomas rets died a happy man and Dan and Shea's speechless [Music] new traditional country music is a really evergreen sub-genre and it just means new country music that is harkening back to the traditions of country music and notably features more organic instrumentation and less overbearing production some examples of neo-traditional ism today would be Midland with songs like mr. lonely Kacey Musgraves

especially on her first two albums Neverland gold an hour but with songs like biscuits and then John party with his song heartache medication is that a swan Toby pop country is on the other end of the spectrum and some people would say that pop country should be called country pop or southern pop or Nashville pop but basically this is music often made in Nashville that leans heavily on pop production I'd wager that the biggest difference in this style of music is the presence of a heavy electronic beat sometimes called a drum loop or a snap

track or something like that the addition of common pop production techniques like vocal layering synthesizers and drops [Music] some songs that fall into this category are Kelsea Ballerini x' miss me more Maren Morris's the bones and cane Browns cool again [Music] there's classic country which could mean anything as far back as patsy cline to stuff as recent as George Strait and Reba McEntire some people use the term Beach Country to describe artists like Kenny Chesney or Jay Cohen and even sometimes Zac Brown Band also in the mainstream is a rising country trap movement which is

blending elements of hip-hop and Country Music's but we'll talk more about that in a little bit but to close out the mainstream category I would say that there's a lot of people that would only be described as just country people that probably have elements of all those different kinds of sounds but aren't always put into one of those little boxes and this is the vast majority of songs the vast majority of artists Luke combs Morgan Wallen Carrie Underwood Blake Shelton Miranda Lambert Chris Stapleton and people aren't gonna say anything more than oh she's country or

he's country and now let's move on to the indie side of things and again a lot of these artists that I mentioned might actually be on a major label they might not really be independent but people just use indie to mean anything that's not explicitly mainstream that's not gonna be on like Good Morning America or have a number one song on the radio that's just called indie red dirt is casually used as a catch-all term for any music that's not produced in Nashville but it's actually a regional style with its roots in Oklahoma and then

extending down into Texas some people call red dirt country music with attitude and I'd say it's a bluesier version of country music and it shares more with the outlaw period of country music and artists like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson than it does with artists like Kenny Chesney Turnpike troubadours are probably the most famous name out of the red dirt scene at the moment but then there's other really popular red dirt artists like Cody Canada and John Fullbright and then we've got Texas country which some people wouldn't even separate from red dirt they'd just put

a slash between them and say red dirt slash Texas but like I said there's some hair-splitting going on in this video Texas country is hard to define because it's a huge scene but I'm just gonna say it's country music in Texas yes there's more of a Western Swing vibe that's informed by the dance halls and honky tonks that this music's often performed in and maybe here and there you'll hear an accordion that's bringing in some of the Tejano influence from Mexico and you will certainly hear less drum machines on these records but for the most

part Texas country is a regional distinction with ties to rodeo culture the Texas scene is huge and profitable it's got its own beefs of like East Texas versus West Texas I'm not gonna get into all to my new show of that but some popular artists are Erin Watson and Cody Johnson I'd say they're kind of the two big ones that have now started to experience mainstream recognition all around the country but there's so many others whether it's Sonny Sweeney or Jamie Lynn Wilson or flatland cavalry or Coe Wetzel [Music] and coat Wetzel's a good example

of someone who's sound bears no resemblance to the artist that came before him but he's still kind of considered Texas country even though it sounds more like Nirvana ash rock bluegrass was a genre begun in the Appalachian region in the 1940s that gets its name from Bill Monroe and the bluegrass boys it has roots in both scotch-irish tunes as well as African jazz and blues it prominently features both banjo and fiddle [Music] and it also showcases high-pitched harmonies and melodies which some people would describe as a high lonesome sound some associated artists are Alison Krauss

and Union Station nickel creek and then a young guy that's really progressing the sound forward named billy strings Apple action is another regionally defined sub-genre but I'd almost describe it as a fusion of bluegrass and red dirt and personally I would argue that in the last decades Appalachian music has had way more of an outlaw attitude than pretty much any other country scene the Apple action sound can be heard really clearly in the early work of Sturgill Simpson as well as Kelsey Walden and the current Appalachian superstar Tyler Childers [Music] nobody knows and start scheduling

okay Americana is a doozy because it was a term created in the 1990s to be a catch-all genre and now thirty years later people have a lot of feelings about it but Americana is a country-ish format with elements of full country blues bluegrass gospel R&B and according to the Americana of Music Association the resulting music from this blend is a distinctive roots oriented sound that lives in a world apart from the pure forms of the genres upon which it may draw basically americano was meant to be a new shelf at the record store or a

new radio format but a contemporary wave forward for some genres that felt archaic as modern country very quickly moved toward pop and hip hop americano was a safe haven for acoustic sounds and many artists like Emmylou Harris quickly embraced us but other people think that the word country is something to be fought for and they reject the term Americana like Tyler Childers famously did while receiving an Americana Music Award as a man who identifies as a country music singer I feel American ain't a part of nothing and as a distraction from the issues that we

were facing on a bigger level as country music singers but like I said it's a catch-all term and so if something feels rootsy and singer/songwriter e and honest and authentic then often it gets categorized as Americana so artists you might know from the Americana movement are like Brandi Carlile the Mavericks Rhiannon Giddens and most popularly jason is [Music] southern rock is pretty simple it's basically country music and rock music and blues mixed together lots of big voices and loud electric guitars historically think about bands like the Marshall Tucker Band or Lynyrd Skynyrd and today think

about bands like Bishop gone whiskey Myers or blackberry smoke [Music] alt-country is something that I would actually categorize under southern rock and this is just more of a loaf I disaffected kind of that classic independent sound and that's gonna include artists like Uncle Tupelo and Lydia Lovelace and most currently Rustin Kelly I feel like it's what some people call farm emo we all wanted to be Duke boys looking for a jeep with Daisy in it barefoot medicines Bay Country rap is another really simply named one and it's a fusion of country and rap and it

kind of feels like it's bastardized by both of those genres and that it's ever controversial this is not a scene I know as much about but the popular names associated with country rap in my lifetime have been people like Bubba Sparxxx cowboy Troy Colt Ford and most recently the biggest star in that sub-genre is up Church who it should be said also makes rock and country stuff as well lately there's a new wave of country rap that some people would call a country trap or trailer trap with songs like lil nas exes Old Town Road

and Blanco Browns the get up and breeland's my truck but these don't really bear as much resemblance to some of the artists that I mentioned before in terms of they're not really about mudding and hunting they just feel kind of worlds apart but they also bear the country rap moniker sometimes those are much more promoted in a mainstream way it's all shifting right now and so we'll see where it all ends up landing I know you young man just like with mainstream there's so many artists that kind of fall into all of these categories someone

like Coulter wall is from Canada and I know Canada is its own you know whole music scene and I don't even want to dip my toe into it because it's like a whole other world to learn but Coulter wall is often adopted by the americana movement by the red dirt movement but he's a Canadian Plainsmen I don't know exactly where he'd fit the same could be said of someone like Yola and some people would say oh well their sole country or theirs blues and the same can be said of someone like Joshua Headley who is

a beloved Nashville musician there's so many great country artists and so many genres I still haven't even named stuff like Amira politan and southern gospel but I got to stop somewhere and I was trying to keep it basic be subgenres 101 and I think I did that I mean something I've really learned as a youtuber is that there's so much I don't know and the older I get as a music fan I'm not as intense about categorizing every single thing because the more I learn about country music the more I really do see how some

of these terms are fluid and how sounds do shift and I do think it's very important to remember the traditions of country music but at the same time it's not something I lose as much sleep over as I did when I was like 20 I don't know if you guys have seen any of those graphs where it's like how much I think I know versus how much I realize I don't know and then how much I actually know but I really relate to that as a music critic because a decade ago I was so intense

about understanding where every little sub-genre fit and like I said I think it's the nature of being a country music fan these are the kind of squabbles what I still think it's useful for understanding what we're talking about here and so I hope this video was helpful to you I hope you enjoyed it I'm like exhausted exhausted I did four full freaking pages of notes on this video I researched it for days I hope it was helpful to you don't rip it apart and say you forgot about ranchera music or something like I did my

best ok I did my best so give this video a like if you liked it and I'll be back with a bunch more simpler stuff soon [Music] you [Music]