have y'all noticed that every pop star wants to make a country album now it's definitely true that country music is the cool kid on the Block you've had this underground rise of artists like Zack Bryan and Tyler chers you've had people like Casey Musgraves become these Darlings of the critical universe and suddenly the whole pop music world that normally is ignoring country music in the last 5 years they're like wait maybe we're curious about getting into this post Malone's been singing country music and is working on a country album and even had steel guitar in
his America the Beautiful performance at the Super [Music] Bowl which mind you was played by Chandler Walters who was on series of episodes so go us series of episodes to Super Bowl pipeline is real but I'm having me a series of epis a few weeks ago Lana Del re confirmed that she's going to put out a country album called lasso Enrique alaus just talked about how he is putting out music with Miranda Lambert but the Peace Day resistance is the fact that Beyonce at the Super Bowl in a big commercial announced that she is releasing
a country inspired album Renaissance part two and dropped two new songs that currently are on top of Apple music's country chart is this good for the industry is it bad for the industry is it fun is the music good is the music country let's just talk about all this stuff so Beyonce dropped two new songs one is called Texas holdom and one is called 16 carriages of the two Texas holdom is definitely the boier more fun upbeat [Music] song which pretty much boils down to Beyonce saying I want to have a good time she's like
I can't read your mind we are not playing poker so put your cards down and let's go dance lyrically it's not like the most crazy complex song it's mostly just kind of a smattering of images of Texas Wester things whether that's tornadoes or Texas hold them or the Dive Bar she likes to go too and sonically you've got some big bass on all four beats along with some kind of jangly banjo and kind of like whistly lasso sounds and the rest of the music is like tons of adlibs it's like woo if you are looking
for straight down the-middle country music that is not what Beyonce is really doing here I would say it's the textures of country music like the feel the types of images that evoke country more than this is going to sound like a freaking Riley Green song at first I found the song kind of underwhelming I wanted it to go somewhere and it kind of just stays at like a very pleasant Vibe the whole time without like a big drop or a huge chorus or something but the more I listened I did find it kind of an
earworm and a few people have pointed out to me it does sound a lot like Lyall LoveIt LA county and now I can't unhear that she dfor this ain't Tex but yeah I definitely think country inspired is the right term because this is hardly some drumless steel soaked Walts the other song 16 carriages has a lot more depth to the lyrics 16 in the song Beyonce is talking about how she watches 16 carriages ride away if I'm reading that correctly I think Carriage is just a western term for tour buses and it is kind of
one of these price of Fame songs about what she has sacrificed and how hard she has worked to get to this place where she is which is very isolating and lonely this one has some crazy breakdowns and a lyrical Cadence in the verses that's kind of this choppy it's not really hip-hop I don't know what it is just this like choppier delivery style but is actually a quite beautiful song though I would say it definitely feels even less country than Texas Holdem doesn't mean it's bad just means it's not that country I'm interested to see
what country fans kind of do with these songs I noticed when I post them on my insta story actually very little engagement from country fans fans I definitely get the sense that Beyonce fans are pumped about it but a lot of country fans are just like not even mad just kind of like whatever and even within the industry I feel like it's been that same response and I wonder if that's cuz Beyonce has done this really not with the Nashville country music infrastructure if you look through the writers of these songs hey there's a lot
of writers and a lot of producers on both songs but none of them are big country names or big country producers or anything like that and that kind of makes sense to me like Beyonce World kind of keeps everything tight-knit and internal her her thing is kind of being inaccessible to the normal masses I wouldn't say either of the songs are as country as Daddy lessons that Beyonce I think put out in [Music] 2016 that song rules that song is so good and she famously played it with the chicks up on stage at an award
show so like Beyonce she's from Texas and she's shown that she's got this kind of country vibe to her already and I wonder if the rest of the album will sound like this or go in a different direction more on that in a second then we got Lana Del re who's putting out this album lasso and she's working with her regular producer Jack anof who produces everyone from Taylor Swift to Marin Morris now but she's also working with Luke lard who was a big part of Casey's early career as a huge hit country songwriter and
she's been recording everywhere from muscle schols to Mississippi and I wasn't super surprised to see Lana Del Rey want to do something in country simply because hey she hangs out with Nikki Lane and Sierra frell all the time and they make music together and B she's done a lot of covers over the years that would kind of suggest this country everything from Unchained Melody to Stand By Your [Music] Man Lana also recently teased the song that she appears to have written with Luke lar called Henry come on on her Instagram h on and it's got
that Lana Del Reish kind of melancholic ethereal sound to it with a little country twist and some simple little acoustic guitars and a little less sort of vocal layer sense now if Beyonce is doing her own thing and Lana's half doing her own thing it feels like post Malone is trying to jump feet first into the mainstream country infrastructure we've seen posts of him with Luke combes and James McNair we've seen him singing with Hardy and Morgan Wallen we've seen him writing with Ernest and Morgan Wallen and again like I said a few months ago
when he put out those hixtape songs of those Joe DIY covers like by a pick up man this is not entirely unexpected because post Malone has been covering country music for years well going and so I think it's kind of undeniable that pop stars are really trying to get in on Country right now and I think for a lot of reasons country fans are a bit gunshy31 to these artists and getting too excited about these projects on the one hand every genre of music is super kind of tribal and loyal which is what post Malone
experienced when he was kind of getting really into hip-hop well we really don't have nothing else to talk to you about because um you know you got one record that we know ofon but you're a nice guy get on a SoundCloud and I'm sure all of these artists are already experiencing as they delve into country actually in the last 24 hours since shooting this video which I'm editing now there has been some of this come up in the discussion around Texas told him not playing on country radio there was an Oklahoma Station the DJ allegedly
didn't know that she'd even put out a country-ish song and so he was like we're not going to play Beyonce when someone asked him that's become a big media Firestorm overnight of like why aren't stations playing Beyonce and now the song has been serviced to country radio Bill Ward wrote this whole article that was like the stations have been slow to play the song and I'm like I mean it's only been out for 48 hours and then they just serviced it today this morning to country radio officially so we'll kind of see what happens I
think radio should play what people want to hear at the same time I feel like this is a media narrative that the media really always will want to push of like it's like a honey pot of like are you going to play the song or you going to say you're not going to play the song right now it seems like they're going to um but we'll have to wait and see if that actually comes to pass because it looked like they were going to play like Zack Bryan and shoulders a lot and those haven't really
been big radio hits either so just acknowledging the story has developed slightly so that's there that's a fact of life that kind of genre loyalty but also we've had so many examples of pop stars throwing on a cowboy hat saying oh I'm kind of getting into country and then when they release their music it doesn't really have anything to do with country music like I remember when Hy wore a cowboy hat once people were like gry you need to cover this and then I was like but this is the [Music] song same thing when Justin
Timberlake made that whole to-do of his man of the woods album and it's like look here's JT Mr Sexy back himself in a flannel this album's going to be so country and then this was the lead single and the video was literally about robots and I was like what was The Branding here everybody same thing when Miley Cyrus was releasing younger now and she was doing all these unplugged covers like on Billboard where it's like a countryfied new sound and I was like maybe if you squint this kind of feels like slightly more organic pop
music but this is not countryfied [Music] Malibu even though I think Malibu is a jam and I think Miley cyer should put out a country record she's like the main pop star I want to make a country album I think her voice would sound so good on it and I've said that for years but given the fact that this cell has been made a lot of times and then the music ends up just being pop music with banjo I think a lot of country fans like take it with a grain of salt when artists say
oh we're getting country now but I also think everyone understands it's fun for artists to explore and do different things and if they're feeling inspired by country to want to go do and try something different now maybe that's the generous take and the cynical take is no this is just the cool kid on the Block right now and this is how Corporate music industry works when something gets cool suddenly you shift your sound to that sound and you're like wait I was kind of into hip-hop now I'm kind of into country and maybe when metal
is popular in 3 years that's what they're all going to Pivot to it is fun though being a country fan and seeing it be so the cool kid on the Block that finally we're the ones being chased it feels like the 9s when Achy Breaky hor and Brook and done and G Brooks and Rebo were so cool that the whole music industry had to bend to country's will that's a little where we're at right now we're back baby even if every pop star deciding they want to make a country album is the exact kind of
thing that will hasten country getting uncool again in the culture because it'll get way Overexposed and then the culture will shift and then country will be like the redheaded stepchild again but whatever that's the cycles of Pop Culture I have heard a frustrated argument from a lot of people that as more pop stars want to come to country that will simply take real country artists further down the chart and make it even harder for them to break through and I do think that's a kind of valid concern like there were all those years that every
single duet they would throw a pop girl on it instead of a country girl whether that was Demi Lavado singing about getting it on with Brad Paisley or Tory Kelly jumping on a track with Chris Lane or Julia Michaels with Keith Urban coming home and I know a lot of people in the industry found that frustrating like all these things that could have been huge good looks for upand cominging females in the genre were just like outsourced to pop music you know I made a video years ago called what happens when Pop Stars go country
it's got Jessica Simpson on the thumbnail and I pretty much think what I said in that video still stands true today I think generally when pop stars are doing this it's kind of a moment to play dress up it's an opportunity for them to try something different that's creatively satisfying to them them but rarely is it a sign of a deep dedication to this genre and that's fine like that's what pop stars do you know they're chameleons a little bit and entertaining ones at that 5 years ago I would have been pissed off about all
this now I'm just kind of like whatever although it's going to be so miserable when like Lana and Beyonce aren't nominated for best country album and we have to endure the discourse of the pop fandoms I am dreading that but we'll get through this together or hell maybe they'll win everything who knows and maybe the freaking Enrique glaus Miranda Lambert song will be a Bop but anyway this is just an obvious trend I've noticed happening and deserved a little video and so that's what you got love you guys I'll be back with more content soon
I wanted to do a Toby Keith video I was traveling all last week so if you follow me on Instagram or on Tik Tok that's where I posted kind of some of my Toby Keith thoughts while I was on the road and just follow me there in general it's a great time anyway love you guys be back soon bye
