Music question: Should the sins of the children be visited upon the parents?

[Matt700wlw]

The Beatles started everything....

Stupid Mop Top stoners!!! :

[Matt700wlw]

Not me. I blame Bob Boone.

I blame El Nino

[IslandRed]

Good thread. Wish I'd seen it over the holidays. Living around Nashville, I'll address the one about blaming Garth Brooks for modern country pop. Unequivocally no, IMO. Country ebbs and flows over the years and will generally go more and more pop until the audience starts rejecting it, at which point it lurches back to a more traditional sound. I don't think Brooks was popular because he redefined the sound of country or anything. He just had some good songs and made his live shows must-sees for country fans. Most of that was just copying Chris Ledoux (which Brooks freely admitted) who was taking cues from arena rock shows, but "arena country" on the scale of a Brooks concert was new to the genre.

No, the sound of modern country radio can largely be blamed on country radio itself. The media consolidations of the 1990s left the bulk of big-city stations in the hands of relatively few programmers, who market-researched themselves into defining the typical country listener as a 35-year-old suburban female. Good luck getting national airplay for songs and artists that don't test well with that demographic. That explains Rascal Flatts. (The other thing that explains Rascal Flatts is ProTools, but I digress.)

[Doc. Scott]

Coming from a heavy radio background (both CHR/Top 40 and college) with no childhood MTV to muck things up, I have always been a "songs uber alles" kind of guy. I'm aware of a band's "lineage", but don't hold it against them until their songs or some other specific aspect (often the singing, especially, or the lyrics) are proven to suck.

Furthermore, blaming the parents for the children seems pretty harsh, don't you think? Like Jimmy Page would ever give anyone from Whitesnake the time of day.

Oh, wait...