A friend of mine sent me an article from Rolling Stone, about Kenny Rogers selling his new CD exclusively at Cracker Barrel. Nothing new here... plenty of musicians do the same thing with Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Best Buy etc. I guess Cracker Barrel makes perfect sense for a country musician because of it's Southern'y home style appeal. But here's what burns my ass. The new "album" is a greatest hits collection w/ 3 new songs tacked on to it!
This is one of the reasons I absolutely hate country music (have I mentioned that Lee Greenwood is a war profiteer?). If you are a fan, and want the 3 new songs, you have to buy the other 9 that you already own. Is there a more disrespectful way to treat your loyal fans? Most of these clowns don't even write their own songs anymore (much less play an instrument)... so you are telling me that Kenny can't scratch up 10 more songs and crank out an entire album? It's nothing but a shameless cash grab. To be clear, I'm not picking on just Kenny Rogers. The Better Half is a big fan of George Strait and I think he's done this before, but with boxed sets and not just a single album.
Mainstream country music has been neutered. Seems that toeing the party line and singing songs about lazy Sundays or high school sweethearts will pretty much guarantee you a top selling tune. But if you drop the saccharine sunglasses and create something genuine, introspective or at the very least think for yourself.... you are dead. If you want proof, just look at what happened to the Dixie Chicks when they spoke out about W. Maybe they were on to something long before his own party started to distance itself from him.
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