Overview
By the 1990s, country music had become the most popular and bestselling genre of music in the United States. In this lesson, we will consider how and why country music rose to commercial dominance in the late 1980s and 1990s. The so-called “new country” music of the 1980s was actually in many ways a revival of older, traditional styles of country music. By the 1980s, a number of the top country stars such as Dolly Parton had become increasingly pop-oriented in their sounds and musical styles. The 1980s saw a return to the earlier days of country music, including the fashion, instrumentation, and lyric themes.
Objectives
- Recall how and why George Strait and Reba McEntire were important figures in the “new” country of the 1980s
- Recall the significance of Garth Brooks’s musical style and lyric message and how he was similar to and different from other country artists
- Examine the careers of other popular country artists from the 1990s, including LeAnn Rimes and Shania Twain
Introduction
By the 1990s, country music had become the most popular and bestselling genre of music in the United States. A 1995 survey showed that over a third of Americans—about 70 million people at the time of the survey—purchased and listened to country music every week. The next closest genre in comparison, adult contemporary, had only 50 million listeners. In this lesson, we will consider how and why country music rose to commercial dominance in the late 1980s and 1990s. Interestingly, country music began selling enormous numbers of albums when artists began rejecting the pop-oriented sounds and instead returned to the instruments, themes, and production values of earlier country music.
"I can take the steel guitars and fiddles off, we can make it a little more pop, cover ideas that are a little less cowboy. But you got to look at yourself in the mirror and ask, whose flag you are under? For Garth Brooks, I'm steel, fiddles, red, white and blue."
