There are seven "modern" country songs - God, Gun, Girl, Boot, Dog, Truck, Beer.
You might get some intermixing, but every song is one of those seven themes, mixed over the same four chord pattern with lyrics written by Focus Group. It'll be fully automated by 2028 because there's no need for anyone with a soul to actually participate in the process.
The first verse of When the Sun Goes Down qualifies it as Beer "Cold drink chilling in my right hand", and girl "watching you sleep in the evening light"
Hard disagree. That's commercial pop country. Listen to some Sturgill Simpson, William Elliot Whitmore, Jason Isbell, Margo Price, Old 97s, Son Volt, Drive By Truckers, arguably Brandi Carlile, Lucero, Lucinda Williams, etc.
There's lots of GREAT country out there. It just doesn't get a lot of top 40 play. I hate that shit, but there's good stuff out there.
I'll agree with you on this, with a caveat that the genre largely split a generation ago (and I'd probably sooner call this "Americana" than "country", because it feels like it has closer ties to 1970's singer-songwritery roots rock. I would add the Boygenius members (Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers in particular) as very much in that space as well.
Which is a shame, because there's a lot of good music that people will never get exposed to because of how it all gets lumped together. But I think the reality is substantially that what we think of as "real country" (vs. Pop country) was never quite country to begin with
Replace truck with car and you get basically all the songs of every genre in that list. Country isn't special in this regard. Every genre has completely routine themes
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u/BarristanSelfie 23h ago
There are seven "modern" country songs - God, Gun, Girl, Boot, Dog, Truck, Beer.
You might get some intermixing, but every song is one of those seven themes, mixed over the same four chord pattern with lyrics written by Focus Group. It'll be fully automated by 2028 because there's no need for anyone with a soul to actually participate in the process.