Opinion: Modern country is the worst musical genre of all time

And how can anyone say, “I don’t like jazz.” How can you ‘not like’ what you don’t understand?

If you haven’t ever played an instrument in your life you don’t have a clue what’s going on! If you don’t know what a chord, or chord change is, you’re clueless.

Simply say, you don’t know jazz, because you don’t know music. Jazz is the most complex music ever created, by black people no less. How in the heck did the most disenfranchised create the most creative music ever is the better question. And don’t even tell me a 4 chord tune, that’s a mega hit, is just as good. It’s simply more popular.

You don’t have to be a musician to enjoy jazz, many aren’t. But it helps to have some idea of what is going on.

@coltrane1: If it’s Soul music you want, there is one current "act" I can enthusiastically recommend: The War & Treaty. An unlikely name, but this husband & wife duo of Michael and Tanya Trotter are absolutely fantastic!

They came to my attention solely for the fact that their debut album Healing Tide was produced by a favorite of mine---Buddy Miller. I don’t know who put the Trotters and Miller together, but the results have to be heard to be believed. Buddy started out in the Contemporary Christian Music field with his eventual wife and musical partner Julie. When he evolved into the secular market, he ended up as guitarist, harmony singer, and bandleader for Emmylou Harris (a position previously filled by Rodney Crowell).

A "Country" musician (he’s far more than that) producing a Soul duo?! Perhaps because he came out of Gospel music, as did Soul music. The duo have VERY strong voices, and the album’s material is excellent. Emmylou joins the duo on one song, the result being fantastic 3-part harmony (Emmylou is a master at singing harmony), which we all love. Right? ;-)

Healing Tide is the strongest debut album I’ve heard in a long, long time. No studio tricks were used in it’s making, done at Buddy’s home studio in Nashville. I use the term literally: Buddy turned his entire 19th century house into a recording studio. When Julie isn’t feeling well (she’s somewhat sickly), he runs a mic cable up to their bedroom, recording her in bed ;-) .

While not wishing to appear argumentative, I must take issue with your proclamation that "Jazz is the most complex music ever created." All Jazz? As in all genres, there is a range of complexity found in Jazz. But more importantly to me, are we to ignore the Baroque era in Classical music? Now THERE is complex music! J.S. Bach was an absolute genius, no secret there.

As for a 4-chord song, I’ve heard a fair amount of Jazz that is composed of less than that, sometimes only one chord, as heard in the music of the "Modal" movement. And then there is the issue of the relationship between complexity and quality. Is quality determined solely by complexity? Using that yardstick, ALL Blues sucks.

For an example of a song that superficially sound simple and non-complex, listen to "God Only Knows", written by Brian Wilson. If you try and play the chords of the song on piano, you are in for a surprise. The chord progression and use of modulation, bass inversion, counterpoint, and other musical devices is surprisingly sophisticated. His peers (including Paul McCartney, Elton John, and Leon Russell consider him a genius. But he’s no J.S. Bach ;-) . Another example is "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted", my absolute favorite "Soul" song.

@bdp24, thank you for the recommendation, I’ll check them out. But the only soul hit I’ve heard in 25 years is Leave The Door Open, by Silk Sonic. Coincidentally, it had a hip and complex chord structure for an RB tune. It was truly more complex than a typical RB tune, but that’s what you get when it’s produced by Bootsy Collins and Bruno Mars, an exceptional musician who plays multiple instruments.

You’re pointing out exceptions to the rule. Miles popularized modal music in the very late 50’s. Miles, I believe, got the idea when he was visiting Paris, and asked to create a film soundtrack for a popular French film while he was on tour. This laid the groundwork for his musical comeback. The rest is history.

But anyone who knows jazz knows that modal music isn’t the norm. And even so, isn’t Miles modal album, Kind of Blue the greatest selling jazz music LP ever created? Of course it is. It’s been an entry to jazz for countless people. Yet, Trane, Cannonball, Evans, Chambers, the 18 year old Jimmy Cobb, and Davis created an LP that is still selling today, 75 years after it was created. So much for simple modal music.

I love Classical music! But it doesn’t have the complex chord structure as most jazz. But it couldn’t have, for it was Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker who popularized playing plus Eleven Thirteen chords. Still, Classical music is it’s own genre. And that’s because it’s roots aren’t based upon the blues, which wasn’t created until the 17th century when African’s were forced to come to America and the Caribbean. Without the blues, there is no jazz. As much as I love Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Ravel, who truly bordered playing jazz chords in a few bars, Classical is just that, Classical. Which is more complex? That’s a column left for an entirely different thread. But ask the question. Can jazz players play Classical? Yes, so many came to jazz with a Classical background, Oscar, Jarrett, Evans, etc. But how many Classical musicians can improvise?

If it’s complexity you want, listen to J.S. Bach’s Concerto For 4 Harpsichords and Orchestra. Each harpsichord plays a different melody; just trying to keep those 4 threads separate will keep your mind busy! And those 4 parts are played over an insane string of chords, the string played at breakneck speed. A lot of other Baroque compositions have a mind-boggling progression of chords through which the musicians must traverse. And modulations (key changes), not to mention the counterpoint parts in the Fugue form. The hardest thing I ever had to learn to do was sing one part in a Fugue-based Pop song, when I was recording with a songwriter who was a music major at The University of California at Riverside, known for it’s excellent music department. It was he who turned me on to J.S. Bach. By the way, his favorite Pop music songwriter was Brian Wilson.

"Classical music is it’s own genre." Well yeah, of course. I agree, you can’t compare it with Blues-based music. But it was you who said "Jazz is the most complex music ever created." You didn’t say the most complex Blues-based/non-Classical music.

As for improvising, you apparently aren’t aware that a lot of Baroque compositions are written with sections requiring the harpsichordist to provide "ornamentation", the baroque term for improvisation. Keith Jarrett is one pianist equally capable in both Classical and Jazz musics; I have a bunch of his Classical recordings.

Terry Adams is one Rock ’n’ Roll keyboardist (piano, clavinet) who uses Jazz influences (Thelonious Monk, Sun Ra) is his band’s (NRBQ---an acronym for New Rhythm & Blues Quartet. Still going strong after 55 years!) songs, and does so with a great sense of humour. The best band in Rock ’n’ Roll!

@coltrane1 “Jazz is the most complex music ever, by black people no less.”

Sweet Martha.

Simply repugnant racism aside, you think fancy chords and improvisational acumen makes “Ellington and Parker” (we could throw in Monk, Mingus, and Coltrane to name a very small few more) “more complex” than Bach, Stravinsky, Bartók, Boulez, Schoenberg (to name a very small few)?  
Musical “complexity” is far more nuanced than your gross oversimplification suggests.

The noted advantage most top jazz instrumentalists possess in improvisational acumen does not make the music of jazz, necessarily, “more complex” than classical.  
If a top-shelf classical instrumentalist may be, at times, a fish out of water when “sitting in” and trying to hold their own in a top-shelf jazz ensemble, the inverse may also be true.  
Plop the most complex, demanding classical score in front of an all-world jazz player, and their inability to play it on sight with impeccable precision and perfection on the very first go may indeed be exposed. 
Just because versatility in instrumental acumen across all ensembles may arguably favor the jazz instrumentalist, this does not necessarily make jazz music, as a whole, “more complex” than classical.