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

@taxonomy: Have you read the entire thread? The "Country" music to which you refer is not at all what Americana (the underground---not on radio or TV---"Hard"---Traditional---Country) artists (T Bone Burnett, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Iris DeMent, Gillian Welch, Buddy & Julie Miller, Jim Lauderdale, Marty Stuart, Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, etc. etc.) are producing.

Are you saying Robert Plant is making music (his two albums with Alison Krauss) which is "classic rock with an occasional mandolin"? You my friend need to try a little harder if you want to know what is available for your listening pleasure (reading this whole thread would be a good start). You ain’t gonna hear it on commercial Country radio, and shouldn’t expect to. That’s like expecting to hear Rock ’n’ Roll on a jazz station. Just because the music business calls something "Country" doesn’t make it so. As T Bone years ago said: "They’ve learned how to sell Country music to people who don’t like it." It’s called marketing, which is all the music business is now.

Have you seen the movie Ghost World (a great one)? If so, think back to the scene where Steve Buscemi’s character is dragged to a Blues club by his date, and the band Blues Hammer gets up on stage and bludgeons (Blues Hammer is an apropos name ;-) Blues music with their hideous attempt to play it? The Country music you have apparently heard is the Country equivalent of Blues Hammer.

@taxonomy Fox News.... is that all you've got?

Musical labels are for record companies and radio stations marketing efforts. 

All music is folk music.  I ain't never heard a horse sing a song. -- Louis Armstrong

@onhwy61 “Musical labels are for record companies and radio stations marketing efforts.”

Thank you.  
I feel people have inherited, internalized and accepted this stuff.  
Music journalists don’t help. The way they describe music is just an exercise in hyphenation. Contrived balderdash to sound like they know what they’re talking about.

It was the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo LP that made me get beyond my hatred of Country & Western and begin to love it more than I rightly should. I might say, too, that somewhere down the line I bought a banjo. I still play it more than I ought to. I play it both Bluegrass Style and in the Old Time Frailing style. And oh yeah, Old Time frailing enthusiasts absolutely despise the boing-dee-boing-dee-boing bluegrass style. They consider it slickster sacrilege. Bluegrass banjo players, meantime, mostly consider Old Time banjo playing to be charming if a bit quaint.

Can't we all just get along?