Country music lost more than just a legend recently, it lost one of the few remaining symbols of a brand that popular music passed by a long time ago. Merle Haggard, the Okie from Muskogee, died on April 6^th at the age of 79. His style of music was one that doesn’t really get much airplay anymore. It’s the style of other Country music royalty like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. It’s a type of music that’s authentic and touches the listener in a way that today’s Country cannot hold a candle to. Yet over the years, it has steadily faded into the background.

In the golden age of Country, the music used to illicit feelings of raw emotion from the listener because many of the songs were written from life experience or are meant to tell a story. David Allen Coe’s ‘The Ride’ wasn’t written by him but at the end of the song you almost believe that he actually met the ghost of Hank Williams. When Haggard sang ‘Mama Tried’, he sparked some sort of reaction in his audience because we knew the song was genuine and we felt sorry for the guy who’d screwed up over and over and sorry for his mama too.

The songs today simply appeal to the lowest common denominator of country music fans, using elements of the rural lifestyle as a prop to get cheap pops from a crowd, as is evidenced in Luke Bryan’s ‘Huntin’, Fishin and Lovin’ Every Day’. Lyrics like, “A huntin’, fishin’, lovin’ every day/That’s the prayer that a country boy prays/Thank God he made me this way” have absolutely no substance and are only meant to pander to the crowd. Country music now is just pop shrouded in a southern accent with tight jeans and cowboy boots. Today’s “bro-country” stars like Blake Shelton play host on The Voice and put out god awful songs like ‘Boys ‘Round Here’ while true country musicians like Johnny Cash hosted The Johnny Cash Show, which featured guests like Bob Dylan and Tammy Wynette, and released all-time hits like ‘Folsom Prison Blues’.

Maybe I’m just acting like some crotchety old man, pining for things to be the way they were and I suppose it is fool hearted to think that country music shouldn’t grow and change along with everything else. After all, Country music of the 1960s and 1970s didn’t sound like Country music did in the 1920s. However, it has changed more than any other genre in music today from what is was at its base. When someone asks me if I like country music I always answer yes and then feel the need to explain that I mean I like “classic country” and not what’s popular today because there is a gap between them that is miles wide. The passing of Merle Haggard is a grim reminder that true Country music is near death and if things keep going the way they are now, it may whimper out without anyone even noticing.