Country has officially become the shittiest genre of music there is.

[Exian]

I can dig some country. About ten years ago, at the apex of my metal head days, I worked with a bunch of Amish dudes who turned me on to some good country. In spite of my best efforts, it grew on me.

I really dig folk music too. Any music born out of hardship just has something extra. Or maybe it's the combination of a working class level of craftsmanship, simplicity, and the sense that an entire people would be dead if not for that particular style of folk music. One of my favorite sort of zoning out methods is to just pick a country at random, youtube that country's folk music, and just zone for like 20 minutes. Once I'm familiar with the sound and feeling of their music, I do a bit of reading on the origin to get a sense of what these people were going through when their music was squeezed out of them.

I guess that's kind of dumb to label all of those different styles "folk music", especially since under that criteria, rap, blues, and flamenco would qualify as folk, but I do consider them folk. It's when the music starts to become industrialized that it starts moving away from folk and towards pop. I feel it even loses something on its journey towards academia. When it's no longer giving a people the extra boost they need to face their life, it's no longer folk.