The Case Of Country Music Homogeny

Country music gets a bad rap, in large part because...Well, it's an easy target. Like, really easy. Really, really easy. Because country music talks a hell of a lot about pickup trucks, tight ladyjeans, and beer. And from this new country music compilation pointing out exactly that, it can be a little overwhelming.

The compilation was put together by Entertainment Weekly's Grady Smith, in response to the accusation that he didn't use enough "mainstream" country music for his 10 Best Country Albums of 2013 list. He wrote: "I thought, 'Well, yeah, because so much of what's on the radio these days sounds exactly the same!' So I decided to make a video to prove my point." And so he did.

This is not to say that pop music, or really almost any saturated genre, does not have these same issues of repetition — bashful beauty, cheating boyfriends, the word "dance"; it's all everywhere. Just look at Bo Burnham's song "repeat stuff," which is based off of that very point.

But this video does lay out the case in country music specifically pretty well, and it is what drives a lot of people away from the genre: