Speaking of pop/metal crossovers (or in this case a pop country/metal crossover), the YouTube algorithm randomly fed me this performance of Ozzy’s “Mama, I’m Coming Home” by Carrie Underwood on Howard Stern.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=14xEuqenBKE
Can’t say I’ve ever heard her sing before, and I don’t love the affectation of her voice, but it was a nice overall performance.
She's a GREAT singer. My wife sent me (this morning, in fact) a duet of her and Axl Rose at the Stagecoach festival doing Sweet Child O'Mine and Paradise City. I'd post it but Axl kind of dominates the singing - she only does one verse of SCOM and I think only one verse of PC.
Check out this song: Blown Away. Be patient; it's got the obligatory artsy beginning for about 45 seconds, and you have to get to the chorus to really get meat of the song. That song gives me chills every time she sings "nothing left of yesterday..." I also like the doubled vocal on the "blown away" part; reminds me of the best moments when James does that in DT (I'm thinking of "This Is The Life").
Yeah, that's not bad at all. She definitely has a good voice. I struggle a bit with countrified singing, but I can sort of appreciate how similar modern country is to the the pop metal scene in the late 80s and early 90s.
"Country music" as it stands today is a weird, weird animal. Very similar in some ways to country in the '70s, and in other ways very different. There's a consolidation in Nashville that doesn't exist in the rock and pop realm; there's a ton of crossover in Nashville, that except for the very specific studio session work of guys like Lukather and his ilk, doesn't happen in rock/pop.
There is some country - and it's dying out quickly - that I LOVE. Waylon Jennings was every bit the artist that, say, a Steven Wilson is; the man could sing like a dream, he played a mean guitar (listen to the outro on his version of "
Me And Bobby McGee") and wrote a ton of good tunes.
And then there's this:
New country. Now, I'm not being fair, because that guy (Brett Young) does write his own songs, and he does play guitar, but it's a more pop oriented approach. That pose is not someone that's out there for his art. All the guys look fairly alike - dark hair, well-groomed beards, sleeves, t-shirts and tight jeans - in the same way that the LA pop-metal scene all looked alike, either like vampires or drag queens, and all the girls look alike - cute blondes in tight skirts. Parmalee is another one. It's a much more image-oriented, record-company driven approach. Not my thing, because the affectations are just as unconvincing as they are in the pop realm. Waylon Jennings lived it. Snorted it. Fucked it. He was the real deal, and it was reflected in his music, the same way it's reflected in Taylor Swift's music, or Eddie Van Halen's music.
Topic: Gatekeeping in rock and metal? (Read 1660 times)
