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Pardi Like It’s 1989
November 22, 2017
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Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors. As we inch closer to the conclusion of 2017 – anticipating a new year filled with hope, promise, and fresh beginnings – I have several names I want you to remember for 2018: Jon Pardi, Luke Combs, Midland, and Chris Janson. These artists will be revolutionizing Country music in the next 12-18 months, returning the genre to actual, genuine, authentic, real, honest-to-goodness, by-gawd, gawl-derned COUNTRY music – the way it oughtta be, damnit.
(Insert primal scream and vein-popping, muscle-flexing pose here)
Music with twang; songs with stories; tight Country combos featuring fiddle, steel, and a live human being; hammering the living shit out of a drum kit, instead of mouse clicking some fancy beat downloaded off the interwebs 20 minutes ago.
The Country music ocean liner has been listing discernibly toward Pop for years now, and it's about time we right this ship. Pardi and Combs will serve as co-captains and navigators of this vessel, aided by capable crew members Janson, and Midland, with others contributing soon – Ashley McBryde immediately comes to mind.
Jon Pardi is the just-crowned CMA New Artist Of The Year with three straight #1 songs – and a recently-released possible fourth, the 100% pure Country "She Ain't In It." Pardi is a hat guy, and by that, I mean a COWBOY hat, not some retro trucker cap pointing the wrong way. Pardi's headwear isn't a stage prop mind you, but as he explains in this week's All Access "10 Questions" feature, "I wear my hat to do shit; it's not like I have to dust the hat off to put it on." Pardi also fancies Western-styled suits, and he worships George Strait.
What's not to love here?
Luke Combs, with two consecutive #1 singles, is a guy who – as my colleague, All Access Nashville Asst. Editor Monta Vaden, likes to put it, "can write and sing real, badass Country songs, then fix your HVAC unit or your carburetor – or both – all in one day." He seems bound for stardom if you listen to many Country programmers. Ditto Midland, whose debut album is a throwback to late-80s and early-90s Country. Their debut single, "Drinkin' Problem," went to #1. Hello?!? Yep, those guys. With their wardrobe throwing back even farther – possibly to the early-60s – featuring suits that look like they've been hand-stitched by the late tailor to the stars, Nudie, or living fashion legend Manuel, and previously worn by Buck Owens. Chris Janson has the #1 song in America this week with "Fix A Dink," which is traditional. Not mentioned earlier but worth noting: independent artist Aaron Watson has a top 20 song, "Outta Style."
Speaking of which, let's just forget that twinkie, wanna-be, fluffy crap and panty-waste Pop. No more Bro-Country BS. Over-produced studio tricks? Boom! Gone! Outta style, and outta here!
Pardi, Combs, Midland, Janson. 2018's Highwaymen. Write that down; say it out loud. The latest neo-traditional movement is on, baby! Yeah, I know it's a small handful of artists – right now, at least – but hey, anybody remember Garth, Clint, and Alan back in 1989? That was only three guys at first, but they changed the world, damnit. Two of those three are now enshrined in the Country Music Hall of Freakin' Fame, for God's sake!
Let's Slow This Down
Okay, okay. So, I may be getting a bit ahead of myself here.
Maybe Pardi and company won't entirely rule the world a year from now (although, they should!), but my point – illustrated in my usual, subtle-as-a-sledgehammer way – is that variety is important in this format, and we're seeing a nuanced, much-needed influx of more traditional songs at Country radio that are working and can better balance our music mix, creating deeper and wider appeal.
And, I'm not the only one who believes that.
"Country is growing and expanding; it's a healthy movement, and it's necessary," said Luke Bryan, perhaps the format's biggest star, when I recently asked him to assess where he sees the music trending. "It's gonna be a Stapleton, a Sam Hunt, a Jon Pardi with a fiddle lick – but you can't have 17 of those songs at once," he continued.
Even Pardi, whom I just anointed the torch-bearer/team captain for my self-proclaimed, traditional wave agreed when I asked him – again, in our "10 Questions" piece – if he senses some kind of movement afoot. "Traditional is always there," believes Pardi, who added, "Sam Hunt is gonna be fine and still play his own stuff, or the other guys that have brought influences that they love into Country music. They're gonna be fine, too. That's how Country is – a big, open world. But, I think it's cooler like that. You can't have everybody doing traditional; you need some of them to mix it up."
Riding three #1 traditional-leaning singles from his "California Sunrise" album, released last year, Pardi has basically doubled-down with the fourth single, "She Ain't In It," when it comes to putting a stake in the ground for his style of Country. This is the most traditional, Country-fied release to radio in his career, and it sounds like something George Strait might have cut about 17 years ago. Quick, and fun aside: In fact, Strait DID cut this song, after UMG Chairman Mike Dungan heard it on a demo sung by former Arista artist Clint Daniels, who also co-wrote it. Dungan sent it to UMG A&R honcho Brian Wright, who took it to Strait, who – coincidentally – was in town recording. Dungan finishes the story: "George liked it and said he was going to cut it. He did, but wasn’t wild about the way that it finished for him, so he decided not to put it on the album. I forgot about it, but Brian never did, and brought it to Jon Pardi over a year later. Jon flipped over it, and they put it in the batch to cut. For some reason, Jon and Brian decided that they should keep this a secret, to surprise me. I just about lost it when I heard it finished in the studio."
Great story that I just had to share – and, only in Nashville, right? Additionally, says Dungan, "She Ain't In It" was an instant favorite of radio programmers, too.
"When we started to meet with radio to play Jon’s new stuff, a bunch of the radio guys who had been the most critical of traditional music jumped up and said, 'that should be your single,'" Dungan recently told me. "We waited until now, and with three straight #1s to Jon’s credit, we decided to come with it." The song was most-added on its Monday, October 24th impact date at radio, further evidence of radio's backing. Two weeks later, Pardi walked home with a CMA Award for Best New Artist.
I asked Dungan if radio's enthusiasm, and Pardi's career momentum, were signs that the pendulum is swinging back toward Country music that's more Country-sounding at radio. "I have no idea if this, or any of the other more Country-leaning songs that are having great success, portends any type of shift, but I am elated that our airwaves are showing the depth and breadth of Country music – we have always been at our best when we do that."
So, there you have it. The head of UMG, the biggest artist in the format, and the CMA New Artist Of The Year all saying Country is better served with a wider variety of music styles.
Radio Believes It, Too.
"Variety is king," said a major market PD who asked to remain anonymous. "Everything shouldn’t sound alike, so we should have room for a lot of styles that fall under the Country umbrella."
Another PD said listeners just want good music. "We’re the idiots that label it," he continued. "I would beg artists to continue to be creative … just be you. Country music fans will figure everything else out for us. They always have." As for what HE needs to see as a programmer? "Something reactive; something that streams, sells, and shows up consistently in research." All of that said, he agrees, "We are at our best as a format when everything doesn’t sound the same."
WUBE/Cincinatti PD Grover Collins is one who seems to be sound code agnostic. "At the end of the day, I just want hits – and if that’s Pop, traditional, or ‘Bro’ Country, male or female, up or down tempo, I really don’t care." And, he's not sure if there's a trend toward traditional music emerging so far. "I’ve had one PD buddy that said his latest research says it may be drifting back from ‘mainstream Pop Country,’ but the #1 song of the year by far is going to be Sam Hunt ['Body Like A Backroad'], and Brett Young is also in my top three most-played songs."
Scripps/Tulsa OM Steve Hunter believes more traditional songs will help the format. "I think Jon, Luke, Midland, and Chris are all on the right track. I hope the labels see success with these songs."
Several programmers with a long history in the format – who lived through the Class of '89 boom, and then its eventual leveling off – used the word "cyclical" when thinking about any Back To The Future type trends.
"In the last four decades, this same discussion comes up often – and for good reason," recalled WYCD/Detroit PD Tim Roberts. "We’ve seen the variety of Country music keep changing and evolving with artists like Waylon and Willie, Keith Whitley, Randy Travis, Clint Black, Alan Jackson, and Garth, and many other traditional superstars pushing on that side to the new wave of Jon Pardi, Luke Combs, and Chris Janson. That trend has always been a good thing for Country Radio, and our many fans, in keeping the traditional side of the format near the roots."
"It’s turning back," says Westwood One VP/Programming George King. "I think the biggest thing that makes 'cycles' is a flavor of Country gets popular, so Nashville starts turning everything into that sound. Then, we get sick of it, and when something new comes, we jump on that."
KRTY/San Jose GM Nate Deaton points out that his station plays gold titles from prior to 2012, which helps deliver depth. "In fact, a quick glance at Mediabase shows we have over 100 titles prior to 2010 [on KRTY], and that does provide variety," says Deaton. "But, it can only be healthy to have a new sampling of the traditional sound."
Texture, Turned Up Louder
If you listen to some of the Legend-branded Country stations, with music steeped in the 90s to early 2000s, you'll get a feel for how the music has flip-flopped since say 2011 when the format began blowing up again. This was due to a perfect storm of Pop producers coming to Nashville and working Country projects and more Pop programmers than ever coming to Country radio and installing Top 40 mechanics that included much more aggressive rotations for this format, while expressing their musical curiosity via an open mind toward diverse sounds, and with younger listeners – who don't categorize music into specific format silos and will try all kinds of sounds in one setting.
Those Legend stations are sonically driven by fiddle and steel, while post-2011, current Country radio is more based in guitar-driven, rock-adjacent, drum machine laced songs. The format has been more mass appeal as a result of that perfect storm, and in the process, traditional country music has assumed, at best, a texture role – albeit an inconsistent one.
I stand by my original – and purposefully over-the-top – premise to start this column: that some kind of neo-traditional music shift is occurring thanks to a growing coalition of exciting, young, new artists carrying that banner. I don't think that can be denied. At the same time, based on what's working for Country radio right now and how it has redefined its target audience in the past seven years, traditional Country – while a personal favorite for many of us – will continue to be texture for the format, though a much stronger one, for the foreseeable future.
I'm happy to see the format's core sound turned up louder again; it's always been an important one that gives us a better, all around snapshot to existing and new listeners sampling what is still the best written, sung, and performed music of any genre, period.
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