Aaron Lewis Says Country Music Has Become “Popified” Because The Industry Was Infiltrated By California

Don’t California my Nashville.

Talk to a lot of the locals here in Music City for long enough and you’ll no doubt hear somebody complain about the number of people who have moved to Nashville from California.

And I get it. Nashville has been one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States for nearly a decade: At one point, over 100 people were moving to the city every day, and the healthcare and tech industries have been embracing Nashville as a business-friendly large city for their operations, which has only driven the population higher as companies relocate to Music City.

Just in the past few years, Amazon announced plans for a new operations center in Nashville, and tech company Oracle will also be building a new campus that’s expected to bring nearly 8,500 new jobs to the city.

Obviously Nashville’s an attractive location because of a business-friendly regulatory environment and Tennessee having no income tax. Not to mention it’s just a fun city and people want to be here.

But of course with that comes new people moving in from other states like California and New York, where tech businesses have been fleeing due to high taxes and burdensome regulations. And it’s not just Nashville locals who have a problem with Californians: Apparently Aaron Lewis thinks they’re ruining country music too.

The outspoken country singer, who’s also the lead singer of Staind, recently sat down with Tucker Carlson and discussed the state of country music. And it’s safe to say he’s not a fan of where the genre’s at right now:

“I don’t really recognize country music. What’s playing on the radio – how do you draw a line from what’s on the radio now and called country music to what was on the radio when we were kids called country music? There’s no line to be drawn.”

And when asked by Tucker what he blamed for the shift, Lewis didn’t hold back:

“It’s been infiltrated by California, just like everything else… Within my career, about halfway through it, everything changed in the industry and a lot of consolidation happened. A lot of people lost their jobs at whatever record label they were at, or they were in the top 40 side of things, and everything got condensed and… they all either went to Nashville or they went to country radio.

And I truly believe that has something to do with why country has become so popified, where it’s like the land of the misfit toys, where it’s not really country, it’s not really pop.

It kind of rides right down the middle of it and becomes its own thing. And they should call it its own thing. Like, it should have its own genre and classification, and instead they call it country.

And I don’t know how you can put George Jones and Merle Haggard in the same sentence as Morgan Wallen or Rascal Flatts. I mean, how do you even, how does that correlate? How does that fall into the same category?

Because it doesn’t in any way, to me.”

Interesting…honestly, I’ve never thought about that side of it, but I don’t think I disagree. When you bring people from pop music to work at country labels and radio, it’s no surprise that the music would follow.

Of course the argument kind of falls apart unless you disregard some of the great country music that’s NOT on the radio. Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, The Red Clay Strays, Charles Wesley Godwin, Sierra Ferrell, Kaitlin Butts…there’s a lot of amazing country music coming out right now, but it’s not played on the radio.

Either way, the infiltration of pop music onto country radio has long been a topic of discussion (and frustration for fans of traditional country music), and Lewis places the blame not on the artists but on those behind the scenes making the decisions:

“It’s the control mechanism. It’s the people in power calling the shots and the tastemakers, if you will, choosing for us what we want to hear and then stuffing it down our throats until we accept it.”

@thetuckercarlsonshow_fan

#tuckercarlson #tuckercarlsontonight #aaronlewis #podcast

♬ original sound – The Truth Podcast

The post Aaron Lewis Says Country Music Has Become “Popified” Because The Industry Was Infiltrated By California first appeared on Whiskey Riff.