New Year, New Beginnings
The State of the Blog/Country Music piece meant to be finished a month ago.
The past month was a lighter one. The two posts were more off the cuff. It was a necessary change of pace. The end of year season is pretty exhausting and quite challenging. Thankfully, it was a challenge I was able to stand up to and persevere with. I overcame it, resulting in what I hope the readership agrees was a satisfying conclusion to 2024. However, it did leave some lingering sense of burnout, or at least a need for something more chilled out. I had intended to release this upcoming piece in the beginning of January. Oh well. It might strike readers as a bit out of place for early February, but with that context in mind, it shouldn't be too much of a trip.
2024 was a great year for the blog. We published more content than ever before. After three years of grinding, we hit the subscriber milestone that I have been gunning for ever since I started this. To all those who have chosen to follow and subscribe, thank you.
The year was a fantastic mix of original content and reviews, following the natural rhythms of the industry. It's quite rare to have a high-profile release in January or February. Only in March and April does the pile start to stack up. Therefore, at the beginning of the year, Today I Heard leaned towards analytical content. Only later in the year did things become more consumed with reviews. That pattern looks to continue this year.
I want to highlight a couple of my favorite pieces from this past year.
This was far and away the best performing post of the year. It was a deep dive into a defining artist of the past decade. It seems to have struck a chord with many readers and brought a lot of new eyeballs to the blog.
I wanted to stretch the blog this past year. Production is something that is critical to the listener's reaction but doesn't get nearly enough press. Over the years, I found that certain production styles resonate well with me, and I discovered a key character in country music history by digging into the producer side of things.
When I wrote this, I had no idea that the year would end with Frankie Ballard releasing a comeback EP. I just wanted to write about that moment long ago when a brash fella out of Michigan came down and rocked the country world. The ensuing analysis and context about bro country was an added bonus. Collaborating made this even more fun.
There was plenty more in 2024. I strongly encourage anyone who joined recently to take a look at the archives. There is plenty there for anyone to enjoy, and unlike many Substacks, it's all free!
https://todayiheard.substack.com/archive
Speaking of all those reviews, this last year included over 130 albums—a number that reveals something interesting about where country music stands today. Most peers, even dedicated music fans, tend not to listen to more than 50 or so records in a year. That is a very reasonable number, about one per week. Add in listening to playlists, old favorites, and current hits, and the average music experience looks quite fruitful. Nearly tripling this is a great feat and allows Today I Heard to operate as a content curator. That is a role I have grown more comfortable with over the years.
Yet even this breakneck pace of listening barely scratches the surface of what's out there. Looking through end-of-year lists from blogs I read—and sometimes even respect—puts this role in perspective. Publications like Saving Country Music, Holler, Country Universe, and (occasionally) the Rolling Stone country list reveal how much we miss. With the exception of Taste of Country Music's list, which was much more mainstream, many significant releases appeared on these lists that never crossed Today I Heard's radar. Even with all that listening, there remains so much in the Country/Americana world to discover.
That realization is somewhat freeing, and it illuminates how country music has grown. There's no way to humanly listen to and digest everything within country music. Heck, even getting to all that matters proves tough. The genre has expanded tremendously over time, more than we might realize without looking back. A more holistic attempt is necessary. In order to achieve that, what has fallen to the wayside must come back.
Through the historical lens, country and roots music's evolution becomes clear. Initially, country music claimed only a small share of the music world, back when regions were siloed off and culturally independent. The genre emerged from southern and Appalachian folk traditions, heavily influenced by immigrant folk traditions mixing with local sounds. It developed largely separate from big-city popular music trends. These traditions eventually formed the commercial genre of country music. The amalgamation of regional sounds with newer pop sounds was naturally driven by market forces that dictated investment based on audience potential. Like a political party expanding from its base by moderating positions or adopting new stances to attract outsiders and centrists, country music grew from its rural, hillbilly roots into a musical and commercial behemoth. It constantly adapted to gain new followers while trying to maintain enough of its core identity.
This growth and mentality was partly fueled by country music's isolation from mainstream recognition, leading to the development of (the way too many) internal award systems like the CMAs and other country music institutions. While Los Angeles and New York dominated music in the 40s and 50s, Nashville became a hub for the hillbilly music rejected by both cities. This fostered independence on one hand, but created a burning desire to be taken seriously on the other.
Artists like Glen Campbell, who moved fluidly between both worlds, exemplified the genre's aspirational goals, despite backlash from grassroots fans who viewed him as a sellout. His enduring popularity and the continued cultural resonance of his classic hits demonstrate the success of the Nashville system. This success continues as the genre expands its commercial reach and adapts to changing audiences.
The path toward broader audiences brings natural tensions. Each attempt to reach suburbanites and growing non-country audiences throughout the decades triggered shifts towards pop, followed by inevitable backlashes. While this same push-pull narrative might seem to apply to artists like Zach Top and the current trend toward organic instrumentation, today's landscape works differently. As consumption patterns have escaped from radio's dominance, audiences—now larger than ever—and their myriad forms of taste shape creation more directly than ever before. This has consequences.
The result looks more like a massive tent called "country" with all sorts of different styles bouncing around. An objective look at the popular artists on streaming demonstrates this new paradigm. Some subgenres grow a little bigger, some stay smaller, but nothing takes over completely. Combs' neo-90s-traditional-with-more-muscle streams as well as Wallen's hip-hop fusion. Zach Bryan goes head-to-head with both of them. Folk-pop iteration Kacey Musgraves exists alongside the raunchy country-fried rock of Lainey Wilson. This mixed reality without a clear dominating theme may just be how things are. This assumption marks a change from how I viewed things just a year or two ago. As one with a historical analytical bias, I assumed this was merely a transition phase. I could still be correct, but the underlying incentive structures seem to have shifted underneath our feet in a way that may render old precedents out of date.
The pop world offers a perfect example of how this would look. During the early 2010s, EDM dominated the mainstream briefly. It didn't go away afterwards—it simply settled down into its own sustainable niche. The DJs still pump out tremendous amounts of music and host massively popular festivals; they just aren't collaborating with Justin Bieber anymore. Looking at the pop charts now reveals a fantastic amount of diversity. 80s synth revival and disco have a strong place on streaming charts, but hyperpop and country vie for attention. Country music as an institution seems headed down a similar path, with multiple genres growing and intertwining under the same broad commercial umbrella. The advantages and disadvantages of this reality are immense and very deserving of being talked about.
This expansion stems partly from intentional choices Nashville has made to welcome non-country overlap. But it also reflects simple demographics—there are just more people listening to country music now than ever before. The genre's presence on pop charts, streaming records, and competition with pop and rap tells the story of this growth. On a smaller scale, the financial viability of smaller and more niche artists further indicates this multipolar reality.
Looking ahead, this changing landscape suggests new holistic approaches to coverage. Even granting the aforementioned weaknesses of a historical analysis approach, the precedents set by the past remain incredibly indicative of the broad strokes of human nature. Though I'm no Hari Seldon, there's still plenty to be gleaned. The realities and habits of the country world are real and illustrative. Additionally, historical context remains crucial for understanding art. The broadening diversity just allows for even more approaches to incorporating music, making the past even more critical to illuminating the murkiness of the present.
Trimming things to a mix of current releases (say, 80-100) current releases alongside a smaller amount of critically acclaimed older albums (20-30) should provide both breadth and depth to the commentary and reviews on Today I Heard. The advantage of older material lies in three areas. First is efficiency—the time needed for one modern release often equals that of several classic recordings. Second is quality—three George Jones records might take the same listening time as one Ernest album, with rather predictable results about which proves more enjoyable. Third is historical context and importance—understanding the ebb and flow of pop crossover over the years can help illustrate what further steps might be ahead for artists like Morgan Wallen or Kane Brown who experiment heavily with pop crossover material.
Production techniques in country music tell a fascinating story about the pace of change in the genre. Recent retrospectives on artists like Frankie Ballard and Thomas Rhett (both linked above) highlight how dramatically the sound has evolved. Having been a country music listener for some time, I've noticed these shifts happening gradually, but it's almost jarring now when I turn on music from eight to ten years ago. A prime example is that "wall of sound" technique that dominated Nashville's radio-aimed country music until just recently—that crashing blast of sound used to both hype up choruses and make songs stand out on streaming playlists. Just give a listen to country radio now and you'll hear how different things are. That production style already sounds dated, and in a few more years, it'll probably seem as anachronistic as those artificial beats from the bro-country era. Change is inevitable, and it's really been on my mind lately. Definitely something we will be exploring further.
The changing soundscape reflects deeper shifts in both the audience and the artists themselves. A new generation of Gen Z artists has emerged, with artists like, for example, Dylan Gossett, Max McNown, Vincent Mason, and this 17-year-old Ty Myers fellow I just heard about a couple weeks ago leading the charge. Their music carries unconscious influences from the early 2000s rock scene, with traces of the Lumineers, John Mayer's rootsy material, and Bon Iver showing through. Even on the brasher mainstream side, disciples of Creed and Nickelback are alive and well on country radio. It may be the music these artists enjoyed as teenagers or, more likely given their youth, it was the music they heard in the car being driven to elementary school.
Much like how Southern Rock of the 1970s naturally surfaced in '90s turbo tonk and 2000s country rock, these influences come from cultural exposure—the music their parents played, what was blaring from speakers at sports games, what they heard on the radio growing up, movie soundtracks, and whatever was in the air in those years. The milieu of non-country influences mixing with country music gives each era its distinctive flavor. While there will always be a place for pure traditional country, outside influences inevitably merge into the genre. It's simply human nature. I have in mind trying to highlight certain non-genre records from the '00s/'10s that are crucial to understanding some of the new sounds being incorporated into the genre's mainstream.
As a counterbalance, and one that is far more aligned with my taste, I will be highlighting how this diverse age allows for more traditional tones to still have important heft in the sounds of the mainstream. The success of Zach Top is exciting, but what's more exciting about it is how it happens simultaneously with the extreme pop crossover material of many other Nashville figures. This coexistence hasn't been the case for a long while, if ever. I can't claim to cover the entirety of the country music umbrella, but by aiming to represent the big ticket items in each part of the tent while painting with the revealing light of the historical gaze, hopefully the whole picture becomes clear.
This organic evolution makes tracking the genre's development particularly fascinating. No one's forcing these changes from above; they're emerging naturally from a new generation of artists, as well as shifting mediums adjusting the manner in which audiences find each other. As 2025 begins, these shifts warrant careful observation and thoughtful analysis. The story of country music keeps expanding, and Today I Heard will be here to document where it goes next.
Thanks for reading,
Joe