And while devoted country fans often decry these performances as selling out country music (selling its soul, as they often say, in many cases unaware they are invoking a musical play on words), these performers draw audiences who otherwise might not tune in for a country show. In 2014, for instance, both Meghan Trainor and Ariana Grande sang on the show. One tried-and-true technique they have adopted is incorporating musical stars from the pop world. The producers for a CMA awards broadcast are, first and foremost, putting on a televised special, and one of their main goals is to increase the audience size and cultural impact of the show. On the other hand, the performance subtly rewrote country music's sonic heritage through a legacy of soul music and other predominantly black performance traditions.Įven before the first notes of “Tennessee Whiskey” sounded, Chris Stapleton's CMA performance had broken with country tradition. On the one hand, the performance enacted a renewal of traditions and roots in country music that reinforced the distinctive otherness of the genre from all other popular music traditions and disavowed pop-crossover music. 5 Within the context of country music circa 2015, Stapleton's performance, and others in the same general mode, simultaneously presented two ostensibly contradictory narratives. The racial politics of country music have always been complicated, and never more so than at the time of Stapleton's rise to fame. But, of particular note in this instance, the chord progression Stapleton deployed-at the very moment when he was heralded as country traditionalist reborn-drew explicit connections to soul music. In so doing, he wrote a musical-political statement about the past and present of country music, one that challenged the racial politics of country music and hinted that its future was foreshadowed by its often-disregarded past.Ĭhanging harmonic language within a particular genre of music is hardly newsworthy, as the styles and trends in just about any genre have included prominent chord progressions that evolve or are radically revised over time. Simply put, Stapleton threw out all of the song's V chords. But Stapleton's cover version altered one of the fundamental musical traits of country music that had been present in the earlier versions of the song: he stripped the song of its original chord progression whose tonal harmonic language had long been one of country music's most distinguishing characteristics. 4 Stapleton took home a trio of major awards that night: new artist, album, and male vocalist of the year. 3 Fans touted Stapleton as a welcome antidote to wide-spread contemporaneous pop-crossover trends that had been panned as formulaic bro-country. 2 The moment was heralded by critics and fans alike as a triumph for Stapleton and a celebrated return to roots-oriented, traditional, hard country music. On 4 November 2015, country singer Chris Stapleton, lauded for his allegiance to hard country music, stepped on stage at the Country Music Association annual awards show in Nashville, Tennessee, and knocked out a stunning performance of “Tennessee Whiskey.” 1 Stapleton presented a cover version of that classic country song, which had been recorded by both David Allan Coe and George Jones more than three decades earlier. What emerges in conclusion is a subversive narrative that reinvents modern hard country music through a lineage of R&B and soul. They propose a new historical perspective on the confluence of country and soul in the early 1960s, most memorably realized in the two Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music albums that Ray Charles released in 1962. The analyses presented here, centered on Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson, weave these threads together into a sonic explanation of country music's contradictory senses of genre identity, musical style, and racial politics. In so doing, he presented a musical-political statement about the past and present of country music that challenged its acknowledged racial politics. But Stapleton's cover version rewrote the song over a historically significant soul groove. In 2015, country singer Chris Stapleton, lauded for his allegiance to hard country music, stepped on stage at the Country Music Association annual awards show in Nashville, Tennessee, and knocked out a stunning performance of “Tennessee Whiskey.” The moment was heralded by critics and fans alike as a celebrated return to roots-oriented, traditional, hard country music.
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