Music

Weiser-Schlesinger: Why I don’t care that Luke Bryan is coming to the Carrier Dome

I admit: I don’t really listen to or have any desire to get into country music.

Sure, I’ve heard it in passing plenty of times before; I’ve visited rural areas in the South and in New York, so I’ve had some basic exposure to what’s new and recent in country music.

As the news came out this week that country-pop sensation Luke Bryan will be this spring’s “big get” at the Carrier Dome to follow up the sold-out, record-breaking Billy Joel performance this past spring, my only response was, “Eh, I probably won’t be buying tickets.”

Sure, this probably sounds hypocritical in comparison to my usual mantra of “give everything and anything a shot,” as I’ve said in some of my other columns. But from what little I’ve heard from the “bro-country” genre, including some of Bryan’s stuff (the cover boy of the genre in many ways), I just can’t bring myself to care about him or modern mainstream country music as a whole.

Luke Bryan is a huge part of the movement today to bring the “country” back into country music — making music about drinking beer, driving a truck and objectifying women to the point where nearly every song by the genre’s poster boys sounds indistinguishable to untrained ears. (Trained ears in “bro-country” are far better at this, I’m sure.)



So when I say I’m not going to Luke Bryan’s performance at the Dome this April, it’s not me protesting against the country genre as a whole; I don’t hate people that like country music, nor do I wish it would go away or anything like that. I’m just not into country.

Brett Weiser-Schlesinger is a sophomore newspaper and online journalism major. He can be reached by email at bweisers@syr.edu or by Twitter at @brettws.





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