[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o&w=560&h=315]

I was in the Nashville airport for a while on Saturday. The soundtrack in the airport is pop country music. I never listen to pop country. I’m not much of a country fan in general, but when I do listen to it, it’s alt-country and outlaw country, plus classics like Merle Haggard, Willie and Waylon, et al. It was awful, this pop country. Every song sounded exactly the same. Every one. I finally went to the airport bar and had a glass of Woodford Reserve and thought of Waylon.

My son Matt has the most eclectic taste in music of anyone I know. He likes alt-country, but hates pop country. I know this because I complained that pop country sounds so boring and monotonous to me. “That’s because it is,” he said.

Matt put me on to the mash-up above, saying it exposes how miserably formulaic mainstream country music has become. Not knowing any of these songs prior to hearing it, it’s really striking how interchangeable they are. Listening to that mash-up approximated two hours of sitting in the Nashville airport hearing the same song over and over. They could have put that mash-up on the tape loop and nobody would have been the wiser.