(In celebration of my 10,000th post at IMWAN, I am stepping outside of my usual haunts and subjects to touch on something that's a big part of my life; my love for country music.)

Among music fans, there’s probably no genre that gets maligned more than country. Its fans are commonly derided and its quality is mocked. However, I’ve noticed in my own life that there is a significant tendency for music fans to appreciate country music more as they age. I think that this is a logical progression, and here’s why.

Even though country music is often labeled as mournful or depressing, I contend that nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a demonstrably false stereotype. Country music is about life and emotion, family and friends, the things we value most. It’s the most positive music being made today. It’s about taking care of one another, how much mamas and daddies love their kids, the struggles of raising a family, doing right by each other, leaving home for the first time, coming back home when we need our family, and why the results are worth the hardships and pain we all go through.

Yeah, there’s some sinning thrown in sometimes, some goofiness here and there. You have to have a sense of humor to get through life, after all. Sometimes love is lost, but then sometimes it’s found again. The overall message, though, is one of hope and redemption, and that’s why the older we get, the more we value country music. The older we get, the more we want those things that country music exemplifies; spending Saturday night on the back porch with friends and family, laughing together at life’s little inanities, realizing that making love is far better than having sex, and knowing that there are people in your life to support you when the hard times come.

Now I know music aficionados of all kinds can and will debate the quality of the music itself, the skill of the performers, and so on, but the heart of country music cannot be debated or denied. It’s about all of those things that matter most to us; I think it just takes some people a lot more living before they realize that it’s really all about them.

Kevin,
Congratulations on your 10,000 posts. That's a lot of posting!

I don't find myself liking country music any more now than I did 20 or 30 years ago, but I do appreciate the virtues you describe. I think, for me, I will get deeper into blues as I age. I've always loved them, but I find as I get a bit older I'm turning more and more back to them, at least at certain points. I still love rock, and am still listening to and seeking new bands, but it's a comfort knowing the blues are always just a step away.

I tend to appreciate older country music these days--mostly because we're talking about some flat-out great songwriting. Country music didn't start to get lame until the 80's or so (much like a lot of music) when the songs themselves started to become, well, sappy and dumb. Country artists these days I can either take or leave...Sugarland is terrific, but I never got the whole Garth Brooks thing. There are also those country artists who were never quite country--Rosanne Cash is a good example.

No I won't and no I don't. I like classic soul and blues the best and the older I get the more I listen to that.

I've actually been listening to harder, louder rock as I get older.

I've always liked country music, even since I was little. Country music people tend to be really great musicians - a lot of country guitarists are massively underrated, but are often more accomplished players than their hard rock counterparts who get all the publicity, magazine covers, etc.

Kevin, I believe you hit it on the head.
I've developed more appreciation for the genre - particularly the "outlaw" over the years. It has not replaced any of my other loves (indeed, I have also grown to listen to metal more as well, when I avoided it like the plague as a teen in the 80s). Country has simply slid neatly into the rotation stew alongside jazz (another development of the last 10 years), punk, Dead, classic rock, blues, soul, funk, blah blah blah. I actually gravitate more to roots music in general...the older the better.
I even have begun to appreciate 'modern country'. As mentioned there are some awesome guitarists who are unheralded, but in many ways are more talented than their shredding brethren.

I also believe Country, as well as, GASP, Contemporary Christian, has become the place for some of the best pop songs, the "classic" style of the Eagles, etc.. Great structure and hooks, that you simply don't see as reliably in modern pop releases.

I think part of it, is that as I grow older, besides the very salient points Kevin outlined, I also really don't care what others think of my listening habits. I'm pleased to turn someone on to something they never heard before, but it makes no difference whether anyone else likes it or not. I find a lot of freedom in that.

I'm not a country fan (though I do like lots of classic country rock). I have gotten more into classic jazz as I've aged, though.

Very true! Just this morning I was playing The Blues Brothers' Briefcase Full of Blues album on the way into work. I had it on vinyl when it first came out and loved it, but then I went through a hipper-than-thou period where I guess I didn't think it was "cool" to listen to something so popular. Well, that was my loss. Now I don't care what anyone thinks of my taste, and I get to enjoy a lot more music.

As for country music, I like it best in small doses (like the hour or so that I get when I visit my hand therapist) but like others here I do appreciate it more as I get older, especially the slice-of-life lyrics.

Outlaw Country is great stuff. I was always an Eagles fan, so tracking backward wasn't hard for me. What really got me into opening my mind, though, was the movie "Walk The Line". Cash was a genius. That got me to discover Willie, Hag, Waylon, and most recently Kris.

But play me anything with a "fiddle", and I'll vomit. That's where my tolerance shuts off.

And I'll tell you something else...Elvis was a uniformly great Country artist in the 70's (at least in those spurts where the drugs didn't wipe out his voice). I'd put "Just Pretend", "For The Good Times" and "Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues" up against anything else that came out in that era.

George Jones rules. The greatest singer ever IMHO.

I've got plenty of country music in the Archives, both old and new. Not always my first pick, but certainly sometimes I'm in the mood for Patsy Cline or Merle Haggard or Charley Pride, or even Randy Travis or (gasp!) Garth Brooks. Always liked to throw a country song onto my mix tapes too.

P.S. Apropos of nothing, try comparing the riff of Shania's "Man! I Feel Like a Woman" to Aersomith's "Uncle Salty" sometime.

Randy Travis is very underrated.....

I don't like country music any more than I used to. And I'm older than you!

I find my appreciation for jazz and classical is increasing in my old age.

That said, I've liked non-Nashville-machine country for some time -- from the Eagles to Steve Earle to Blue Rodeo to Hank Williams Sr. to Johnny Cash to Dwight Yoakam to Dixie Chicks. And I do like a country twang in music (i.e. Ryan Adams, Wilco, Neko Case, etc.). BUT I have a hard time stomaching Hallmark-esque new country songs. I like the odd song here and there, but for the most part don't like shallow emotional manipulation ('I Hope You Dance' is an exception).

Thanks for bringing up this point, which I should have. I don't see it as supplanting anything else so much as people gaining appreciation for it.

And you always will be.

I'm with RoyalScam about Outlaw Country, in that I have come to appreciate many (such as Johnny Cash) much more than I did when I was younger. I like Country when it has a bit of a rough edge to it, instead of being too smooth and over-produced.

It's been a long time since I associated country with sorrow and heartbreak. The last time I listened to much country music (a few years back, before the local cable provider dropped the country station) it was largely good time music where the good old boys presented manifestos in rhymed couplets of the down home American way of life they love as if they were gunning for beer or pickup truck commercial soundtracks and the lovestruck girls shot through gauzy filters wandered through woodland gardens in summer dresses and a certain amount of women's anger masquerading as empowerment.

Musically country has appropriated the backbeat, bass lines and nonoffensive amount of guitar distortion from 70s rock layered over with southern dialects and fiddles, steel guitar and mandolin, sons of the Eagles and Poco, grandchildren of Buffalo Springfield. The musicianship is always topnotch, as it always has been, Nashville cats and all that.

Pip, accurate, articulate, and amusing summation! Love it.

I've posted previously (it must have been nearly three years ago by now) about how a Loretta Lynn compilation CD came into my life for a couple of days and how fascinated I was by the music and especially her songwriting, which communicated a lifestyle and a culture seemingly about a million miles from my own day-to-day existance. To that extent, I still liken it (in a good way) to those few rap songs that communicate exactly the same things--that give me a little bit of insight into the lives of others. Of course, back when I was a teenager and determining my primary musical tastes which have pretty much followed me into adulthood, I was looking for music that I could identify with and somehow try to relate to my life; growing up in the suburbs, rap and country music weren't it.

Pip, once more I don't know why I bother posting. Well done.