’90s Country

My father-in-law calls some of the country music made in the 1990s “L.A. Country,” referring to the ways the big-league artists — your Garths, your Alans, et al. — cleaned up their sonic acts to become more palatable for a wider audience. So it goes; all of that very much happened and it set the stage for today’s pop country, but it doesn’t paint a complete picture. The bones of classic, pre-cassette country music were the same as they’d always been: sadness, desperation, hope through struggle, struggling to hope, and love as dangerous and stupid as it can get. Yes, the clean production was there, cheesy keyboards and gated reverb aplenty, but existing simultaneously was the rejection of the clean; dirty and dry guitars, unadorned vocals, everything close to the mic. It was a strange, whiplashing time to be a fan of Country music, but as the battle between tradition and reinvention continues, we can see the ’90s as a time when Country reenergized its bruised and broken heart.