When genres evolve, it’s only natural that some listeners get left behind. We all tend to latch onto what we know and struggle to “get with the times” 100% of the time. Even visionary musicians sometimes find it difficult to keep up with how genres change across generations. Legends Linda Ronstadt and Tom Petty had this issue when it came to the modern equivalent of country music.
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Linda Ronstadt and Tom Petty’s Issue With Modern Country Music
Now, I reckon it would be hard to understand the modern popification of country music when you were around during the genre’s potent heyday. Both Ronstadt and Petty were there for the 1960s and 1970s country scene, a time when you couldn’t mistake a country artist for anyone else.
Both artists also have a lot to thank country music for. Though Ronstadt and Petty are considered rockers, their sounds are imbued with a lot of twangy elements. They both worked with legendary country artists like Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson. They got a firsthand view of what a through-and-through country artist was like.
All in all, they respected the purity of country when they were coming up and winced at the way pop music was infiltrating the scene.
“I don’t listen to modern country music,” Ronstadt once said. “Don’t care for it particularly. I like old country music, when it still came out of the country. What they call country music now is what I call Midwest mall-crawler music. You go into big-box stores and come out with huge pushcarts of things.”
Petty concurred with Ronstadt that the term “country music” was getting a little too loose for his liking.
“We’re kind of interested in all kinds of American music,” Petty added to that point. “Pure forms of it. Not what they would call country today. Most of what they would call country today is just bad rock groups with a fiddle. The stuff that we liked was late 1950s, early 1960s stuff. We’re a rock and roll band, but a lot of the roots of rock and roll come from country.”
While modern country music has certainly widened the genre’s market, there is something to Ronstadt and Petty’s point. The genre is getting less and less finite as the years go on. Many classic country fans would feel the same as these two legends, preferring to look back rather than be in the present.
Even country artists themselves are seeing a return to form. Many younger talents are trying to bring back country’s potency, rivaling the pop-forward sound that has become commonplace.
(Photo by Larry Hulst/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)