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Country Is the New Rock

Music styles have increasingly blended over the past three decades

Don Henley (left) of the Eagles and Garth Brooks Ethan Miller/Getty Images; Kevin Winter/Getty Images for iHeartMedia This story is part of a series on country music as AARP celebrates America.
In the famous Bob's Country Bunker scene from the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd walk into a rowdy bar and ask, “What kind of music do you usually have here?” The response: “Oh, we got both kinds — country and western.” Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. The joke is based on a specific notion — that fans of country music don’t care about (or even acknowledge) other styles of music. If this stereotype was ever true, it isn’t now. Country music has won over lots of fans who previously didn’t care for the genre, and it’s done so partly by embracing sounds and influences from outside the music’s traditional sound. The sort of sounds that caused patrons to throw beer bottles at Jake and Elwood are more welcomed today. “Experimentation in country music isn’t just a trend anymore, it’s almost a norm,” says Beville Dunkerley, head of country industry and artist relations at SiriusXM and Pandora. “It’s inviting more people to enjoy the genre. It’s not just about pickup trucks, tailgate parties, dogs and divorces.” Or as Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler (who turned to country in his solo career) has said: “Country is the new rock ’n’ roll.”

Growth in popularity

To Americans who ignore country, the music’s popularity may be surprising. Forty-eight percent of Americans 55 and older listen to country music at least once per month, according to data compiled by the Country Music Association. Although it’s perceived as a regional music, 49 percent of people who live in the Northeast listen to country; that isn't far behind the South’s figure of 55 percent. The most popular album of 2021 was country: Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: the Double Album, which tallied more than 3.2 million equivalent album units (that takes into account not only purchases but also listens on ). Country accounted for 8.6 percent of album sales last year, which isn’t far behind pop music’s 10.7 percent share, according to MRC Data. And for seven years in a row, country’s streaming growth has increased faster than the industry average for all genres. To take one dramatic example, streaming consumption overall increased by 93 percent in 2015; for country, the increase that same year was 168 percent. On the Pandora service, Today's Country is the number 2 streaming station, behind only the Top 40-oriented Today's Hits, “and every now and then, Today’s Country will jump over Today’s Hits and have the number 1 spot for a month or two,” Dunkerley says. “We’ve seen country grow gradually, then suddenly, for the better part of 30 years, to where it’s pretty much everywhere now. You can’t really avoid it,” says Mike Dungan, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group Nashville. Roughly at the beginning of Dungan's timeline is the release of Garth Brooks’ first album, which sold more than 10 million copies. But the roots of the phenomenon go back farther than that. Entertainment $3 off popcorn and soft drink combos See more Entertainment offers >

Sounds of the 70s

The Eagles didn’t invent country rock — most people credit the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers for that distinction — but they did turn it into a ubiquitous cultural product. The compilation album Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 is the best selling album of all time, at 38 million units, and Hotel California places third on that list, at 26 million. They judiciously incorporated banjo and steel guitar into their music, and huge hits like “Lyin’ Eyes,” “Take It Easy” and “Desperado” normalized twang for a generation of rock fans. In the early ’90s, when was becoming the biggest star in music, he sometimes surprised (and even alienated) people by mentioning Dan Fogelberg, KISS and other noncountry artists as an influence. His crossover success, Dungan explains, was partly because music was “losing the art of the electric guitar,” due to the rise of R&B and . Over the decades, as mainstream guitar bands have become more and more scarce, country has become the best place to scratch a guitar itch. According to Dungan, “the soccer moms with two kids in the back of a minivan” became a core country audience via Garth Brooks, and then branched out into other Nashville artists. By then, “country felt very comfortable to them,” he adds. “All of a sudden, a pedal steel guitar didn’t sound repulsive. The Eagles certainly had a lot to do with that.” Another factor that’s contributed to country’s expansion is the use of algorithms to recommend music on streaming services. When fans relied mostly on the radio to discover new music, stations were programmed by style; a rock station didn’t play country, a country station didn’t play R&B. But a computer algorithm is agnostic; it dispassionately recommends music you might like based on what others listen to, so it might direct you from the Eagles to Morgan Wade, to Eric Church, or Tori Amos to Kacey Musgraves. AARP Membership — $12 for your first year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. More on entertainment AARP NEWSLETTERS %{ newsLetterPromoText }% %{ description }% Subscribe AARP VALUE & MEMBER BENEFITS See more Health & Wellness offers > See more Flights & Vacation Packages offers > See more Finances offers > See more Health & Wellness offers > SAVE MONEY WITH THESE LIMITED-TIME OFFERS