If you live in America, there’s a high probability that you have had the misfortune of passing through radio stations and coming across a country station that was playing a loud, gaudy song about trucks, painted on jeans, and beer. I think it’s fair to say that, at this point, this type of country music has become a huge part of the country music image. In the manner that is chic to pen insulting genre names, “bro-country" was born just as “brostep” and “brocore” before it. The songs are simple and repetitive (internally and between songs), the southern accents are thick, the product placement is obvious. “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?” indeed. Hank III might, though.

For the sake of this post, the type of music I’m referring to is the type made by Florida Georgia Line, Blake Shelton, and even “country rap” like The Lacs. This is something that is oppressively widespread now and the term “bro-country” wasn’t coined until 2013, but it’s clear that it wasn’t born in a vacuum.

Hearing this description of the genre, one might wonder why anyone would bother listening to this music. To figure this out, one must ask: what does this music offer that other music does not? What did older country music offer and is it being offered elsewhere?

Popular rock music in the past 20 years or so hasn’t encompassed a lot of different social uses. The post-Nirvana, post-grunge pop rock landscape was gritty and severe. Eventually that gave way to a tackier, but more sensitive, landscape: Creed, Nickleback, Three Days Grace. Nu-metal and its disciples brought the angst up a lot and the reaction to that music since then has left the rock songs popular enough to get into the pop music stations looking shy, hip, and expressive: think MGMT or even Foster the People.

But there hasn’t been much in the way of popular rock music geared toward light-heartedness and partying (unless you want to count Andrew WK). Classic and 80’s rock had this in spades. To this day, those genres are white people party music. It’s big and over-the-top and cheesy but not necessary obsessed with sounding serious. It looks silly and it is and that is the purpose that it serves.

By most metrics, these bro-country songs are rock songs in that same vein. They often are loud, arena-style guitar-driven songs with guitar solos in them. They are closer to the archetype of classic rock than they are to Waylon and Willie and the boys. Sure, popular hip-hop music deals a lot with partying, but its clear from the lyrics that they are at an entirely different kind of party. Bro-country parties romanticize the pastoral (though Blake Shelton does end up in the club in the video I linked) as well as aspects of the American middle class. Still, the borrowing from hip-hop is clear and never hidden. Hell, Nelly is in that Florida Georgia Line I linked to.

"Heartbreak Dream" Betty Who 2014

"Poptimism" is definitely something that's engulfing the music scene (regardless of whether you're talking about the underground or the mainstream, it's everywhere).  Pop music, for the first time in a very long time, is actually cool.  Who'da ever thunk.  With this insurgence of poptimism there has also been a lot of genre blending: mainstream pop becomes more twee or minimal (Of Monsters & Men had two Billboard Hot 100 hits, Beyonce's new album, as well as Britney's borrow heavily from Lorde and Kelela's minimalist electronic styles, Lana Del Rey finally breaks through to a larger audience and is no longer just a weird, controversial talking point on Pitchfork) while alternative music becomes more polished (Haim is basically a girl version of Hanson, The Flaming Lips collaborate with both Ke$ha and Miley Cyrus, London Grammar, Wild Beasts, Sondre Lerche and a slew of others cover "Wrecking Ball", while dance pop chanteuse Ellie Goulding covers every popular alt. rock song from the past ten years).  Stereogum coined a term for all these genres melting together to create one big genre, and that genre is the "monogenre".  They used Haim and Lorde as examples of two acts who benefit from having pop sensibilities and mainstream success, as well as indie cred, as part of their weekly column "This Week in Pop" (a column that, in and of itself, represents the reality of the monogenre and the saturation of poptimism into alternative culture).  A week later, those very same acts cemented the reality of the monogenre when they performed together for VH1's You Oughta Know concert, doing a cover of a Sheryl Crow song... because why not.

New York-based Australian singer-songwriter Betty Who, I think, is the embodiment of the post-genre music scene.  In later edition of Stereogum's This Week in Pop, they described "Heartbreak Dream" as being the kind of song that could just as easily be something by Katy Perry or Tegan & Sara (although, given the quality of T&S's recent output, those two acts are not so dissimilar anymore).  The production reminds me a bit of The Postal Service or The Blow from days of yore, while the songwriting obviously is that of someone who came of age in the post-"Hot 'n' Cold" world.  Betty Who cites Robyn, Miley Cyrus, and the aforementioned Katy Perry as major influences, saying "(They) make pop that’s generational. They’re making the pop music of our generation that’s going to stick around. People are going to look back and be like, ‘Oh my God, it’s Robyn’s Body Talk album. That’s one of the best pop albums of the last 10 years.'"