I concede, it’s not all about giving up and hard-luck/pain mongering. There are still quite a number of country artists that I like—although, I find myself hesitant to use ‘country’ to describe their music anymore; maybe we can call it, “Rural Americana.”

But, admittedly, I have a strong biases and bring a lot of personal baggage to the discussion of country music.

I can’t meet you halfway on the pop-country thing though! That shit hurts me.