Bad Music? Prejudice? Or, Both? (Give Me A Break)

Wouldn't you know that this angle would come from New Yorkers at The Village Voice?

"Here's the thing: pop music, as it exists in 2005, is basically black music, and it has been for some time. Country music is enormously popular. But country music is hugely, overwhelmingly white enough that it becomes an obvious target for the people who don't buy it, almost a punchline in itself. No matter how many millions of albums Nashville's country industry sells every year, it still has a massive jones to sell to the people who don't buy it, who treat it like a joke. And so they do stuff like holding the CMAs in New York and bringing in Elton John. But Nashville executives know that country won't stop being such a huge target until it stops being so goddam white. And there's the problem."

If this is the PR fallout from taking the CMA Awards to Gotham, I can't wait to get back to Music City next year. (The best part of the story are the comments folks are adding in response to it, so read all the way down to the end.)