On hootin'-and-hollerin'-core
We have entered a new realm.
There are some musical talents that need a little bit of drawing out, or just some guidance into and through the experience of being a talented songwriter that can express emotions and human conflict. This is natural enough, given how unnatural it is to balance commercial appeal and achieving a fully realized artistic vision. But someone like Benson Boone or the “Married in a Year” guy is absolutely not one of these musicians.
If you’re out of the loop, there’s this guy named Brendan Abernathy who recently went viral for a live performance of a song where he stands on his tippy-toes and does a goofy patriotic salute for some reason. On the merits, it’s a perfectly mid song that sounds like an MCR fanboy attempting a folk tune in the vein of Noah Kahan or Alex Warren. It’s a bit melodramatic and full of lovey-dovey clichés, but the vitriol in response has been exceedingly intense for something so inherently corny. He’s a mostly undeserving victim of a hate train thanks to social media algorithms that are designed to serve us something that will drive us toward derangement instead of topics that we’re passionate about. But I get why people would dunk on this shit, as I’m among the haters, because even Chance the Rapper did a better job of making a marriage song, and I’ve seen better acoustic guitar meltdowns come from Lauryn Hill’s cursed attempt at an unplugged album. For some ungodly reason, whenever I hear this type of music I think of linen fabric.
And Benson Boone is not the next Freddie Mercury. He’s giving “Love: It’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru” vibes and his music makes me want to buy overpriced and cheaply made products.
People will ask, “Why do you hate on this type of music? No one is making you listen to it.” Because it fucking sucks. Art is subjective to a point, but not all music is created as equally valid pursuits of human expression. There are disposable songs that are clearly formulated to chart and they have narrowly commercial and nakedly trend-hopping ambitions. It’s hard to shit on AI for pumping out derivative soulless slop when humans are perfectly capable of replicating these tendencies.
Last week, I came across a video on Instagram that perfectly explained this phenomenon: “We have reached the logical progression from Stomp, Clap, Hey and have moved to Hootin’ and Hollerin’ core.” This genre is characterized by vocalists with a singing range of one octave, artists who have no discernable distinction or artistic quality, and a fanbase who exclusively wears clothes from Target. The songs will ape some signifiers of emotion, but they lack passion. I always think these guys are all Imagine Dragons.
Other acceptable names for this music include:
Youth Pastor Unplugged Core
Non-Denominational Church Songs Core
Old Navy Summer Sales Event Core
“The all-new GMC Sierra, available now at your local auto dealer” Core
It’s like diet Lumineers without the Chelsea Boots and ironic suspenders. The fact that this music is dropping during another looming recession is like salt in the wound.
The Food Industry has been experiencing this for ages. Can we draw any conclusions for the future of art, from that experience? Is the phenomenon similar enough, or does AI have a more thorough quality of impact than the industrialization of food?
The response is OTT but I think people are trying to pre emptively purge whatever comes out of the stomp stomp clap community