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Why country singers want to go pop
Sep. 8th, 2010 08:47 amWhy country singers want to go pop.
Dottie West 1968 ("I Was Born A Country Girl"):
Dottie West 1979:
[EDIT: Well, YouTube killed the clip: It might have been a live version of "You Pick Me Up (And Put Me Down)" with her look at its most disco. Anyway, here's "A Lesson In Leavin'" from probably about a year later.
And here's a link to a 1979 version of "We've Got Tonight"; a little more staid, but still a look that's a drastic shift from 1968.]
But I don't claim to know anything about Dottie West or about fashion, and anyway, few stories are ever simple or simply linear; e.g., here's Dottie in 1967 ("Here Comes My Baby"):
( Dottie West: Here Comes My Baby )
And in 1965, with her sound bleeding into old-style r&b ("There's Someone Who's Missing"):
( Dottie West and Boots Randolph: There's Someone Who's Missing )
(I'm looking at all these while exploring the idea that periodically country moves into pop in order to shake its sense of stodginess and squareness, but that also there are countermoves to try to find a specifically country form of hipness. In the late '90s you get Faith Hill and the Dixie Chicks and Shania Twain pushing their style into glamour, while maybe you get... I don't know, would Toby Keith and Brooks & Dunn qualify as a countermove into country hipness? Big & Rich, in the '00s? Meanwhile, Taylor Swift is taking the Faith 'n' Dixie Chick glamour rebellion in her own idiosyncratic direction. Are there any country guys who might be said to be currently doing this?)
Dottie West 1968 ("I Was Born A Country Girl"):
Dottie West 1979:
[EDIT: Well, YouTube killed the clip: It might have been a live version of "You Pick Me Up (And Put Me Down)" with her look at its most disco. Anyway, here's "A Lesson In Leavin'" from probably about a year later.
And here's a link to a 1979 version of "We've Got Tonight"; a little more staid, but still a look that's a drastic shift from 1968.]
But I don't claim to know anything about Dottie West or about fashion, and anyway, few stories are ever simple or simply linear; e.g., here's Dottie in 1967 ("Here Comes My Baby"):
( Dottie West: Here Comes My Baby )
And in 1965, with her sound bleeding into old-style r&b ("There's Someone Who's Missing"):
( Dottie West and Boots Randolph: There's Someone Who's Missing )
(I'm looking at all these while exploring the idea that periodically country moves into pop in order to shake its sense of stodginess and squareness, but that also there are countermoves to try to find a specifically country form of hipness. In the late '90s you get Faith Hill and the Dixie Chicks and Shania Twain pushing their style into glamour, while maybe you get... I don't know, would Toby Keith and Brooks & Dunn qualify as a countermove into country hipness? Big & Rich, in the '00s? Meanwhile, Taylor Swift is taking the Faith 'n' Dixie Chick glamour rebellion in her own idiosyncratic direction. Are there any country guys who might be said to be currently doing this?)
