Star Trek, Pop Music Going To The Country, and Joyce Carol Oates' Butcher: A Pop Culture Break

I am not the world's greatest Star Trek fan, but this seemed like the best reason to get Paramount+. Reading ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ is over. Now Alex Kurtzman readies for ‘Starfleet Academy’ and ‘Section 31’. I have this schzoid thing going on with Star Trek. On one side, I like Roddenberry's optimism for the future, and on the other this leaves the characters one-dimensional. There is also a problem I have with science fiction in general, I am a fan of both Robert Heinlein and William Gibson.

Likewise, I have never considered myself a country music fan. I do like Hank Williams Sr, Jr, and III; Johnny Cash; Emmylou Harris; Jimmy Rodgers: Sturgill Simpson, Waylon Jennings; Margo Price. Having lived through (and worked in a bar that tried to latch onto the perceived trend) Urban Cowboy, I find myself skeptical of The Guardian's Ten-gallon hits! Why country is the biggest pop music craze of 2024. Country went to town and hooked up with the blues. The article says severla things that might make this different than 40 years; one is that country does story songs (which is one thing I ahve always liked).

Three weeks ago, A Bar Song (Tipsy) went to No 1 on the US country chart, displacing Texas Hold ’Em – the first time in history there had been two consecutive country No 1s by Black artists. It’s all a far cry from even a few years ago, when Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road was removed from the country chart just as it was about to reach the top on the spurious grounds that it did not include “enough elements of today’s country music”. (Billboard denied that race had played any part in the decision.)

“There’s been a change,” says Hannaby. “They’ve been called out. There’s still a problem – I’ve seen a lot of negative comments online about the Beyoncé album and I’m sure that’s affected by racism – but the industry, I think, has changed. As a whole, everyone I know is loving the Dasha track, Beyoncé’s work, Post Malone and Morgan Wallen; radio play is actually happening for them.”

The country-adjacent pivot seems to be one of 2024’s big pop trends. In the wake of Cowboy Carter, Lana Del Rey announced her next album would focus on country music, while Post Malone’s collaboration with Wallen represents a distinct step away from the guitar-pop of his most recent album, Austin, let alone his trap-influenced beginnings.

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Dasha says the appeal of country to artists from other genres is straightforward: “Country keeps it so grounded and so down-home. It’s not talking about unrelatable, high-level things – country’s for normal people that work 9-to-5 and have hard lifestyles. I feel like that brings a level of authenticity and people are wanting to tap into that again. Honestly, by going into country with my music, I feel like my songwriting has gotten to bloom; it’s more authentically me. Before, I had to write pop lyrics; it was a tighter box I had to live in. Now that it’s country, I feel like the world is my oyster with lyrics.” 

A taste of a review of Joyce Carol Oates's latest novel 

1. Butcher by Joyce Carol Oates
(Knopf)

4 Rave • 2 Positive

“The book has the feverish energy, narrative propulsion and descriptive amplitude—sometimes to excess—of much of her earlier work … Undoubtedly one of her most surreal and gruesome works, sparing no repulsive detail or nefarious impulse. In the end, though, the purview of the novel is larger than one might think, becoming an empathic and discerning commentary on women’s rights, the abuses of patriarchy and the servitude of the poor and disenfranchised. Oates, as is her wont, succeeds in creating a world that is apart from our own yet familiar, making it impossible to dismiss her observations about twisted natures and random acts of violence.”

I am, of course, an Oates fan. 

Check it all out. Sorry about this post being such a dog's breakfast.

sch 5/30