For many, of course, country music is an oxymoron. But a few terrific musicians do leap to mind.

Nancy Griffith, Emmy Lou Harris and Roseanne Cash, for example.

I'd be curious to hear Hank Williams reaction to Hank Jr's opening act at the Sarah Palin concerts.

I'm hoping he is spinning in his grave right now at the very thought of it..

george walton

I think Brown's larger point that much of "country" music increasingly borrows from pop or rock is right on.  The artists mentioned above belong in a different category than most of today's country music.  And yes, I thought the same thing about Hank Sr.!  What a travesty his son has become.

"Country" top 40 has as much relation to country music as the "Rock" top 40 has to do with rock & roll. Browne's lament at the sad state of Nashville's most popular music could have been written a decade ago, or a decade before that, or a decade before that. Yes, the worst of the popular "country" music today is flabbier and dumber than ever. But it's not like Waylon and Willie were rebelling against a Nashville establishment that produced fantastic music.

The irony is that rock & roll is effectively dead, outside of your nearest bar band playing covers on a Thursday night. But in the shadow of Nashville, the artists who've tried to keep alive the authentic voice of country music are playing the best rock & roll in several decades, bringing that music full circle back to its roots. Heck, I would argue that country today is the most vibrant and important popular music in America today. Not the "country" music of Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw, but the country music of Jon Langford and Ryan Adams and Neko Case -- and Robert Earl Keene and Junior Brown and James McMurtry and Emmylou Harris and even Willie. Hell, some of the best recent albums by artists who came out of the rock or folk tents have had a decidedly country flavor, including great recent work by John Hiatt, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Jimmy Buffett.

(You might argue that this last category of "good rock or folk becoming country" is more about artists like Dyland and Springsteen playing up a blues influence, but what in the end is country music if not white guys trying to play blues?)

Also, bluegrass is as healthy as ever, rockabilly is having a bit of a renaissance, and as long as those two musics are healthy, country music will be just fine. We may not hear the good stuff on commercial radio, but when have we ever?

Final point: Anyone who cares about country music needs to bookmark http://www.kfat.com/, where you can listen to tapes of late 1970s and early '80s broadcasts by KFAT from Gilroy, California, streamed online. Best damn radio station ever, though KFAT alum Bill Goldsmith's internet channel Radio Paradise is pretty terrific.

"I think country was going pop well before 9/11."

Indeed.  Jennings was singing "I don't think Hank done it this way" in 1975.

I trace the beginning of country's decline as a vital musical genre to the late 60s, a time when, ironically, mainstream rockers like Dylan, the Byrds, the Band, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Commander Cody, the Grateful Dead and the Flying Burrito Brothers took on the mantle of preservers of the country tradition in music.  Country music could not have evolved as it did absent the social and geographical isolation of working class southerners (and westerners like Buck Owens and the transplanted Okie Merle Haggard), much as classic R&B and soul were a product of the racially segregated society of the mid-20th century.  The social milieu from which country sprang no longer exists, so it's really no surprise that the music isn't the same as it was.

Thankfully, we do have the alt-country and Americana artists that Rhubarb cites, to keep the flame alive.  I would add a few personal favorites, not so much straight country as country-influenced, like Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett and the Drive-By Truckers.  The music's still there.  You just have to make the effort to find it.

There's still great country music being played by the likes of many of the people identified in earlier comments, as well as (in no particular order):

* Red Meat (http://redmeat.net)

* BR5-49 (http://br549.com)

* Dwight Yoakam

* Big Smith (http://www.bigsmithband.com, although they're more bluegrass-y)

There's also the now relatively mature alt-country/Americana/"y'all"ternative type of bands that originated with Uncle Tupelo (and early Wilco), and includes (although a lot of these bands may dislike the categorization):

* Jim Lauderdale

* Bobby Bare, Jr.

* The Bottle Rockets

* Avett Brothers

* Old Crow Medicine Show

* Whiskeytown/Ryan Adams

Etc. etc.  There's still all kinds of great country music.  But it's just like any other genre with a significant mainstream: it's been productized and packaged to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which is why it merges with all of the other productized and packaged music.

There's nothing wrong with that: I just don't listen to it, so it's no skin off my back.  And I get to see my favorite acts in smaller clubs with a couple hundred (at a big show!) of my closest friends.