Bro-country is the phenomenon you're thinking of, and it has a somewhat complex genesis. We didn't just go from Willie Nelson and Blair Mountain songs to chud-rap in one fell swoop. Even in the '50s and '60s there were competing pop-country subgenres (the Nashville and Bakersfield sounds) replacing the honky-tonk classics and broadly began the commoditization of country music.
Country has been kinda shit since the '90s imo. In the '80s, country was a broad genre but with limited pop relevance. A traditionalist form of country had taken the throne from the pop and outlaw country forms dominant in the 1970s. Enter Garth Brooks, who is wildly successful synthesizing neotraditional country and rock into a pop music product people just seemed to really just like.
Around 1990, two important events happened for country: The FCC changed FM station spacing requirements and Billboard began building charts solely from radio plays rather than record sales. Country music format went wild in the FM band, and soon it became just pop music. FM stations are expensive to run, and you want to play what people will listen to, so you play to the charts.
The thesis here is that country is a popular genre and will follow the whims of popular culture - however the hell that works. In the 1980s there was a synthesis with rock, but obviously nobody broadly gives a shit about rock anymore, so we look to the trajectory of other pop genres over the past few years, and we'll see where this is going: Interesting microgenres you need to be really plugged-in to have the slightest fucking idea about, and a lot of mainstream stuff everywhere else you have to sift the gold out of. It's just that hip-hop and EDM (and all their complex evolution) are more dominant now instead of rock, and artists who like those aesthetics sensibilities are going to adopt those themes for better or worse.
Bro-country is the phenomenon you're thinking of, and it has a somewhat complex genesis. We didn't just go from Willie Nelson and Blair Mountain songs to chud-rap in one fell swoop. Even in the '50s and '60s there were competing pop-country subgenres (the Nashville and Bakersfield sounds) replacing the honky-tonk classics and broadly began the commoditization of country music.
Country has been kinda shit since the '90s imo. In the '80s, country was a broad genre but with limited pop relevance. A traditionalist form of country had taken the throne from the pop and outlaw country forms dominant in the 1970s. Enter Garth Brooks, who is wildly successful synthesizing neotraditional country and rock into a pop music product people just seemed to really just like.
Around 1990, two important events happened for country: The FCC changed FM station spacing requirements and Billboard began building charts solely from radio plays rather than record sales. Country music format went wild in the FM band, and soon it became just pop music. FM stations are expensive to run, and you want to play what people will listen to, so you play to the charts.
The thesis here is that country is a popular genre and will follow the whims of popular culture - however the hell that works. In the 1980s there was a synthesis with rock, but obviously nobody broadly gives a shit about rock anymore, so we look to the trajectory of other pop genres over the past few years, and we'll see where this is going: Interesting microgenres you need to be really plugged-in to have the slightest fucking idea about, and a lot of mainstream stuff everywhere else you have to sift the gold out of. It's just that hip-hop and EDM (and all their complex evolution) are more dominant now instead of rock, and artists who like those aesthetics sensibilities are going to adopt those themes for better or worse.