The Nashville Sound Subgenre Of Country Music

In the 1960s, the country music industry expanded to contemporary music like pop, jazz, and rock and roll. Country music was mainly listened to and enjoyed by urban folk. However, urban folk did not appreciate county music. More people began to listen to modern music, and the music business began losing its popularity and audience. The industry needed to find a way to attract a bigger audience to the genre. The Country Music Association decided to add pop music elements into country music, such as a smoother sound, backing vocals, string arrangements, and polished singing, to try to draw a bigger audience to the country music genre. By adding more modern music elements such as pop, they will be able to make country music mainstream and attract

The Nashville Sound began to use more modern-day music elements from different genres to become mainstream. The laboring-class audience did not consider the Nashville Sound subgenre of country music because of these changes. They were upset that the Country Music Association was turning away from traditional country music and made these changes to make money and be marketable. "One particularly passionate fan crystallized the oppositional sentiment by arguing that country music was the authentic music of the specifically rural and working-class people of America and that the musical changes brought about by the Nashville sound were destroying this connection." (Hill 2011:298) Fans boycotted the Nashville Sound and argued that Country Music belonged to the working-class and rural audiences. According to a country music fan's letter, "Country Music belongs first to the laboring and rural people of this country. They have no musical training and often can’t even read music, but when the day’s work is done they can take down the old guitar, banjo, or fiddle and play the simple songs that tell about their way of life in a fashion that the finest symphony orchestras in the world can never imitate. They don’t want your horns or drums—they don’t want your chorus singing in the background or even your Jordanaires making little noises behind them. All that stuff is for the city people who jumped on the country music bandwagon when there turned out to be so much money in it." (Kennison