[Maritime Q-Scout]

Stranger,

There you make some valid points, and I too hate Shania Twain. However, you don't have bands that sound like the Beatles anymore, or Lynard Skynard, or Genesis, or the Eagles, or whomever was big in the past. The music industry is in constant evolution. Is it fair to blame one catalyst for change who started to influence the scene almost 20 years ago, to the Big & Riches, and Toby Keith's of today? Was it a factor? Undoubtably. But the factor, put the fall of the ole country music on his shoulders? I don't think so. In fairness I think a change in country music was coming, with the expansion of FM radio, music videos, and then the internet, country went from being that weird, one-off, genre, to something that more people listen to and enjoy. The evolution was happening with or without Garth.

The other side of the coin is that people don't think of modern country music, or "new country" with the same viewpoint as the old joke "what do you get when you play country music backwards? You get your wife back, you get your house back, you get your dog back, you get your truck back . . . "

If you don't like Garth, that's fine by me (I wish 50,000+ less people liked him when he sold out the Metro Centre on back to back to back to back nights in 1996), I don't like the Smashing Pumpkins and get a lot of head for being a teenager from the 90's who think Billy Corgan's voice is the worst thing on the planet and he sounds like a dying mule.

To each their own