The Genre The New Zealand Media Forgot

If it's all possible that a sector of New Zealand's journalists are more incompetent than our sports Journalists then it has to be our music Journos.

Lets take the 90's for example.

Thru their reporting on the international music scene, we heard about the rise of Grunge, we heard how hiphop and Rap artists were taking the world by storm, we heard about Robbie Williams and how cool he was.

Yet the rise of one Genre never made the media here. If I was to say, this style of music was the most popular form of music in the USA in the 90's, and it's top artist was the fastest selling artist in History and played to more people to any other artist, and he has now become the top selling solo artist of all time, if your from New Zealand, thanks to our media you wouldn't know who I was talking about.

If I was to say to New Zealanders , that a poll of Seattle High School students, on who they would love to see in concert the most, featured this guy at the top, If I was also to say that the demographic for this music form is 17-35 Urban college educated females, if I was to say that this Genre got respect for it's artists songs about Gay Rights, Racial Equality, Woman rights and the environment, New Zealanders still wouldn't know what genre I was talking about.

Why, because its so easy for them to just play on the stereotype and make jokes about people with no teeth or brains and pickup trucks. In 1993 a group of Polytech students from Christchurch training to be disjockeys, had access to a radio frequency and picked this Genre, for two months they did no research and ended up playing music from around 60 years ago and played satirical songs instead, when told about what artists they should play, they just brushed it off and had no idea what they should play.

Unfortunately this is still going on in the 21st century, the genre is treated as a joke, CD stores are in a time warp, having the same artists they would of had 40 years ago, not one NZ Journo could name the top artists today in this genre, instead they make lame jokes.

The sad thing is, the most popular New Zealand artist ever with sales of 8 million in the USA alone, gets no credit for his achievements, the kiwi who hosts a cable music show with 30 million subscribers also gets no air time, the New Zealand manager of one of the most successful artists ever has never got credit.

So to Answer my questions to the kiwi readers of this blog.

The most popular Genre in the states in the 90's was Country Music.

The most popular artist was Garth Brooks a country singer.

More people attended country music concerts in the states than any other form of music.

Seattle High School students voted Garth Brooks ahead of Nirvana and Pearl Jam as who they would love to see the most.

Garth, The Dixie Chicks and Martina McBride wrote songs about Gay Rights, racial equality, Woman Rights and the Environment.

Keith Urban is our most successful artist ever, not Scribe.

Kelly Wells is the Kiwi who hosts a show on CMT.

It was a Kiwi who managed Alan Jackson's first three albums.

The average country fan in the states is aged between 17-35, female, from the city and is college educated.

So Please New Zealand Journos, if sometime in the future you are going to report on Country Music, how about doing some research and getting some facts right, now excuse me I'm off to pluck the chickens and marry my cousin.

Posted in: Country Music