Tuesday Trivia: Music miscellany

I was thinking about "one-hit wonders" and wondering what happens to artists who don't keep it coming. Then I got off-track a bit, listening to my favorite radio station ("The Bee, WBEE" here in Rochester NY: see Links, at right). A new song came on, one I had only heard once before, a week or so ago. It's a catchy little number by Ray Scott (new to me, never heard of him). His song's called My Kind of Music. The gist of it is, he meets the "perfect" girl, got the ring picked out and all, until he finds out... She doesn't like country music!

The best verse in this song goes something like this:
(almost, but not quite, to the tune of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer")
I asked her if she'd ever heard of Alan Jackson.
She said, "doesn't he sing that 'Where Were You?'?"
I said, yeah, but girl, that man's a living legend!
She said, "Really, I thought he was new."

I can relate to this verse from both sides of the coin. Five years ago I knew almost nothing about country music. I was pretty sure I didn't like it. At the time, I had no idea just how "country" some of my favorite artists were: bands like The Eagles and Lynyrd Skynyrd and such. A couple of pretty serious life changes led me to change my entire music-listening concept, and I ended up very much caught up in modern country music. Not the older stuff, which still seems way too twangy. I started with the obvious crossover artists like Faith Hill and Lonestar, and got deeper into it from there. I have to admit that until 9/11 and "Where Were You?" I didn't really know who Alan Jackson was. Now I can only laugh at the verse I quoted above, thinking about how ignorant I was then. If you want to get me started, ask me about Allison Kraus and Union Station... man, they are just amazing!

Which brings me back to Trivia, the long way around. You wondered where all this was leading, didn't you? Here's my question: Is Rap and Hip-Hop really as bad as I think it is? Or am I just as ignorant about these genres as I was about Country? Twenty years from now will there be "Oldies" stations playing Kill the White Bitches and Gang-rape your Motha? Will there be a whole slew of dudes with -daddy attached to their names in some sort of Hall of Fame? Will The Game Show Network play "Name That Tune" in three F-bombs or less? Should I just go ahead and let my little boys (well, not so little anymore...) listen to this, um, crap? Or is it genius? So tell me, and be honest, do I sound just like my father when I tell my kids, "That's not real music!"? Is this just one more example of the Circle of Life swinging 'round to bite me in the ass?