Do you know this man?
If not, would it help if I mentioned that since 2000 he's sold 20 million albums, 5+ million concert tickets (becoming the first artist to ever sell 1+million tickets in 4 straight years) and won around a dozen awards from various organizations including an American Music Award as Artist of the Year in 2004?
That good friends, is Kenny Chesney, biggest name in music today and it's entirely possible you've never heard his music.
Country is the most popular music format on the radio airwaves and on the concert circuit, and yet MTV and top 40 radio refuse to play their music despite impressive record sales and concert attendance. It's amazing to me that the most popular singer out today is so marginalized to a specific group. I can't think of any other time when the mainstream was so afraid to embrace something so clearly popular and bankable. It's not like these artists don't have crossover appeal; this isn't Merle Haggard or Hank Williams, this is Rascal Flatts, Sugarland, and Tim McGraw, they're not cowboys, they're pop stars in cowboy boots.
Basically, rap has stopped being as fun as it was in the Timbaland, Irv Gotti, Manny Fresh, Neptunes-produced era and the casual fan has sort of moved on which caused the surge in the pop-punk trash heap that included Yellowcard, Fall Out Boy, and the like. Now there is a nu-pop on the charts, with Justin Timberlake, Pussycat Dolls, and Fergie leading the charge, although you couldn't pay me enough money to sit through the entire song "Fergalicious" (oh how I wish I had made that up). The top 40 ground is ripe for the taking and country has the artists to take it over if they were given the opening.
Geez, talking about football and country music...I'm feeling very American right now
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