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RE: I'm a redneck that doesn't like country music
some of the musical arrangements and melodies as well.
I wish I could find the video but some music scholar picked apart about a dozen popular country music songs and showed on a program that they were all essentially the same song from a chord progression standpoint. Lyrics are tough for sure, you need someone with a lot of real life stories for those to have any sort of meaning and this is probably why I appreciate the greats of country like Johnny Cash and Kenny Rogers. The stories they tell are pretty amazing.
The value of predictable chord progressions is that almost anyone can play along. This is community music, a different kind of art.
I myself like to sing more complex stuff, I like the challenges, but in a brand new setting, being able to recognize simple progressions allows me to sit in on songs I have never heard before. That has enormous value, and is true of most folk music I believe.
Lyrics are a whole other thing. The best lyrics are usually very simple, and simple is very hard to write. I can't write lyrics at all, even though I am a poet.