I don't know where "bro country" came from or what it really means, but a lot of those guys are my buddies and I support their music. Within country there are lots of styles: stone-cold country, like Brandy Clark, and there's Florida Georgia Line with what they do, which is completely different and bringing a whole new audience. There's room for everyone.
There's room for everyone. There's room for pop country, for 'rock & roll' country, for stone-cold country, and everything in-between. Great music is great music.
Country music has taken so many forms, and I've always contended that it does not matter if the casual listener falls in love with country music through Florida Georgia Line, Taylor Swift, Old Crow Medicine Show or whomever - just get in and start digging!
'My Country, My Music' is about bringing music in languages like Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, Malyalam, and Marathi together. It's about bringing musical genres together, different scenarios in which music is displayed in our country in one show.
I don't think it's changed that much when you go on the principle if Garth introduced more rock into country music, then Florida Georgia Line's gonna introduce more dance and more beat-driven stuff into country music. That's just how it's gonna go. So whatever influences you as a kid, you're gonna put in your music.
When Florida Georgia Line and Nelly put out the 'Cruise' remix, it brought so many more people to country music.
The music that I play is much more accepted in America. Do you know what I mean? Americans recognize and not necessarily country music. I go to a lot of places in Canada and they go "I don't like country music" and they think I'm a country musician. When I am a country musician but not a country musician like they think of.
Even though I've had 20-some country No. 1 records, I still have a hard time convincing a lot of these people in the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music that I love country music.
As soon as I got into country music, it was like hook, line and sinker. I was so focused on country, I ended up leaving all those '80s hair-band CDs behind - which now I still wish I had, but I was done with it.
I don't like to make comparisons, as it's different coaching a Spanish team to coaching a German or English team. Each country has their style, more or less, and within each country, they have different styles.
Country music is just country. It's going to shift around a little bit, doing some different instrumentations, different production styles. But it will always come back to what you heard at the Opry. Nobody wants it to change.
Colombians are sick of 'Narcos' stories because Colombia is a country that has changed so much. It's a country that's completely different from the country that we see in 'Narcos.' They reconstructed themselves in 25 years, which is amazing.
I listened to country music my whole life. I started writing music when I was a teenager. It all came out country.
I've never shied away from country. 'Karma Chameleon' verges on country. Reggae and country are very closely linked. If you go to Jamaica, you hear a lot of country music. There's a correlation.
I started rocking and rolling when Guns N' Roses came out. It wasn't until Garth Brooks came around that I really got back to country. He made it fun again. To me, in country music, the rigor mortis was setting in and it just wasn't fun anymore. Garth brought everyone back over to country and made it cool again.
Italians don't have a unique style like France or Spain or Germany or the UK, it's different everywhere you go. The style of the girl in Milan is really architectural and modern. In Naples it's a completely different style, it's more dark. I'm sure our style was more precise in the past in the '50s or '60s where everything was very Sophia Loren. It's weird because obviously outside of Italy you think of one country, but when you're in the country you know how different the country is from the north to the center to the south to the island. There are so many differences.
I was writing country songs, but I wasn't listening to country yet. I grew up on a farm in East Tennessee, so my roots are country, you know? But I didn't know where those songs came from or where they fit.