Yes, they’re completed, but only if you don’t care about them. I don’t much care about pop country, and so I know a few big names and new progress won’t change that. And yet it’s still capable of supporting a subculture of people who do care, and for whom new things are happening.
anecdote about that: I, too, identify as someone who doesn’t care about / like / listen to pop country. However, one time on a solo road trip I was listening to whatever radio station happened to have the best reception, which was one at a time in that area. Those unusual circumstances caused me to tolerate a bunch of songs that I found mildly annoying, and among them, I discovered that there were some pop country songs that I actually enjoyed quite a lot.
If I’d been going about my normal adult life, I never would have discovered the handful of songs I liked, because I would have changed the station or put on music stored to my phone. When I shared my excitement about the “new art” of the couple songs I like with a friend who’s more familiar with the genre, they didn’t consider it “new art” at all—the songs I liked had been high on the charts for several weeks, perhaps in part due to their general palatability to broader audiences, and were not only “old” to a genre fan but less exemplary of “art” than the songs I found annoying.
However, this seems to imply the opposite of what I’m hearing from your comment: I’m hearing you say that advances in pop country will look like new good art to genre fans, but not to you. The lesson I’d draw from my own moment with it is that it’s far easier to find the low-hanging fruit of subjectively “new good art” in the middle of areas where one hasn’t personally looked much, versus on the edges of a well-explored space.
Yes, they’re completed, but only if you don’t care about them. I don’t much care about pop country, and so I know a few big names and new progress won’t change that. And yet it’s still capable of supporting a subculture of people who do care, and for whom new things are happening.
anecdote about that: I, too, identify as someone who doesn’t care about / like / listen to pop country. However, one time on a solo road trip I was listening to whatever radio station happened to have the best reception, which was one at a time in that area. Those unusual circumstances caused me to tolerate a bunch of songs that I found mildly annoying, and among them, I discovered that there were some pop country songs that I actually enjoyed quite a lot.
If I’d been going about my normal adult life, I never would have discovered the handful of songs I liked, because I would have changed the station or put on music stored to my phone. When I shared my excitement about the “new art” of the couple songs I like with a friend who’s more familiar with the genre, they didn’t consider it “new art” at all—the songs I liked had been high on the charts for several weeks, perhaps in part due to their general palatability to broader audiences, and were not only “old” to a genre fan but less exemplary of “art” than the songs I found annoying.
However, this seems to imply the opposite of what I’m hearing from your comment: I’m hearing you say that advances in pop country will look like new good art to genre fans, but not to you. The lesson I’d draw from my own moment with it is that it’s far easier to find the low-hanging fruit of subjectively “new good art” in the middle of areas where one hasn’t personally looked much, versus on the edges of a well-explored space.