Is country music actually awesome?

Brace yourself dear reader. I’m about to do something I’ve never done before: I’m about to praise country music.

When I was 10-years old and starting to become cognitively aware of what music was, it was 2013 and country music was arguably bigger than it had ever been. I was hearing country music on the radio more often, and it became my favorite genre for a while, to the point where no other genres mattered to me. Unfortunately for me, 2013 was also arguably the worst year for country music. 2013 was the year that the biggest names in country music were Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton, Sam Hunt, Hunter Hayes, and Cole Swindell. In other words, this was the ‘Bro Country era’: upbeat, mid-to-high tempo music with heavy pop influences and lyrics about attractive young women, copious amounts of alcohol consumption, partying and pickup trucks. Exclusively in that order.

Don’t get me wrong, there was good country music during this time, but radio sure as hell wasn’t playing the good stuff. They were playing the popular stuff. Thankfully, in the middle of eighth grade, one of my friends introduced me to Green Day, and ever since then pop punk/alternative was the genre that took over my life. Bands and artists like Fall Out Boy, Blink-182, Sum 41, Paramore, Good Charlotte, Weezer, and, later on, Machine Gun Kelly, Mod Sun, Youngblud, Linkin Park and Korn became my music of course, and I rarely gave country music another thought again. When I did give country music a thought, it was never a positive one.

So, what changed? Why am I writing this column about country music when I haven’t liked it for years? Well, over spring break, my family and I took a trip to Denver, and on the way there, I started listening to the ‘Song vs Song’ podcast hosted by Todd Nathanson and Alina Morgan. In an episode from Oct. 14, 2020, they put “Cruise” by Florida Georgia Line against “Dirt Road Anthem” by Jason Aldean. Both of these songs were nostalgic for me because both of those songs were in heavy rotation for me when I was in my country phase. Listening to the hostsalong with guest host Grady Smith, a country music YouTuber - talk about both of these songs got me reminiscing about how much I used to love country music. It also made me wonder if country music had gotten any better. Like a guy stalking his ex-girlfriend on social media years after the break up, I decided to check on country music to see if it had improved itself by listening to the ‘Country Rising’ playlist on Tidal. Listening to a few songs, I had a massive realization: I didn’t hate what I was listening to. Every song didn’t sound the same. It was no longer all about girls, trucks, beer and jeans. It was diverse and interesting and really awesome. Does this make me a true-blue country music fan now? Am I gonna have to trade in my Blink-182 and Korn t-shirts for flannel button ups? My red Converse for brown boots? My black beanie for a 10-gallon stetson? My Corolla for a Tacoma?

Not quite. You see, aside from the fact that pop - punk and alternative music will always have my whole heart - my favorite type of country music is the type that doesn’t sound like traditional country music. Don’t get me wrong, there are exceptions (Chris Stapleton for example), but during my dive into country music, the songs that stood out the most to me were ones that took inspiration from other music genres. The first song I heard that made me realize country music is actually really awesome now was “Cottonmouth” by country newcomer Rvshvd (pronounced Rashad), which features the lead singer of Ice Nine Kills, a heavy metal band. It’s an absolutely killer combination of country and hard rock, with one of the best choruses I’ve ever heard in any song. the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, religion, age, military status, sexual orientation, or any other protected category under federal, state, or local law, or by college policy.

The other type of country music I like is country music with hip-hop influences. I know this may be the bane of the existence of many “true” country fans, and it can sound cringe when it’s done badly, but when it’s done well, it’s done really well. The best examples of this come from Morgan Wallens’ new album “One Thing At A Time”. Tracks like “Ain’t That Some”, “I Wrote The Book”, “Sunrise”, “You Proof”, “180 (Lifestyle)”, “Neon Star”, and “Thinkin Bout Me” were the most captivating and fun to listen to. There are some great traditional country songs on that album too, but the ones I just listed are the best in my opinion.

I could honestly keep going. I didn’t even get into how Jelly Roll is doing some of the most exciting things in country music right now, or how I even found songs from people like Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line that I liked even though I still don’t really like them as artists. But for the sake of time, I’m going to refrain myself.

What I’d like to say in closing is this - if you’re the type of country music traditionalist who is disgusted by my opinions on the genre, I understand.

But for me, if taking influences from other genres is what gets people like me interested in country music, where’s the problem?

Country music needs to evolve, and I’m proud of it for taking the time for self improvement.

Mason Poepperling is a Buhler sophomore studying Journalism.

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Gamers haven’t gatekept anything

This week, I happened to be scrolling through TikTok and discovered something that really upset me. It was a TikTok reflecting on the recent finale of HBO Max’s “The Last Of Us”. It read “Dear Gamers, I have a bone to pick with you. Why didn’t you tell us that games have incredible plots and character development? This whole time I’ve been thinking you were playing Mario Kart. Now, as I watch The Last Of Us show, I’m realizing that you’ve been gatekeeping some of the best stories in modern history What should we play? We’ll do whatever you tell us. Sincerely,Abook reader.”

That seems pretty innocent, right? You may ask yourself, “Braedon, why does that upset you? That’s someone expressing an interest in one of your passions, you should be happy.”

Well here’s the thing. The tone is absolutely conde scending as hell. I’d love to recommend good story games to people, when they don’t come to us pretending like every game we play has been for stupid little babies.

Braedon Martin

Seriously, like if you can sit there and pretend we’re the bad guys because you thought every game we touch is “Fortnite”. It’s frankly an insult. Not to mention, “The Last Of Us” is (hot take) not even a tremdous story There are other stories out there that are fantastic. Games like “Out er Wilds”, “Hollow Knight”, and “Hades” with infinitely better stories of life, loss, and entropy. “The Last of Us” is a decent telling of the moral gray of a man in the apocalypse, sure, but it’s also a failing of proper use of video games as an artform. TLoU is a movie game, a game more focused on cinematography and cutscenes than interactive storytelling.

All of that is getting beyond the point here. Gamers have (for the most part) never kept our passions, in fact we are always trying to bring more people in. It’s ridiculous to play the victim when you yourself are the reason you have “missed out” on the greatest art form since the written book. Moron.

Braedon Martin is a Hutchinson sophomore studying journalism. he is the Collegian’s Opinion Page Editor and Managing Editor for Design.

65 Million Years And Few Good Dinosaurs

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved dinosaurs, and not just ‘Oh, I think dinosaurs are cool.’ No, no, no. I mean, I am actively following paleontology news and I’m up to date on whatever the heck is going on with Spinosaurus.

Of course though, I also love dinosaur movies, and I’ve seen a lot. I’ve seen the good like “Jurassic Park”, the bad like “Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom”, and the obscure like “Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds”.

So when I saw a new big budget dinosaur film, not connected to the “Jurassic Park” franchise, and being worked on by the people who’ve made an actually decent monster thriller, “A Quiet Place” was coming out, I was pretty excited.

The plot of “65” is that aliens crash land on Earth during the age of the dinosaurs.

Now before you start shouting “spoiler alert” just know that this neat little twist is not only spoiled in the trailer, not only spoiled subtly by the title, and not only spoiled by the poster’s tagline, but the title card within the first few minutes of the film literally says “65” and then under that ‘million years ago visitors crash landed on Earth’ so thanks for spoiling your “Planet of the Apes” esc twist movie, but I’ll get back to that.

Anyways, there are only two survivors of the crash, the pilot and a little girl, unfortunately the two are unable to communicate with each other, but have to work together to get through the dinosaur infested jungle to reach an escape pod and get off Earth before the meteor strikes.

So back to the wasted potential of the twist, whatthe-heck movie?! The twist was right there, perfectly laid out in front of them, heck all they had to do was take out the subtitle in the title card, change the trailer, the films tagline, maybe the name a little or have 65 apply to something else, that’s it! Do that and you’d have a solid little twist.

Now is the twist itself fairly obvious, sure, but I don’t think most would realize the characters are meant to be aliens and not humans and might just assume the dinosaurs are alien dinosaurs, wouldn’t be the first time in sci-fi. It’s really just the meteor that’d lead someone to realize they were on earth, but no, all of that wasn’t obvious enough so they spell it out for you right out of the gate.

So they wasted a potential twist, but how’s the story and characters?

Well the characters are definitely the best part of the film. The dynamic between the two is nice and enjoyable to watch. There are some cheesy scenes but for the most part their stuff is pretty good, however, there is one specific instance where one character lies to the other, and when the truth is revealed the one gets mad at the other for a little bit, and then it’s immediately all okay. Aside from that little bit of rushed subplot, their stuff is pretty decent.

Unfortunately it’s not enough to get through the story which consists of the characters slowly walking from one action sequence to the next.

“Jurassic World Dominion” also had a similar problem where after a while it just felt like the characters were moving from one one-off dinosaur encounter to the next, except instead of fighting giant grasshoppers between the dinosaur scenes, “65” instead fills its down time with walking… honestly still more entertaining that “Jurassic World Dominion” though.

But when there is action how is it?

Well … the action is fine I guess, serviceable. Nothing special, just ‘guy shooting dinosaurs with gun and girl getting attacked by dinosaurs,’ standard stuff.

As I’ve already stated I’ve seen a lot of dinosaur movies but “65” has hands down the ugliest dinosaurs I have ever seen! And this film doesn’t have the low budget or outdated effects excuse, this is a 2023 film with a 45 million dollar budget.

First of all the dinosaurs are not accurate, but I don’t think that’s the end all be all of dinosaur design quality, but here it’s really bad, and they aren’t able to make up for inaccuracies because the dinosaurs are just flat out ugly. The skin is shrunk tight to the hips, the Velociraptor-like dinosaurs’ wrists are twisted wrong, eyes are put in odd places, and a lot of the dinosaurs are just fake.

Fake dinosaurs can work, I think “Terra Nova” did it well back in the day, but here they are just ugly and weird and not explained. By the end you’re left with more questions than answers.

And there’s also the fact that this ecosystem is seemingly made of entirely carnivores whose preferred prey item is people, even if there’s two giant carcasses in front of them. There is only one maybe herbivore in the entire film and it’s a weird Ankylosaurus with a T-Rex head so I have no idea what that was supposed to be.

So over all, awful dinosaurs. They look stupid, they act stupid, they suck. It feels like the designer said, “yeah i know what a dinosaur looks like” and then proceeded to draw them from memory with zero references.

One compliment I’ll give the film is that the alien tech is neat, it looks weird and alien but it’s believable … which makes me feel like they put more effort into that than the dinosaurs.

“65” may have a decent little character dynamic between the protagonists, but unfortunately it’s not enough to save the film from its wasted potential, lackluster action scenes, terrible dinosaurs, and a whole lot of walking.

I give this film four Dsungaripterus with their eyes in their nasal cavity out of 10.