Finding country

Something I often wonder about is how other people first started listening to country music.  I imagine for a lot of readers it was very straightforward – you grew up listening to country radio, maybe your parents were fans, and your own interest developed from there.

It was different for me.  Growing up in England, country music was a long way from mainstream.  The only country songs I heard were the few that had crossed over to become pop hits; my parents had one Dolly Parton record, on cassette tape (Love Is Like A Butterfly). It was almost by chance that I found country music for myself.  I think I had always felt something was missing in the pop stuff I heard all the time, but I didn’t really know what.

Then the pop station I listened to started a one-hour country show on Sunday evenings, just after the pop charts. Even though the DJ clearly didn’t know much about country music, he played a good mixture of classics and the latest from Nashville. It was my good fortune that this was in 1987; the neotraditional movement was in full swing, and there was some great music being released. I enjoyed it more the more I heard, until one evening I had an epiphany: I had absolutely hated every single song on that week’s pop chart, and either liked or loved every song on the country show. With the enthusiasm of the convert, I decided I would stick with country music for good.

I found some other radio stations whose catchment area I was in, and which also had an hour or two of country music a week; I got used to changing the dial every night to tune into a different station to get my fix. I began to buy records: my very first purchases were Randy Travis’ Always And Forever, which still holds up for me, and Steve Wariner’s It’s A Crazy World, which has aged less well. Plus I liberated that Dolly cassette tape, so that probably counts as the first country record in my possession.

The love of country music I found so unexpectedly at 16 has stayed with me and grown stronger over time. Maybe living in an environment where I’ve had to actively seek it out has made my love for the music stronger.

So how did other people start listening to country music? Did your interest just develop over time, or did anyone else have a sudden conversion experience?