My rose-colored glasses recollection of country lands me squarely in the middle of 90s country, in the territory of Garth Brooks and Reba McEntire, still the country vocalists I have the most songs from in mp3 format. It was a period I remember fairly fondly; I got out of country music when I started making friends in high school with cars of their own who listened to more rock music. (My love of Aerosmith came very late.) In that way, I'm less familiar with modern country, though I know I find it infinitely more grating to listen to on the radio, in a way that makes me wonder if it actually has gotten more problematic since I was young, or if I just have the songs that I like and remember and my brain has edited out the more troubling songs from country in the 90s. My dad liked the older country (Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, etc) which I never really got into--though in my college years, he got me onto Emmylou Harris' folksier later stuff--basically Red Dirt Girl and onward, when she started writing her own material. There's a particular week of my life when our phone line went down that is basically scored to that CD--I fell in love with it. The title track so perfectly encapsulated a particular fear of mine that I've rather loved Harris ever since. I'm agnostic myself, but her songs about faith are so deeply felt and raw that I always end up liking them anyway, with Prayer In Open D being probably my favorite of all of her songs, save perhaps The Pearl. Likewise her songs about women are (at least in what I've heard) always so achingly sympathetic to the women in question, so absolutely empathetic to their trials and woes. /rambling about youthful music recollections