Bluegrass, a subgenre of country music, allows every participant to take a solo

Country music can be traced back to Colonial America

The genre begins with the folk music of the Colonial settlers, blending the area’s regional sounds, including gospel, African spirituals, and Anglo-Saxon, Scottish, and Celtic ballads.

Western swing merged country with jazz

For as long as country music has been set to record, its artists have experimented with the genre’s boundaries. Look no further than this track from 1946, Bob Wills’ “Roly Poly.” The song is a classic example of Western swing, a country subgenre that blended country and jazz.

In the 1920s, country was often called 'hillbilly music'

The term was meant to describe the rural people who typically performed the Appalachian folk music. Though Black people were also making country music at the time, their records were categorized as “race music.”

Country's sound continues to evolve

Country music is having a moment. In 2023, it saw the biggest growth in market share of any genre—up nearly 22%. This overview traces country’s rise from Appalachian folk roots to its current pop, rock, and hip-hop-infused wave, with artists like Beyoncé and Post Malone joining the mix.

Outlaw Country was a subgenre that emerged in the 1970s

Outlaw country was a reaction against popular country music produced in Nashville. The name's origin is disputed, but it was firmly established with the 1976 album “Wanted! The Outlaws,” a record featuring songs by Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser—artists who bucked industry norms.

Ray Charles' 'Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music' albums blurred genre lines

Released in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, Charles’ records showed that country music, by then largely segregated, was an American music, no matter one’s background.

Blues was a major influence on early rock

Early rock ‘n’ roll had a straightforward sound, relying mostly on guitar, bass, drums, piano, and saxophone playing up-tempo 12-bar blues. In subsequent decades, the form evolved and splintered into countless subgenres that used more diverse sounds, instruments, and lyrics.

The music theory behind a lonesome country classic

Townes Van Zandt's "I'll Be Here in the Morning" might read like a clever inversion of a standard country music trope. But Cush, a musician in his own right, walks through the song's structure to show how its story is far more complicated than its lyrics suggest.

Béla Fleck took the banjo from Appalachian porches to African villages and Carnegie Hall

In a conversation recorded at a Philadelphia instrument shop, Fleck reflects on how an instrument associated with a single American folk tradition became his vehicle for bluegrass, jazz, classical, African folk, and orchestral music. He has long advocated that every living room should have a banjo, and he highlights how he has integrated the instrument across genres in this fascinating discussion.

Ken Burns believes country music is an essential American art form

Ken Burns’ massive 2019 miniseries “Country Music” explores the genre and its rich history. In this interview with writer Walter Isaacson, Burns explains what drew him to country, his definition of this “mongrel” music, and why he considers it to be an integral part of American culture.

After Beyoncé won the Grammy for best country album, the Grammys created a new category

The singer took home the award for best country album in 2025 for "Cowboy Carter." Months after the awards, and some criticism from the country community, the Grammys announced a new category for 2026: best contemporary country album. Ostensibly, that makes room for the genre's traditionalists and its innovators, though the distinction between the two categories is vague.

Jazz musicians use different melodic approaches to produce improvised performances

While jazz musicians are known for their improvisational skills, they rely on years of training and a complex understanding of compositions to inform their improvised solos, using a song's structure and chords to make their in-the-moment choices. Although jazz artists could, in theory, play whatever they wanted, musicians often employ common melodic approaches—such as scalar improvisation and arpeggios—to generate solos.

The harmonizing Louvin Brothers continued country's religious tradition

You won’t find a better pair of harmonizers than brothers Ira and Charlie Louvin, whose records became cornerstones of country, bluegrass, and gospel. This podcast examines the brothers’ remarkable approach to singing, along with the close relationship that made them such ideal musical partners—and what ultimately tore them apart.

Free jazz embraced the avant-garde

Ornette Coleman's 1959 album "The Shape of Jazz to Come" abandoned traditional notions of melody and structure, inadvertently creating "free jazz," a subgenre that embraced absolute musical freedom and gained popularity in the countercultural 1960s.

Biz Markie's "Alone Again" changed the laws for sampling

Before 1991, there was no established legal standard for the gray area of sampling. That changed when Gilbert O-Sullivan sued Biz Markie for using his song "Alone Again (Naturally)." After the case, labels were required to clear all samples, and artists were discouraged from creating sample-heavy music.

The origin of the 'barbershop quartet'

Barbershop is subgenre of acapella, limited to four singers who all play highly specific roles. If you see a particularly inspired quartet, you might even see them in old-timey barber dress, a nod to style's origin: the British barbershop. This brief explainer from Mental Floss breaks down the strange story behind the form and how it traveled overseas to become the music we know today.

CBGB, the breeding ground for punk, was intended to be a country bar

Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, Blondie, and many other bands got their start at CBGB. But its owner, Hillel “Hilly” Kristal, didn’t intend for it to be a punk rock venue. CBGB stood for “Country Bluegrass Blues,” though he included “OMFUG” (for “Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers”) on the venue’s marquee.

Explore 'The Grand Ole Opry' radio archive

"The Grand Ole Opry" changed the course of country music, bringing the music from the mountains and hollers to a nationwide audience through its weekly show. This archive of the radio program offers hundreds of hours of Opry radio programs from several decades of the show's existence.

Bands largely disappeared from the charts in the 21st century

Chris Dalla Riva analyzed 65 years of Billboard charts and found that bands (even those that don't play instruments) severely declined in the 21st century, largely replaced by solo artists.

Inside the rise of focus music

Any casual YouTube or Spotify user has likely stumbled upon a playlist called "lo-fi beats to study and relax to" while searching for new music. Those "lo-fi beats" actually represent a growing genre of music called "focus music." Spotify, for instance. saw a 50% increase in listening time for focus playlists in its 2023 Wrapped report. This article explains why productivity tunes are on an upswing right now. Read it here.

The mesmerizing harmonies of Georgia's 'singing village' feast

Listen along to a polyphonic feast in Georgia known as a Supra. The event is a long-held tradition in the "singing village" of Lakushdi, featuring intricate, stunning musical harmonies sung by attendees and performers. Learn how the singing is learned and performed and participate in the feast from afar with this fascinating podcast.

The story behind Copland and Graham's 'Appalachian Spring'

The ballet, which premiered in 1944, was conceived by the composer and choreographer through the mail, with the two corresponding about how the music might fit the dancing. Later, designer Isamu Noguchi would design a set that whittled the western Pennsylvanian pioneer town down to its core elements.

The symbol of the American lawn

Trimmed, pure green lawns are the norm in US yards and require regular mowing, fertilizing, and weed whacking to keep in order. They are cherished for their simple aesthetic and as a soft area for walking or playing near the house. Still, they are also so-called monoculture zones with only one plant species, lacking biodiverse resilience. This article traces the history of the lawn in America and the contemporary debates over its future.

‘Hang On Sloopy,’ Ohio’s unofficial anthem

The McCoys' 1965 single "Hang On Sloopy" isn't technically about the Buckeye State, but it became a fan favorite after appearing in the Ohio State Marching Band repertoire.

In 2004, Prince paid tribute to George Harrison with a surreal solo

The 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony paid tribute to the recently deceased Beatle with a rendition of one of his most famous songs by Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood, and George Harrison's son, Dhani. Several minutes into the performance, Prince suddenly appeared center stage for a virtuosic solo. He ended it by tossing his guitar into the crowd. Tom Petty's drummer would later say, "Everybody wonders where that guitar went, and I gotta tell you, I was on the stage, and I wonder where it went, too."

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after exploding due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

Some renewable energy sources may weaken the resiliency of electric grids by removing outage buffers provided by coal- and natural gas-fired plants, which provide the system with more time to find a new power source if a plant goes down.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day