ABSTRACT
For most of us, Williams wins in a landslide, both because the musical elements he employs are more “traditional” and because he is seen to be more sincere-writing the music he loves, not what record label executives ask him to produce for the charts. But this perception obscures the truth: both styles of country-what one sociologist dubbed the “hardcore” and “soft shell” (Peterson 1997)—are products created for the marketplace by teams of music workers (producers, arrangers, music executives, agents) trying to sell tickets and records (Ryan and Peterson 1982). The teams “share beliefs about what they think people will listen to on the radio and what they will buy in stores” and combine these beliefs with elements that “infuse [them] with the legitimacy already established for that form” (Hughes 2000:200, 190).
