And the same with pretty much anything else. There's plenty of non-corporate country music you would enjoy if you actually went and looked, both before and after Brooks.
Sure, I still held onto my outlaws, plus I picked up the Lyle Lovetts and Lucinda Williams and kd langs and cowboy junkies ; but by and large the genre got co-opted - like huge-ly
From anti-authoritarian to mainstream jingoism
tbf hip hop struggled against a corporate takeover as well, but it seemed to re-emerge as an artist driven medium
Coincidentally I was thinking about the country corporate thing today - the Today show was on in the background and they had some blonde country star on the plaza - it struck me how costumey the whole thing was. Her backup band was in what I could only describe as contemporary grand ol opry and she was wearing country Barbie except blue instead of pink
Like none of the look was anywhere close to real - but it was also trying to evoke something that might have been real at some point