Music City’s Got the Blues

The lights will shine as brightly as ever at tonight’s Country Music Assn. Awards in the Grand Ol’ Opry. The smiles will beam as broadly. The thank yous will gush as shamelessly. But there’s less for the gathering of stars and handlers to celebrate than in recent years. For the first time in the ‘90s, country music does not enter its highest-profile night as a growth business.

“We have too many artists and too much product out there, and we’ve hit a wall,” says Tony Brown, president of MCA Records Nashville. “Over-saturation has taken its toll. It’s time for us to do a little cleaning out.”

As of September, sales for 1996 are down 9% compared to the first three quarters last year, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America. Meanwhile, the number of country radio listeners has slipped 20% since 1993, says the trade industry magazine Radio & Records.

It’s a troubling slide considering that sales more than tripled between 1989 and 1995, leaping from $600 million a year to more than $2 billion annually. Country music artists now appear on network television and other media with a regularity only dreamed of by stars of the past.

Tonight’s three-hour awards program, usually the top-rated program for the evening, will offer another indicator of the music’s popularity.

Vince Gill, who has already won more CMA Awards than any other artist in history and who will serve as host for the telecast, leads in nominations this year with seven, including entertainer of the year. Among the performers will be George Strait (who is tied for second with five nominations), Dolly Parton and Wynonna.

“The CMA Awards is an important benchmark of consumer interest in country music,” says Ed Benson, executive director of the CMA. “We’ll all be looking closely at how well it does.”

Benson emphasizes that country music now occupies a place in America’s cultural consciousness that it had never attained in the past.

But several consecutive years of unbridled growth leveled in 1995. If the final figures for 1996 come in under the previous year’s totals, it will be the first drop in annual sales in more than a decade.

“Nobody in Nashville has panicked, but there is concern,” Benson says. “Right now, the industry is much bigger than it ever has been. Country music has become assimilated as part of the mainstream fabric of America, as far as demographic reach. We’re part of the regular entertainment of America now. . . . From a business perspective, this is a rapidly changing industry, but the industry has never been better situated to assess things and react accordingly.”

Growth has resulted in an explosion of new record labels in recent years. Ten years ago, Nashville hosted country divisions of seven major record labels. Today, there are 24 labels in town, counting several significant independents, including Curb and River North.

But some insiders predict that several of the labels will follow the lead of A&M;, which closed its country division last month and laid off its staff. A&M;’s lone money-making country artist, Toby Keith, was transferred to Mercury Records, its bigger brother within the Polygram Records system.

“We’re having to digest our growth before we make the next step,” says Joe Galante, president of RCA Nashville, which has been trimming its roster in recent months. “We may be in a period where we lose business this year and maybe lose business next year, and then hopefully we rise back up.”

Ken Levitan, president of Rising Tide Records, a new Nashville label associated with MCA, sees the next year or so “as a cleansing time,” adding: “I don’t see cause for alarm. I just think we need to buckle down and make good music.”

That lament--the need for better music--runs through the commentary of most industry leaders. “We’ve hurt ourselves,” Levitan says. “There’s a lot of generic music out there.”

Galante puts it this way: “We have not done a good job of replacing the superstars we created in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. We’ve become too preoccupied with chasing songs up the charts and not with developing long careers.

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“This business was built by strong personalities--from Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson . . . to Garth Brooks and Reba McEntire. We need to find the next generation of those kinds of artists.”

Some executives mention the tight playlists and formulaic tendencies of country radio as one of the reasons listeners are turning back to pop, which has become more tuneful in the last couple of years with the emergence of Alanis Morissette, Hootie & the Blowfish, Joan Osborne and Sheryl Crow.

“Radio needs to open up and take more chances,” Levitan says. “I think that’s very important. But when ratings slip, playlists crunch up and it’s harder to get new stuff through. That’s the hard part.”

Others blame Nashville for pushing too many sound-alike artists at radio and clogging the system with lackluster music. “I don’t think radio is a stumbling block,” MCA’s Brown says. “Radio had to react to Nashville’s greediness. They’ve been inundated by all these new labels and all these new artists. Radio would prefer to play quality songs by quality artists. The A&R; departments are as much to blame as anybody.”

Most executives warn against over-reacting. They speak of reassessment, of returning the focus to good music, of emphasizing artist development rather than novel songs. They all stress that country music remains better off than in any previous period.

“I don’t think we’re standing at the edge of a cliff about to fall off,” says Tim DuBois, president of Arista Nashville. “We’ve got some big records coming before the end of the year. Reba [McEntire], Clint [Black] and Alan [Jackson] all have albums coming out. It will be interesting at the end of the year to see how much we’re actually down. Our superstar acts are still selling, still doing great business. It’s the mid-level artists that aren’t doing as well, but we have a whole lot more of them than we used to. It’s going to be an interesting time coming up. This whole thing may do us some good. A little shake-up might make us focus first and foremost on the music, which is where our attention as record executives should be.”

* The Country Music Assn. Awards will be telecast by CBS from Nashville tonight, carried in Los Angeles by KCBS-TV Channel 2 at 8 p.m.