Country music is one of the most diverse genres of music we have today. Some songs can take you into a beautiful story with a happy ending and others can make you feel heartbroken and down. Both can be great songs and convey powerful messages, but they can be performed in very different ways. Today, the country music I know and love can be a good old laid back song with nothing but an acoustic guitar, or have an entire band play the entire song like songs that are very commonly associated with an artist like Jason Aldean . , Luke Bryant and Brad Paisley. So if country music is such a flexible genre, how did it get to be so? When country music started, it was done one way for many years and then everything changed. How did an artist like Taylor Swift become associated with country music when critics and avid listeners say she could easily be in the pop singer genre? There's a big difference in the style of music a Jason Aldean would play and the style of country Taylor Swift sings, so how did these two very different artists become associated with the same genre? The earliest forms of country music can be traced back to the recordings of Southern Appalachian fiddlers made in the late 1910s. It wasn't until a decade later, however, that country music became sought after as a true genre. Eck Robertson is credited with the first commercial country recording in 1922. It expanded from there. Jimmie Rodgers, also known as the "father of country music", was a national success. Even years after the passing of Eck Robertson and Jimmie Rodgers, country music has remained largely the same. Only in the 1950s did the evolution of Nashville country occur, and even at that time country music still carried its original sound of fiddle twang that we still find in some songs today. Country music is a special form of music because no matter what happens in my life, there is always a great country song that I can relate to and that will immediately make me feel better about the situation. You can feel much better about a situation if you're happy, or feel even angrier if you're not having a good day and want to let it all out, in this genre, anything goes.