Country Pop

Country pop, with roots in both the countrypolitan sound and in soft rock, is a subgenre of country music that first emerged in the 1970s. Although the term first referred to country music songs and artists that crossed over to top 40 radio, country pop acts are now more likely to cross over to adult contemporary.

Country music first showed its potential to cross over into the pop charts in the early 1960s with a new creation by producers Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins that called itself the Nashville Sound. This was intended to have country singers gain more success in pop music and help sell more records. The first male artists to come out of this new genre were Jim Reeves and Eddy Arnold, who both grew to have widespread acceptance in both country and pop music.

The first female country singer to emerge from this new genre was Patsy Cline in the early 1960s. She created a whole new breed of female country artists, such as Crystal Gayle and Shania Twain, who gained prominence in later years. Even though Cline also gained widespread acceptance from country and pop audiences alike, the Nashville Sound did not maintain its popularity for long, receiving competition first from the Bakersfield sound and later the outlaw movement.

This description is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses materials from the Wikipedia article "Country pop".