Following up John’s earlier post, concerning the Associated Press story, claiming that:
Beyonce went bluegrass in a surprise performance with country band Sugarland at the American Music Awards on Sunday night.
As John pointed out, they also quote Beyonce as saying the bluegrass version of her song Irreplaceable “ain’t bad.”
Curiosity grabbed me and I had to see exactly what the AP, and Beyonce, thought bluegrass sounded like, so I went to YouTube looking for it. YouTube is amazing btw. Anyway, here’s a link to the clip. I won’t embed it here because it is most definitely NOT bluegrass.
Apparently if it has acoustic guitar and mandolin in it, it must be bluegrass. Hardly. The instrumentation is two acoustic guitars, a mandolin, electric upright bass, drums, and accordion. The performance and vocals are in no way bluegrass.
It seems the Associated Press has no idea what bluegrass is about. And stories like this one, trying to pass this kind of stuff off as bluegrass, sure don’t help the public figure it out either.
