Country music star John Rich is definitely not a fan of NBC’s countrified version of American Idol. In an interview on Sirius XM, Rich sounded off on the network’s reality singing competition show Nashville Star. “The folks in New York at NBC — there’s some good folks up there, but I swear to God they don’t know jack about country music,” Rich said.
Sirius XM wasn’t the only media outlet to get an earful of Rich’s rants against the show. “I wouldn’t touch Nashville Star with a 40-foot pole,” he told The Tennessean (via The Boot). “NBC completely bastardized what country music is about.” Particularly, Rich takes exception to when Nashville Star incorporates non-country music into it’s repertoire. “We’ve got a guy named Kenny Chesney who’s 40 years old, who’s an east Tennessee hillbilly who sells 80,000 tickets a show,” he added. “We don’t need the other people’s music to make us cool enough to listen to.”
Ah, yes, one Kenneth Chesney, who we just discovered looks a lot like Karl Pilkington when he takes his hat off.