May 12, 2025 by Elias Prodger (‘26)
If you walk into any doctor’s office in this country, you are bound to come across a couple of things. Rows of tolerable blue padded chairs, endless copies of sports magazines (often about golfing), and at least one TV blasting Good Morning America or HGTV reruns. On a brisk January morning, I walked into my allergist with a solid four TV’s giving me a full stereo view of the Good Morning America live music segment. With a completely dead phone and no magazines in the reach of my pterodactyl wingspan, I watched in utter horror and awe as the new LoCash song, “Isn’t She Country….”, made its way to my ears.
LoCash (previously referred to as the LoCash Cowboys) has just released their new song. It is a full, unapologetic interpolation of the Stevie Wonder classic “Isn’t She Lovely.” The classic 1976 track from his seminal album Songs In a Key of Life, is an angelic ballad written about the birth of his first daughter and the jubilation that came with her birth. “Isn’t She Country” on the other hand, is a two-and-a-half-minute flagrant money grab stealing a classic melody in order to list off tired country tropes, in effort to appeal to country radio and the worst side of Nashville. This uninspired attempt at a hit is part of a broader, more troubling trend that has emerged in the modern era of music.
First, we need to establish that a well-done interpolation or sample of other artists’ music can have real artistic merit. As early as David Bowie’s use of a Beatles melody in “Young Americans”, interpolation and sampling of old records has slowly become more prevalent, especially with Hip-Hop DJ’s and beat makers in the 70’s and 80’s. Stevie Wonder himself became the subject of one of the most popular interpolations of all time, when Coolio sampled another song from Songs In The Key of Life for his classic track, “Gangsters Paradise.”
As an anecdote, I want to make it clear that I am not against modern interpolation as a general umbrella. Beyonce’s “Break My Soul” and Juice Wrld’s “Lucid Dreams” are able to take previously existing melodies and change the arrangement and timbre enough to elevate the song and skillfully create something new and interesting. However, when done poorly, it comes across as a blatant attempt to release a popular song with as little creativity and energy as possible. I could list countless poor examples of this in modern pop and country music. Gayle’s “ABCDEFU” interpolating twinkle twinkle little star, MGK and Jelly Roll’s “Lonely Road” interpolating the John Denver classic “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” even Dustin Lynch and Jelly Roll taking Dobbie Gray’s “Drift Away” into a Chevrolet commercial.
The goal behind these tracks is clear. By taking popular old songs and shifting the tonal focus to be around modern lyrical references and tropes, we lose the initial artistic value of these melodies, for their writers to appeal to the largest number of people possible. The goal is to farm nostalgia and someone else’s brilliance instead of putting time in effort into fostering your own creativity. In a time where the entire history of recorded music is at your fingertips, the industry has continued to appeal to the easiest way to guarantee a profit instead of something more interesting and exciting for the consumer.
I beg you, please don’t listen to the LoCash song, don’t give them any engagement or reassurance. Go listen to some Stevie Wonder and go support your favorite independent artist.