Why does most "Country" Music use mostly major and minor plain simple chords?
Rock and Roll features power chords. Funk features 9th and 13th chords. Blues features 7th chords. Jazz features all kinds of strange diminished and augmented and suspended and flat 5th and other unusual chords.
Country music (aka Country and Western) features mostly very basic major chords with an occasional minor chord thrown in to spice things up. Very rarely do I see Country songs that include any exotic or unusual chords other than embellishing a D major chord by adding or subtracting a finger to play a Dsus4 or Dsus2. And I do occasionally see a 7th chord thrown in as a passing chord - but not so often.
Why do country music writers and composers avoid the more complex chords such as the ones used in other genres? Certainly Brad Paisley or Keith Urban could play any chord they wanted to. Is there something inherent in the fabric of Country music that falls apart if you deviate outside the basic major and minor chords?
Are there good examples of country artists/writers/composers who regularly deviate from this "norm"? Or at least a few songs that squarely fall into the accepted definition of the "Country" music genre that feature more complex chords?
Before anybody goes there - the band America - is a Rock band formed in England according to Wikipedia - although some of their lyrics might cross over into what we expect in a "Country" song.
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I'd say it's for the same reason that pop music is like that: sticking to triads creates a mood of straightforward, pure, clear emotion. This comes right down from Celtic music--would you enjoy Danny Boy or Auld Lang Syne any more with a bunch of sly jazz upper partials? (Well, it's been done, but even jazz guys often stick closer to triads when they're playing that material.)
That being said, if you go outside of modern commercial country, you do start to find more interesting chords. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings use all kinds of strange intervals and even outside tones. Willie Nelson is famous for his jazzy chords. Chet Atkins and Les Paul did all kinds of neat stuff. Major 6 chords are considered a hallmark of classic country (try an open E chord with a C# on the B string and tell me that doesn't sound country).
I think it is hard to answer a question like this in any other way than with an opinion, even if it is based on some experience.
When I look at a general cross section of country bands, there are, in many cases, a lot more players on the stage. Fiddles, lap steel, lead and rhythm guitar, bass, piano, etc. This typically means that you need to leave larger holes in what you play for others to fill in the gaps. Maybe you're jamming on a G major and the fiddle player is hitting the F# to make it sound as a Major 7th.
So while you might look up a chord chart for a simple tune and see a bunch simple chords, that is likely just the "meat" of the song, odds are good that when that artist takes the stage, he is playing with a host of other musicians adding notes to the harmony that turn those simple chords into much more complex harmonies.
I could likely go on with other reason why I might choose simple chords to write a country tune, but for the most part it comes down to artistic expression.
As r lo mentions above, Western Swing is full of harmony you might expect to hear coming from a Jazz group.
One of the important roots of country music is the folk music brought to the Appalachians by European (particularly Irish) immigrants in the late 18th and early 19th century, with influences from African music (the banjo being the most obvious one) and the parallel development of congregational church music (the development of which was itself influenced by some of the same traditions). None of these are noted for the use of highly complex harmonies or harmonic developments.
Musicians in these developing communities would also in many cases not have been professionals, but family members getting together and performing, which requires a straightforward, commonly-understood system of achieving 'harmony that works'.
Although this early American traditional music included ballads and dances, It also seems that when the music started to be published and broadcast, it was the 'good-time' music - the dances - that was most marketable, and these were mostly oriented around major tonality. This led to what we think of as 'Country music' being associated most associated with the major key and scale in particular (although of course there are many minor-key country songs, these still don't make up a high percentage).
A large part of the marketability of Country music is still based around its perceived authenticity and connection with the traditions of working and farming communities. For that reason, music that deviates a long way from these roots tends not to be labelled simply as 'Country'. A lot of Southern Rock, for example, has identifiably country elements, but is seen as separate. Outlaw Country also tends to include a wider range of influences, including more of the older ballad-style music, blues, and folk.
Sources : Appalachian Traditional Music - A Short History & Country Music - Piero Scaruffi
Because that's the style of what we call "Country Music". The "3-chord trick" plus maybe a few more. There's no "why" beyond that simple fact. If a songwriter wrote more complex harmonies or a player started slipping in jazz substitutions you'd say "That doesn't sound like Country!"
When I started to play with open country jam sessions, playing major chord songs, I could hear, in the overall sound major 7th, major six, sus etc chords. It was caused, either by the melody and or by a RIFF played by wn instrument.
You could also ask “why do artists outside of the country genre use complex chords instead of the simpler harmonies of country music?” The complex harmonies are not necessarily better.
In the country genre, there is a culture where an artist will make a song, and millions of everyday people who may not have had access to musical schooling can get themselves a guitar and learn to play and sing that song. If you know a few chords and have a capo and can sing a little bit, the reason you may love country music may be because you can play some or all of the songs yourself. That is a really beautiful tradition that also exists in some other genres like Blues.
Many country artists come right out of that tradition — they didn’t have musical schooling, they just got a cheap guitar and taught themselves how to play country. Then they starting writing songs with that same basic musical toolkit, adding to that culture, telling their own stories.
So the focus in Country (and Blues) is on the storytelling, performance, and playability by a broad audience rather than the orchestration and arrangement. An analogy might be black and white photography, where you are deliberately putting aside color to focus more intensely on composition, texture, mood, lighting, subject.
In other genres it can be the opposite. In Jazz and Concert music, for example, there is an academic exploration of what is possible that is prioritized over making your songs playable by the everyday person. The photography analogy there might be not only using color film, but making video, making motion graphics, pushing the technical envelope.
In short, the simple harmonies of Country are a feature, not a bug.
The quote has been attributed to many, but country music is "three chords and the truth." Harlan Howard said it first.
The musicianship in country has typically taken a backseat to lyrical songwriting and telling the truth through words- at least the truth as the songwriter sees it. The depth of the song is usually- note the word usually- in the lyrics, not the music.
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