The Grand Ole Opry and Country Music

I have a healthy curiosity of the Grand Ole Opry and being a fan of many of the country singers and songwriter in the music capital, USA
I decided to investigate the question: how has the Opry's presence affected country music of the past with that of today's current trends?

Truth in music is a powerful thing. Music invokes so many emotions in us. It has the ability to make us smile, shred a tear, get up and dance or transport us back to a special place in time to a moment that we might and will cherish forever. Bill Monroe writes in Don't Get Above Your Raisin' that "country music is America's truest music" (Malone, 13), and if that is true then the Grand Old Opry goes hand-in-hand with that statement. As country music gives us a sense of nostalgia and a desire to go back as Malone writes again: "to that little cabin on the hill where we never lived, or to the life of a happy, roving cowboy that we have never experience" (Malone, 13). With this nostalgia, we are reminded of simpler and easier times of lazy mornings and quiet afternoons, and of simpler times from our childhoods long since past as current country superstar Kenny Chesney describes in his monstrous hit "I Go Back." Keith Urban explained what he thought country music is while hosting the countdown of country's greatest songs as he introduced Kris Kristoffen's "Sunday Morning Coming Down," Urban explains: country music is about Saturday night and Sunday morning in its simplest terms as a more old-fashioned and laid-back feeling.