A new brand of country music emerged in the '70s that sought to bring raw honky tonk emotion and authenticity back to the genre, which had become increasingly pop-oriented. These are the outlaw country songs that mattered.
Many of the solo artists that emerged in the 1970s became widely referred to as "singer-songwriters." These artists wrote and performed songs that were personal, sincere, introspective, and, most importantly, timeless.