Published Monday, 03 September 2012
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Well, think again.
Because at venues across Northern Ireland hundreds of late teens and twentysomethings, dressed to the nines, are waiting each Saturday night for the Country sensation that is Nathan Carter.
"He's the best singer in Ireland," one reveller told me at a gig in Newry. "And I think that's why a load of young people come to him because he's young and he's getting the music back into young people."
"Why do you think there are so many young people here?" I asked a 29-year-old woman in the crowd. "Because it's going round generations now," she said. "We're starting all over again. Everyone's going to the dance. Discos are gone."
Softly spoken, a tad nervous - meek almost - during our interview, it's easy to see why the 22-year-old Liverpudlian Nathan Carter's charm and good looks might capture many fans of boy bands. But Country is something different.
"When I was growing up none of my friends would have considered country music cool at all," says Nathan. "You know they wouldn't have listened to it or wouldn't have taken any notice at all.
But I suppose since I've started singing, since I've started recording songs that would appeal to all generations," he says.
Modest about his own success, he credits the popularity of American singers such as Taylor Swift, Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood with buoying him along. It's clear other local country artists such as Lisa McHugh and Gerry Guthrie have enjoyed their own success alongside Nathan.
Ken Bruce, U105's country expert, says there was a gap in the market.
"If you listen to their sets they've got country, they've got rock and roll, they've got pop - all types of music that appeal to younger people."
Nathan's latest single 'Wagon Wheel' has had over 100,000 hits on YouTube, and he credits Twitter and his hugely popular Facebook site, which has about 3,500 followers, as fuelling his success.
The uncrowned "queen of country" herself, Philomena Begley, remembers a young member of her audience in the Abbey Hotel in Donegal standing out one evening.
"The people with him were shouting up that he was a singer from Liverpool so I called him up to sing," she remembers. "And honest to God he just took the place apart.
Back in Newry, as Nathan takes to the stage to sing a countrified version of 'Piece of My Heart' - more in the style of Daniel O'Donnell than Janis Joplin - the crowd goes wild. And that's just those who got in.
Promoter Trevor Kane estimates that 200 people have been turned away tonight - in fact revellers are always turned away from Nathan's gigs, something organisers are trying to rectify with a new concert tour at bigger venues in the autumn.
Philomena Begley and her ilk are still packing in the crowds and are as popular as ever. But if she's the uncrowned queen of country, it's clear Nathan Carter is at the very least a pretender to the throne.