I’m a child of the ’80s, so yes, I listened to Def Leppard. The one-armed drummer shtick was enough to keep my interest in spite of the head-banging music and indecipherable lyrics. These days, country music is more my middle-aged speed — and those two worlds should never mix.

Unfortunately, in its attempt to be cool, Country Music Television decided that teenage country star Taylor Swift should sing the Def Leppard songs of her parents’ era and vice versa. The end result is some of the most unenlightened redneck music I’ve ever heard.

Rolling Stone thinks Taylor Swift is cool because she raps and rocks, and that rag’s endorsement alone would have been enough to scare me away from her crossover album with Def Leppard. Now that I’ve actually heard it, I’m less inclined to buy any of Swift’s music. Sometimes you can judge an artist by the company they keep.

It’s not just Swift, though. The whole crossover trend in country music is wearing thin.

The term used to mean that a country musician had scored a big hit on pop radio, like “Islands In The Stream” (1983) by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton or “When She Cries” (1992) by my favorite band, Restless Heart. Nowadays, it means the has-beens of pop, like Sheila E., are trying to resurrect their careers by going country.

In the mid-1990s, I bought the albums “Common Thread” and “Come Together,” which featured country stars singing the songs of the the Eagles and the Beatles. I even enjoyed the original duet “Who Says You Can’t Go Home” by Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland and Jon Bon Jovi few years ago.

But all of that music at least has a country feel to it. The crossover genre officially jumped the shark when Nashville decided it was a good idea to give vulgar rapper Kid Rock a voice in country music and pair Taylor Swift with Def Leppard and Sugarland with The B-52s.

The old-timers like to say it’s time to put the country back in country music. I’d be happy if Nashville would just cut the pop, rap and heavy-metal out of it.