In country you don't want hot mixes, because you'd want to listen to the song again. In pop you do, because it's gone out of style before the second playback!

Kidding for sure, but not far from the truth (otherwise it wouldn't be funny). I read somewhere that 'the loudness wars' are over, and engineers actually are getting requests from record labels these days about not overcompressing the tracks.

Of course there are all the science about loud being percieved as better, so it won't go away. But much better to listen to a deep and well balanced mix, coming from moderately used high end gear (we can all dream..).

To reach big volume, you can do it in stages, though. A little compression on the way in, more compression when it's there, and a little more in the mastering.

Mostly the volume stuff is done in the mastering, I think. So don't worry about it and send the tracks off to a mastering engineer (like Mike Caro, for example)..