Growing up, summer was the windows down in my dad’s truck as a medley of Darius Rucker and Chris Stapleton sliced through the air. To say he’s a country music listener would be an understatement. Through the lens of nostalgia, those were good days. But in separating the music from the memories, I must confess I despised the honky tonk, the hillbilly rock, the redneck pop. From a critical viewpoint, I always thought that the music sounded more like pop under the filter of a dramatized and unplaceable “Southern accent” than a true genre of its own. My ears felt abused by the combination of rock instrumentation, autotune and a chorus about whiskey, tractors and muddy boots.
The experience of my childhood turned me off country music for much of my youth. It wasn’t until the Spotify algorithm directed me to singer-songwriters like Jim Croce to John Prine and Townes Van Zandt that I began to gain a new perspective of the genre — that there was a beauty inherent in its lyrical tradition. This discovery only led me to more questions than answers: how did John Prine lampooning patriotic bumper stickers turn into Toby Keith warning terrorists about the might of the American empire? How did country music go from songs about cowboys, poverty, alcoholism and loss to Brad Paisley praising “tractors, trucks, little towns and mama” in “This is Country Music”?
Country music, like much of American music, can be traced to the forced interactions between European settlers and enslaved Africans. Many songs find their origins in British ballads — Marty Robbins’ “Streets of Laredo” takes its melody from the Irish “The Bard of Armagh.” In the rural South, the intersection of these melodies with African instruments, such as the banjo, gave rise to spirituals and hillbilly music, which would eventually be repackaged as the modern definition of country music.
Early country music was already characterized as a protest of American social structures. Before its commercial rise, white and Black artists came together to perform, record and write together. Jimmie Rodgers — the father of country music — collaborated with jazz legend Louis Armstrong. Black artists such as Rufus Payne and Arnold Schultz mentored Hank Williams and Bill Monroe on their way to redefining hillbilly music for a white audience. Shaped by the multiracial makeup of a segregated South, country music began to speak to the rural poor of the region.
This is one of the reasons I find myself so drawn to this era of country music and artists such as Townes Van Zandt, David Allan Coe and Johnny Cash. With its origins rooted in the American South, country music speaks to the hardship almost built into the DNA of life in the region. Old country music draws on a Southern storytelling tradition to bemoan economic hardship, addiction, racial violence and personal toils. Even if I myself have never experienced much of the problems these artists describe — many of these outlaw country singers speak from their lived experiences concerning prison and drug use — their words are so viscerally poetic that I have no choice but to resonate with their stories. When Townes Van Zandt sings about a game of poker between Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold, I almost feel as if I’m seated next to them as a third player at the table. Bob Dylan’s country-inspired “Girl from the North Country” — dueted with Johnny Cash — makes me wistful for a woman I’ve never known and a life I’ll never live.
I don’t mean to say that modern country music is fundamentally worse than the artists of the past. The genre isn’t a monolith, and many inferior songs from the ’60s and ’70s have certainly been forgotten due to poor overall quality. In the same way that I love the sounds of classic country, I’m also drawn to people such as Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan. Their songs harken back to stories of hardship, mistakes and the working man as the scions of Cash and elders of outlaw country. Still, their music stands in sharp contrast to other country artists of this century, and the origin of the shift seems to come from the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Country music changed virtually overnight following the attacks. In an interview with The Rolling Stone, Andie Summers, a Philadelphia-based DJ at WXTU, recalled her experience on air immediately after 9/11.
“We didn’t play much music for the next few days,” Summers said. “When we finally started again, the only upbeat songs we were playing were patriotic ones, very pro-America. Everything else was somber, reflective or comforting.”
Reflecting the national mood, country music began to prioritize patriotic ballads, often extolling the virtue of the armed forces and the value of the American way of life, all suddenly under attack by a foreign enemy. Within months, Alan Jackson released “Where Were You,” a call for Americans to come together under God: “Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us/And the greatest is love.” Over the following years, patriotic country music dominated the radio. The most illustrious example, Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” came in 2002 and seemed to drum up support for the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the entire industry seemed to coalesce around support for the War on Terror, silencing any critics of the genre’s lurch towards Jingoism. Famously, The Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, a country group that saw tremendous success during the 1990s — their album Fly reached number one on the Billboard charts — were unceremoniously ejected from country stardom after criticizing the U.S invasion of Iraq. Under attack from fans of the genre, radio DJs and, notably, Toby Keith, the group was all but banned from country radio stations.
Throughout the rest of the decade, country music began to take on an increasingly commercial tone. Gone were personal stories of hardship, the simple life and the undesirables of society. In their place came ballads with a carefully curated list of words designed to perk the ears of listeners. Known as bro-country — satirized by Bo Burnham in a comedy song — artists such as Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean routinely reached the top of the charts by singing of tailgates, trucks and beer. It was precisely this brand of country music that turned me off from the genre for so long.
Listening to these songs as a boy growing up in the urban South, I couldn’t relate to the lyrics of modern country. As much as my Dad took me fishing and hunting in his truck, the idea of being “country” or “redneck” was overshadowed by the fact we lived in a city of nearly half a million people and spent more time driving past strip malls and suburban neighborhoods than farms and fields. On a personal level, the songs failed to resonate with me in the way classic country artists do now; Cole Swindell’s “Ain’t Worth the Whiskey” doesn’t make me feel the song’s heartbreak in the same way as George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Without making an accusation, the music always sounded inauthentic. If every artist on the radio was singing about drinking beers on a dirt road, where were the original stories?
Going hand-in-hand with the commercialization of the genre was its politicization. In the post-9/11 United States, country music became the anthem of patriots. Green Day? Punk Rock? Pop? Those were for the liberals, the college-educated elite and the urban socialist. This isn’t to say that country music wasn’t already conservative — the 1960s and 1970s welcomed a few popular anti-hippie hits such as “Okie from Muskogee” — but there was a marked shift in its substance during the 2000s. Sarah Lamodi, a graduate of Northeastern University, published a preliminary research project she conducted during her undergraduate degree in English and media and screen studies. She coded a program to find the most common words in country songs before and after 9/11. Her conclusions? Country music from 2002 to 2020 makes far more references to war, religion and nationalism than its 20th century counterpart.
This makes the music of this era perfectly suited as a soundtrack to our heightened state of political polarization. In the ongoing 2024 presidential campaign, Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” has been co-opted by the Make America Great Again movement. In the long wait before a February rally in South Carolina, supporters of former President Donald Trump listened to the song a total of three times, according to National Public Radio. In an interview with NPR, Tonya Helm, who attended the rally, laid out why the song has become a MAGA rallying cry 20 years after its release.
“It didn’t have as much meaning to me, I mean, because that was right after the Twin Towers,” Helm said. “But then now it’s got more of a meaning to me because our country just sucks right now. Biden needs to go, and you know, what better song to do it to than to Toby Keith’s ‘Red, White and Blue’?”
The conservative takeover of country music didn’t stop with Keith, and new songs continue to inflame a culture war both across the nation and inside the genre. In 2023, Jason Aldean released the music video for his hit single “Try That in a Small Town.” The song, which faced immediate criticism from activists, fellow artists and even industry professionals, criticizes violence in big cities as a response to the protests that erupted in 2020 and 2021 as a response to the murder of George Floyd.
“Cuss out a cop, spit in his face/ Stomp on the flag and light it up/ Yeah, ya think you’re tough/ Well, try that in a small town.”
The song makes a less-than-oblique reference, a threat, to the consequences of holding the same protests in, as Aldean describes it, a small town.
“Try that in a small town/ See how far ya make it down the road/ Around here, we take care of our own/ You cross that line, it won’t take long/ For you to find out, I recommend you don’t/ Try that in a small town.”
The song’s music video only serves to accentuate its message. In the video, Aldean performs the song in front of Maury County Courthouse, where Henry Choate, a Black teenager, was lynched in 1927. Behind him, footage of peaceful protests are flashed alongside clips of burning flags and rioting. Some of the footage appears to be from the George Floyd protests, which were overwhelmingly peaceful, while others are stock footage of violence filmed outside of the United States.
The demonization of cities is nothing new, and has its roots in the white flight of the late 20th century and the disinvestment from the minority communities forced to stay behind. Aldean’s song is another manifestation of this, stoking rural and suburban fears of urban places as dangerous, crime-ridden warzones. In response to these same points I’m making, Aldean denounced his critics.
“There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it,” Aldean said. “Try That In A Small Town,’ for me, refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief.”
Regardless of whether the song overtly references race, the undertones are clear. In response to his “canceling” by what was deemed as a woke mob by the Right, Aldean’s song was propelled to number one on the iTunes charts and became one of the top music videos on YouTube. Political leaders including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump — who Aldean is publicly friends with — rushed to his defense, with Trump urging his followers to listen to the song in a post to his Truth Social site.
“Jason Aldean is a fantastic guy who just came out with a great new song,” Trump wrote. “Support Jason all the way. MAGA!!!”
On the other hand, modern country artists who buck with this trend find themselves on the opposite end of the crowd. Only two weeks after Aldean’s video was released, Tyler Childers released the video for his song “In Your Love.” The video elevated the song, already a heartfelt love ballad, by depicting its subjects as two gay men working as coal miners in rural Appalachia. Although the song found a large receptive audience, some comments on the video and on X were more critical. Amongst the criticisms were allegations of Childer’s being gay, that he had “gone woke” and that the video was “horse shit.”
Childers and Aldean represent two sides of modern country music. On one hand, Aldean is the older, conservative singer who appeals to the same base as Donald Trump and thrives on controversy. He also represents a certain level of inauthenticity. While Aldean spoke in support of his song — which he didn’t write — by citing his own small-town upbringing, he was actually raised in Macon, Ga. a city of over 150,000 people. While growing up, he attended a Christian private school. On the other hand, Childers was raised in rural Kentucky to a father in the coal industry. His music has historically been more lyrically complex and highlighted working class subjects.
Between the two songs, it was “Try That in a Small Town” which found more commercial success. Despite — or maybe because of — the music video’s controversy, the song peaked at number one on the U.S. top 100 and number two on the global top 200. In contrast, Childers’ “In Your Love” only reached number 43 and number 131 respectively.
I’m proud to listen to country music and I’m proud of its legacy. Even as the genre is dominated by conservative artists, Childers and others like him represent a lurch back to the outlaw legacy of the 20th century. Their songs speak from a place of raw emotion, harkening back to their own life experiences; in the age-old adage about country music, their songs are three chords and the truth. Whether it’s Zach Bryan commenting on his identity growing up in rural Oklahoma or Oliver Anthony championing his own working-class bona fides, the songs of this new generation of country may bring the average release year of the songs on my playlist up just a bit.
Country music is political. Inherently. The genre’s history is steeped in stories of the working class, inner turmoil, racial inequalities and a rejection of the capitalist system which has so eloquently ravaged the rural South. When listening to these songs and reading their histories, it’s maddeningly obvious that something has gone wrong. The consequences are an ever-inflamed culture war and the cultivation of violence. To a large portion of my fellow country enthusiasts, a song glorifying the idea of shooting protesters is more in-tune with their morals than a song about love — only because the love is queer.
The consequences are clear: More and more people will begin to believe that violence, rather than being a personal act bearing rightful consequences — see Cash’s “Devil’s Right Hand” or Allan Coe’s “Revenge” — is a justifiable path of political discourse. Songs originally intended to motivate the country for a global War on Terror will instill the same blind devotion in supporters of civilian politics. Wealthy and educated friends of politicians who declare they will “be a dictator on day one” will continue to don the trappings of rural poverty while growing rich on the back of the societal divisions that they sowed. The only solution is to stop listening. A generation of country artists are speaking to real people from their real experiences, urging kinship and understanding across the country, but their music is gaining only a fraction of the popularity of artists like Aldean or Luke Bryan. Unless we return to the roots of country music, the majority of the genre’s listeners will continue to be indoctrinated by bro-country into a cult of violence — the soundtrack of the next coup will be off-beat claps and untraceable Southern accents marred by bad autotune.
Statement Correspondent Joshua Nicholson can be reached at joshuni@umich.edu.
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