I grew up hearing new-wave country music around the house. Artists like Luke Bryant, Morgan Wallen, Dierks Bentley, and Miranda Lambert. Just like most Southerners, I have a personal history with country music. As I got older I began to take a deep dive into different genres. When I stumbled upon older country and folk tunes, I realized they sounded nothing like what we hear today. Since 9/11, country music has shifted into an overly commercialized jingoistic genre.
Let’s take a step back into history. Country music prior to 9/11 targeted working-class struggles and familial bonds. Artists like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Tom Waits, and Dolly Parton all wrote about the struggles of being a working-class American. For example, we can look at a verse from “Coal Miner’s Daughter” by Loretta Lynn:
“Well, I was borned a coal miner’s daughter
In a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler
We were poor, but we had love
That’s the one thing that daddy made sure of
He shoveled coal to make a poor man’s dollar”
In a research paper done by Sarah Lamoid at Northeastern University, she examines the lyrical change in country music from 1950-2000 and 2002-2020. She found that in modern country music, some of the most common words are: family, fight, peace, Vietnam, bloody, slinging, generation, trash, and malls.
We can see a division begin to start with famous conservative singer-songwriter Toby Keith. His song “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)” was a tribute to 9/11. In this song, he embodies the stereotypical die-hard American patriot. He managed to sing highly creative phrases such as “Mother Freedom ringing her bell” and “the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist”. Toby Keith, who cosplays as a working class American who has served in the army. He amassed over 40 million sales of his first album and has an estimated net worth of around $300 million. Not to mention, he’s never served. He doesn’t speak for the people and his art simply lacks any sign of emotional intelligence or depth.
Artists clung to this kind of music. Aaron Lewis co-wrote “Am I the Only One,” singing about his devotion to America, that this generation seems to lack, and his disgust with the tearing down of confederate statues. Jason Aldean sang “Try that in a Small Town” as a reaction to the BLM movement in 2020. In his music video, he sings in front of the Maury County Court House where a young man named Henry Choate was lynched in 1927.
Now country music has become associated with Bud-Light, raised trucks, and good church-going conservative families that shop at Walmart. People pushed out artists like the Chicks and let ignorant artists like Toby Keith rise to prominence. I truly enjoy country music, but today I can’t listen to the capitalistic propaganda winning awards at the Academy of Country Music. There is no artistry, no unification, no diversity. Instead, it’s dominated by rich men obsessed with murder and incorrect civil war history.
