How Gen Z Fell In Love With the Pistol Annies' Most Depressing Song

Pistol Annies TikTok fame? Yes really!

🗨 Don't Rock the Comments Section: What's Your Song of the Summer?

We all know the country song of 2026 if you look at the charts - "Choosin' Texas," obviously - but what's your country song of the summer? Your personal favorite summer country banger of the moment?

From the Archives: An Interview With Patty Griffin

Hello newsletter friends, I hope you are all enjoying this start to summer (it's currently pouring on the Saturday I am writing this, so currently waiting for things to actually feel like summer over here). A quick update on my end: this week, I started as a Senior

Put a Record On: Big Lips, Big T*ts, Big Hits

Welcome back to Don’t Rock the Inbox. Here’s this week’s music recommendation post and playlist, which are for paying subscribers only. If you’re interested in paid content but not able to afford it, shoot us an email. The Good "Never Really Mine," Kaitlin Butts:

'An Old Cowhand,' Sonny Rollins, and Jazz and Country Music's Overlapping History

Who's a real cowboy? The question has been central to American culture (popular and otherwise) for almost as long as it's existed, filtered through novels and songs and (of course) endless Westerns, where myths around the tough, rugged and macho American West were consolidated by posh

Put A Record On: The 2026 Summer Playlist (Spoiler, It's Disco)

The summer playlist is a pretty beloved (by me, at least) tradition here at DRTI — paying subscribers have access to all the previous ones here — and as we've discussed quite thoroughly, the country trend of this summer seems to sync up with our pre-existing interest in disco

When Will Women in Country Music Get to be Mediocre?

Lainey Wilson works her ass off. This ability to keep going, at first against all odds and now to keep up with the ravenous demands of her career, is the centerpiece of a new documentary about her life, Keepin’ Country Cool, which debuted last month on Netflix.  Working hard is

Put A Record On: It's A Disco Country World

Welcome back to Don’t Rock the Inbox. Here’s this week’s music recommendation post and playlist, which are for paying subscribers only. If you’re interested in paid content but not able to afford it, shoot us an email. The Good "Crisco," Miranda Lambert: Not Miranda

On Mothering and Work

I'm writing this the day after my first Mother's Day as a mother, in the hour and a half or so I have each night after the baby has gone to bed and before I go to bed if I plan to get any sleep at

🗨 Don't Rock the Comments Section: Middle of Nowhere

Yee-fucking-haw: there's a new Kacey Musgraves album in the world. Middle of Nowhere has been out for a week now, so hopefully you've all had enough time to sit with it for more than a few listens - enough listens, to discuss here! We chatted

What Do You Do When You're Lonesome?

I've probably told this story here before, but the man that really drew us to Nashville was Justin Townes Earle. We'd come to visit during a now-defunct music festival called Soundland, and Justin was playing in a small room off the Korean Veterans Boulevard roundabout,

Put A Record On: Don Schlitz Beyond 'The Gambler'

Earlier this week, we paid a slightly belated homage to the gone-too-soon songwriter Don Schlitz. In spite of the fact that he wrote one of the most widely beloved pop songs of the last century (it was even turned into series of TV movies), he was hardly a