Beyoncé, Ballerini and (Comedy) Bang Bang: Our Top Posts Of 2024
Thank you for reading and hanging in with us through another wild and often wonderful year of country etc. music!
By Natalie
Somehow it’s 2025 tomorrow, and so in the spirit of reflection we’re looking back on our first full year of sending this newsletter — specifically, the writing we did that really seemed to resonate with you all. Marissa and I are so thrilled and proud of the community we’re aiming to foster here, and obviously it only exists because of all of you: the people who open these emails, read them, share them, comment on them and pay to support our work. Thank you!! We are so grateful, and are already plotting for how we can keep the country content coming in 2025.
I’d like to give Marissa’s Waxahatchee interview another plug, because we just slipped it in under the wire; an absolute must read!! Such a special conversation.
Before I dive into our top posts of the year, I wanted to quickly shout out some of our non-DRTI writing — hopefully, you’re deep in vacation mode with time to read :) Marissa profiled Sierra Ferrell, Kaitlin Butts and Chase Rice among others; she also offered great analysis with her anniversary piece on Sturgill’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. I profiled The War and Treaty and Miranda Lambert, wrote about how Midland’s “Drinkin’ Problem” has become a standard in English and Spanish and got to interview Billy Bob Thornton (hey, as he will tell you he’s a musician first!).
Without further ado, our top posts of the year!!! Thank you again for reading and see you in 2025!
Me, waxing poetic about music in North Texas (what else is new?) in part to promote my new radio show on KNON Now :)
I went long on Stapleton and his impact, in one of our most opened emails of the year!
Marissa’s recap of the always-distressing CMA broadcast was a perfect follow up to our lively open thread on the topic!
At the dawn of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter year, Marissa predicted and unpacked what it all meant (fitting to reshare this just after Beyoncé literally rode in on a horse to her internationally televised non-Super Bowl halftime show!).
Marissa shared some thoughts on what it meant for the Democratic party to publicly embrace music that too often gets characterized as exclusively conservative in this great essay.
Marissa dug into what it means for Kelsea Ballerini to keep trying to succeed within the framework of Music Row and country radio in spite of the many hurdles she faces there — and more broadly, what it means for us to keep engaging with the major label/corporate side of the genre.
Marissa and I got to hang out with some of you at Americana Fest and it was wonderful!!! Plus we saw a ton of music and wrote about it and apparently you were all into that which is also wonderful!
Marissa dug into how country music’s favorite conservative grifters are completely aligned with the way politicians like J.D. Vance cynically deploy rural life and culture for anti-establishment clout in our third most popular piece of the year.
Extremely proud to note that we effectively mobilized Comedy Bing Bongers with our second-most popular post of the year, on the glories of Memphis Kansas Breeze. May the new year bring more truck anthems (or perhaps a Lainey Wilson cover of “Truck Birthday”). ›
We cracked the code with this one, it would seem — or you all are just as big of Combs heads as we are. Our most-viewed post of the year was all about how discerning country fans shouldn’t throw Combs out with the commercial country radio bathwater he’s flourishing in! More Converting the Skeptics posts to come in 2025, because there is a lot of (justified!) skepticism of this genre we find ourselves writing about over here at DRTI.
