Issue #19: The Summer Of Country Discourse

We head back to the official Don't Rock The Inbox Slack to wade through the sea of country takes. Even, yes, the redheaded guy with the beard.

Before we begin, some super exciting news: We are officially launching the Don’t Rock The Inbox Book Club!! Our first book will be Why Tammy Wynette Matters by Steacy Easton — we’re telling you this now so that you have time to read it before we get Steacy on Zoom to discuss it on Monday, September 18th with us and our paying subscribers. If you don’t have it yet, we have our first discount code (!! I’m so excited about this!) for Don’t Rock The Inbox readers only (!): enter UTXTAMMY for 25% off + free shipping if you purchase the book directly from UT Press.

If you’re excited about our new book club but haven’t yet become a paying subscriber, well you’re in luck on that front, too. We’re having a back-to-school sale, with 35% off annual subscriptions for the next week — $52 instead of the usual $80 for a year of full access to all our country music writing, recommendations, live events, playlists, and community. (I got tired just typing that.) With your subscription, you also get the knowledge that you’re helping us write about the things we believe are important without a paywall in our free weekly posts — literally, this programming is made possible by viewers (and commenters, and emailers) like you. We’re so grateful to everyone who’s gotten onboard so far, and excited to keep growing this community of sweet country (and whatever) fans. So subscribe, take advantage of our first discount code and mark your calendars for September 18!

Now, down to business.

Two guys competing to see who can take up the most unmerited space in pop music

Yes, it’s come to this. We have to address the elephants who are trampling all over the room — and this week, we took to the Don’t Rock The Inbox Slack to do just that. Read on as we explore a few of this summer’s inescapable country storylines and try to make sense of where the genre is right now, both as a commercial product and as a larger tradition. Our conversation is below.

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Marissa: I feel like the choice right now is confront the country discourse, which is mostly awful, or move to a deserted island to never have to speak about it ever again. Weighing pros and cons ATM, to be honest.

Natalie: There is so, so, so much discourse and it is almost universally bad. A lot of people are listening to country music (or music that is being sold as “country”), and a healthy chunk of that music is inspiring people who normally would not think about it at all to broadcast very strong opinions on the subject. Great time to have a country music newsletter.

I guess we are compelled to start by staring down the Aldean-Wallen-Combs 1-2-3 on Billboard's Hot 100 a couple weeks back — the first time three "country" songs have ever topped that chart (Wallen and Combs are still holding steady atop the chart this week; T-Swift is actually up to No. 3 with “Cruel Summer”…a pop song that is not all that much poppier than Wallen or Combs’ offerings). Each one of those songs has its own exhausting and depressing discourse, and they've really forced the issue by being overwhelmingly popular.

Marissa: Ah yes. Can't avoid it, I suppose. I could be wrong, but my guess would be that this is not going to be an aberration, but rather a future norm. And not because of the "popularity" of country music, but because they've got the system down pat at this point.

Natalie: Yeah, that's a good observation — the Nashville machine is just operating at a different tilt right now than the rest of the industry (which is complaining about how hard it is to sell tickets while both Wallen and Combs are selling out stadiums).

Marissa: You get a base still so engaged with radio airplay, you get an enraged political base, you get false buzz, you get payola, so many exciting and enticing ingredients! Nashville always gets shit for being behind in the streaming arena, and in some ways that's true, but Nashville loves numbers more than anyone. We have number one parties! It's all about chart climbing at the end of the day, and thinking that this town isn't getting pretty damn good at it even outside of country radio is shortsighted — case in point, current charts.

Natalie: Outlining those songs, we have a Nickelbackified MAGA vigilante song (Aldean), a basic R&B-cribbing ballad (Wallen, who was clearly listening to a fair amount of Baby Bash — a perennial TikTok fave — when he was recording), and a cover of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car," which charted as rock and adult contemporary 35 years ago. Unsurprisingly, the two songs here that are not explicitly racist draw heavily from (what else) Black music.

There is a range here, which I think makes it all the weirder and more frustrating when people have been lumping them all together to make some facile point. Yes, they are all white men, and that is worth saying over and over because it's messed up. But beyond that…

Marissa: For sure — also, the actual music they are making, whatever its differences and similarities, is insignificant compared to the unchecked power of a white man in country music, and it's ever-growing now that they’ve figured out how to harness angry people on the internet. Speaking of Nickelback, are we gonna talk about that Atlantic piece that claims this is a sudden trend?

Natalie: LOL yes — as though Joey Moi just arrived. I do think Wallen's wild success has made it the sound to beat right now — the explosions of Jelly Roll and Bailey Zimmerman just prove that people have an insatiable appetite for further-watered down versions of "How You Remind Me." (On the superficial country thinkpiece topic — did you know Jelly Roll might “heal the broken soul of America” per the NYT?)

Marissa: They do, and I'd love a stat on how many current country DJ's and PDs used to program rock radio. I also don't want to lump Wallen and Aldean in with Luke Combs, who I like.

Natalie: I think Luke is catching a fair amount of flack just by association, which is fine to an extent — obviously he's making boatloads of money in the process. But covering a Tracy Chapman song because you earnestly have always loved Tracy Chapman (and yes, probably having your label strategically push it because they saw a window for success) — which is why he did it — and sending millions her way in the process is not anything like politically baiting people all the way to the iTunes store, or capitalizing on Gen Z's short attention spans with TikTok fodder (and the mythology and mystique of "cancellation" as it pertains to your own obvious racism).

Marissa: Watching the discourse around that song choice — which was one of the very first songs he covered on Vine, which tells you how long ago it was — shows, per usual, how little people feel the need to actually engage with country music and apply a sense of expertise to their coverage. And is the Aldean song already way off the chart? I haven't looked, but I saw it plunging.

Natalie: I think the most important takeaway from the whole thing was from the Black Opry's Holly G, who astutely noted to the Washington Post that the whole fandango was proof that Tracy and voices like hers should have been prominent on country radio all along.

The Aldean song has fallen off (steady at No. 21 for the second week in a row), which makes sense because Trump can only direct people to it so many times before the novelty wears off. It's rising at country radio, though, so how much success it winds up having there will be a real litmus test for the format.

Marissa: I mean you have to also first acknowledge, too, that singles by these men do not fail. The organic growth of Combs has always been interesting, but for the most part, there is a system in place to ensure that every song put out by these men eventually reach number one, through a very refined process. Or you could call it payola if you like! Might not involve bags of money and coke, but shit put in this specific pipeline does not fail.

Natalie: Yeah, I just looked and Aldean's last song that peaked outside the Country Airplay top ten was in 2013 (!!!), and there have only been two outside the top ten in his entire career (what the actual fuck…). What we talk about when we talk about industry plants....

Marissa: People ask all the time why the songs are so bad, and there are a lot of reasons for that (I think Aldean is a talentless hack and always have, I can much easier defend a Luke Bryan who is like, kinda hokey and fun?). A primary one, though, is that they don't have to be any good. If it's going to go to number one anyway, why waste time and money on something good?

Natalie: The ways that all of these songs have reached such broad audiences also separates Aldean. I know that people (especially outside of country) attribute Wallen's success to a kind of reactionary listening, but we're so far from him being on record saying the N-word (which happened!! Keep saying it!) at this point I think it's clear that regardless of whatever bump that gave him at the time, he's since tapped into the teen zeitgeist (which is rare in country) and has manifested full pop crossover — "Last Night," like I said, is more or less a very white R&B song, an evergreen formula for $$$. Combs was obviously angling for a pop audience here too, because that's who Chapman initially reached. 

Aldean....it was such a perfect storm of the most extreme version of the kind of tired America First B.S. he's been spewing for years now reaching a whole new audience that was, depending on the person, horrified or thrilled by his unmistakably white supremacist rhetoric. 

Marissa: We know it's possible for country to cross over in really profound ways — we saw it in the nineties with Shania and the Chicks and Garth. We just changed the playing field enough that it's impossible for this to happen to anyone but a cishet white man. With Aldean, he needed a way to stay relevant. And this worked like a charm.

Natalie: I want to believe it'll go away, but the model worked so well that I can't help but think labels will try their best to replicate it. Obviously this is not the first time this has happened; in the world of boyfriend/wedding/whatever sappy stuff that we've been in, though, things have been a little quiet recently on the explicitly political front. Now, I am girding my loins for a rash of MAGA crap flooding the airwaves.

The whole situation has shown how cowardly even the more progressive side of Music Row — I'm looking at you, Tim McGraw — has become even just since Nashville's post-9/11 patriotism fever....would have been cool if anyone with a big platform would have called Aldean out, but alas. Hey Jelly Roll — since you are trading heavily in your “former rapper” backstory (and having Three 6 Mafia join you on tour…hoping they got a hefty check for that), it might be cool to show an iota of solidarity instead of, say, appearing on Fox & Friends!

Marissa: When I was researching my book, I spoke to PDs who were at stations after 9/11 and they eventually had to tag all the jingoistic songs so they could be properly placed into rotation....which I am sure was designed so they had to play them more often than women.

Natalie: Ugh…really hope it does not come to that again. This time, with songs tagged “fascist.”

Marissa: Whatever makes money! LOL. I think a good case to examine is Raelynn. Her career was not going where she wanted, in part because it can't go much of anywhere if you are a mid-level woman in country music wanting to engage with the mainstream. So she went full MAGA because it was making her more famous with a certain group of people — true "doing what the popular girls [at your white supremacist high school] are doing" behavior. I don't know if half these people even know what they believe, they just like money and fame.

Natalie: Yeah, it's so cynical. Not to bring up a favorite of many DRTI readers, but I was so excited to see Hailey Whitters for the first time back in 2021 because I really loved her first two albums. She came on stage with a whole new Iowa corn girl persona and a song about “boys back home” with the lyrics, "They wear worn-out boots, they take off their hats/For suppers and sermons, funerals and flags/They'll bail you out of a ditch or a bar/And they won't be caught dead in no electric car," and another one called "Our Grass Is Legal" (????). Hailey, are you trying to tell me you've never smoked a joint? Who are you talking to here?

Not to go on a full tangent — obviously the other discourse du jour is MAGA Childers, a.k.a. Oliver Anthony. Bet you didn't have country song with welfare queen rhetoric on your 2023 bingo card (or maybe you did)...

Marissa: How does one even talk about this song? I mean, even if you remove the discourse around it and the meaning of the lyrics, it's not actually a very good song. Title is clever but that's about it? Someone will figure out who is responsible for the astroturfing eventually, I suppose…

These people really all broke the day Tyler Childers said Black Lives Matter, huh. Which, among many things, shows that they willingly ignored everything he sang about before that because they wanted him to serve a purpose. There are so many actual good songs about the workingman’s plight by SG Goodman, Drive By Truckers, Margo Price, Isbell, Childers....like why would you fuck around with this one (I mean I know why).

Natalie: My theory is that the Aldean thing happened, and some enterprising and deeply awful A&R went scouring TikTok for a useful avatar for more similar music - and found this guy, who is cosplaying the character that Sturgill Simpson played on Righteous Gemstones this season. He had an active TikTok and YouTube presence long before this week; his TikToks are tagged #tylerchilders and #zachbryan lmao — it’s so embarrassing.

His numbers and virality are so self-evidently being juiced that it’s really dispiriting to see how many otherwise sane people are credulously accepting his story as evidence of anything besides an act designed for profit (“I have no reason to doubt that Oliver Anthony is genuine in his rage over being a working man and not making enough money and feeling the vague sense that the whole damn system is ripping him off” — well, I do!! and the reason I do is because racism is wildly profitable!). That some leftists find his story even a little credible is proof of how deep country’s myths about “authenticity” — its stories about the superiority of an imagined, bygone all-white world — run. He is deemed “real” despite clearly shaping himself (and being shaped) to a very specific end; “AintGottaDollar” is his handle, but he owns 90 acres…

Marissa: Check out his likes on YouTube — videos about Jews celebrating after 9/11 and shit. Reading scripture before his concert this weekend...It reads like an SNL character to me.

Natalie: It's just as though we have no more media literacy now than people did when "country" music was first invented by a business man in a recording studio in a city (which is what happened!). This dude is presenting as "authentic" in a very specific and intentional way, standing in a forest like he lives in some little hut with his big beard and fancy guitar. And everyone is just performatively lapping it up — or performatively disdaining it — when we could just like, move on....if only.

There's no question country puts itself squarely in the middle of the culture wars, but it is sooooo tiring to have to keep saying this every single time. We don't need to credulously accept the stories country tells about itself and keep repeating them — and that is on the people who insist on pontificating about it while knowing nothing.

Marissa: Pontificating about it while knowing nothing....exactly that. Someone pointed out that he has not gone viral on TikTok, which is definitely odd on top of all of this.

Natalie: So what do we doooo — us specifically but also everyone who enjoys listening to music that gets called country or is connected to this tradition in some way. Is it too facile to say ignore the bad and elevate the good....

Marissa: That is a very good question. I said something to this point after I read that Atlantic story, which is that you have to do more elevating if you want to convincingly take down the bad. You can’t just take down the bad because you think southern people and country fans are all piece of shit hillbillies who deserve whatever comes to them. It’s the same people who, after abortion bans in both of our states, were like, “Well fuck them they deserved it!”

You want to publish pieces about the very bad parts of the genre? 1. Hire someone who knows their actual shit to write it and 2. Publish profiles about country artists who are good, too! And also then don't make those entire profiles about how they are "country for people who hate country music.”

Natalie: And maybe try not to spin the controversy du jour into clickbait that confirms everyone's worst assumptions, also.

Marissa: It does feel like there is some degree of glee in it, at times.

Natalie: Definitely. I wonder, too, about all of this crossover and country's currently growing place within pop music in general. My feeling is that 90% of the very online people we interact with day to day grossly underestimate how many people are just turning on the radio or the Spotify playlist as a matter of course and don't know anything about any of this.

Marissa: Yeah, I really agree with that. Every time I home to the east coast, I hear country music in stores. It's the new elevator music.

Natalie: There are definitely people I know in Texas spinning Morgan Wallen tunes because the algorithm fed them to them, and that's like...a much more representative experience that also raises the ceiling for a number of probably white, probably male Music Row artists. I'm curious what kind of music comes from that growth (so far nothing great, but who knows). Now that he's shaved his mullet he's probably topped out....why he would tee up a zillion justified skinhead jokes, I'm not sure (Let’s hope it’s not signaling some impending Aldean collab for the Trump campaign trail….although it feels like it’s only a matter of time).

Marissa: I haven't even seen a pic of the new hairdo yet. I shall google now.

Natalie: This PEOPLE headline is cracking me up: "Morgan Wallen Shaves Off Signature Mullet and Mustache: 'I Didn't Like My Long Hair Anymore'" #breaking

Marissa: People being so connected to that hair...talk about authenticity signaling. LOL, breaking news, truly.

Natalie: All the world's a stage, and all the Morgan Wallens (or Corgan Wallens) merely players, etc. etc.

Anyway IDK — do we have any parting thoughts on the Summer Of Country Takes? No, I will not write you a clickbait thinkpiece on any of the aforementioned topics for $150. A dollar a word and then maybe we can talk....

Marissa: Hahah for real. Sadly, I think we are in for a long road of this — but this also made me smile today:

Natalie: There has always been a counter to whatever the prevailing Music Row conservatism is, and the current iteration of that opposition music is great and worth celebrating...I think the overwhelming success of Tyler Childers etc. also shows how much streaming/social media has created an avenue for country music outside of the radio. Like I'm not gonna pretend to know anything about Zach Bryan's politics (or to have listened to his music, tbph…we’ll get to that in another newsletter) but having one of the music's biggest rising stars speak up for trans people is a standalone victory. I want louder and more, obviously.

Marissa: Yeah, I am not a very optimistic person — I am working on that. But there is optimism for me in that the people standing on the right side of history are the ones with the best music.

Natalie: (again, not saying that's zach bryan on either count lmao - just a visible example)

Marissa: I have been thinking about that poem that went viral not long ago: "In order for me to write poetry that isn't political, I must listen to the birds, and in order to hear the birds, the warplanes must be silent."

Natalie: Totally — I think in country especially, people get away with the like "Well I don't talk about politics/all politicians are bad" etc. You are totally free to say that and feel that way, but you also have to know that is a privilege; opting out of conversations that make you uncomfortable is a privilege. I know both of us try to amplify people making music who don't have or use that privilege.

Marissa: Anywho, not to be too serious. I can go back to making fun of the bearded man.

Natalie: LOLOL yeah, Tyler Mahan Coe has been roasting him pretty effectively. I'm enjoying that.

Marissa: Oh, his roasts have been A+.

Natalie: Anyway, solidarity forever and especially against Jason Aldean and everyone on Music Row who's profiting off of him.

Marissa: Yeah that's a whole other post, but there's a whole machine backing him up and plenty of them tell themselves they voted for Obama so they can sleep at night. Sorry hon...but no.

Natalie: While they soundtrack the dog avi crowd we're working on the soundtrack for the revolution, simple as that.

If you’re looking for further reading beyond the aforementioned Washington Post piece by Emily Yahr, we also recommend Amanda Marie Martinez’s piece on “small town” rhetoric in country through history for NPR!