cannibalcoalition:

speakswiththorns:

lilacbreastedroller:

BIG DISCLAIMER: i was 9 when 9/11 happened, so this might be more about my own crystalizing tastes than anything else. i think it’s a pretty darn good theory tho and other people have validated it.

BIGGER DISCLAIMER: i am not saying that country music prior to 9/11 was free from nationalist, racist, misogynist undertones – i just think that these themes became more the norm!

MY HOT TAKE:

with very few exceptions, including goodbye earl, before he cheats, and daddy Iessons (side note – all women!) 9/11 ruined country music. around 2014 onward we’ve got margo price, sturgill simpson, jason isbell etc., who are making country music great again (wink), but those folks are mostly considered “alternative” country. the mainstream country music for well over a decade now is a glut of trash performative patriotic / working-class-but-not-really lab-crafted budweiser-sponsored nonsense that has managed to sound rebellious (or has convinced its fans that it sounds rebellious) without ever actually questioning any power structure. so much so that artists who ACTUALLY criticized the government were literally blacklisted for nearly a decade (the dixie chicks)

pre-9/11 country music, though not perfect or ideologically pure by any stretch, did not have the raging american flag painted truck boner that comes to mind for a lot of people who say “i like everything except rap and country”

SPECIFICALLY, toby keith’s “courtesy of the red, white, and blue (the angry american)” (2002) literally destroyed country music. it was a direct answer to the 9/11 attacks and war song in support of the invasion of afghanistan. the lyrics read like a disjointed feverish email chain letter forwarded from your great uncle sprinkled with glittering american flag gifs and heavily saturated pictures of bald eagles. the entire song is lifted from an estimated 248 peeling bumper stickers collected from rusted trucks on cinder blocks in overgrown yards, cut up and arranged to fit a catchy, formulaic tune that is almost certainly the background music playing in george w. bush’s head at all times.

“we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the american way
and uncle sam put your name at the top of his list
and the statue of liberty started shakin’ her fist
and the eagle will fly, and it’s gonna be hell, when you hear mother freedom start a’ringin’ her bell”

country music and the new country musicians that toby keith paved the way for became so pro establishment and so unquestioningly nationalistic that, again, the dixie chicks who went against this grain were blacklisted by the industry and received death threats from country music fans. hell, there are folks who STILL froth at the mouth at the mere mention of the dixie chicks.

9/11 killed outlaw country – how can you sing the praises of law breakers when your main circuit consists of singing to troops? there are some great classic country songs critiquing the police state – especially from johnny cash and merle haggard – now country music artists hold fundraisers for FOPs. new country music is basically in-law country music.

you don’t have to write a pro-bush patriotic anthem to be part of this post-9/11 ruination. playing meaningless songs about living in the heart of (read: white) america, eschewing the city (read: not white), and cracking open a cold one with the boys for “authentic” country music is also important to the war effort.

there’s a progression of themes here:

post 9/11 top tier: war anthem, vocally patriotic, directly used as pro war propaganda;
which paved the way for: “things used to be so much better” thinly veiled racist laments, good for campaign ads;
which paved the way for meaningless party anthems – attempts to make things “like they used to be” and craft a reality that neither the artist nor listener likely ever experience.

that brings us to what most people think of today when they say they hate country music: the country party anthem – “tiny hot gal in tight jean shorts who can drink beer like the guys, she doesn’t like beyoncé Like Other Girls, oh she’s so into me and my truck, i’m gonna take her fishing after i finish sowing my corn – sung by a guy who’s never touched a tractor” – has overtaken the tragic, done me wrong, despairing country ballads of tammy wynette, george jones, and even up into pre-9/11 contemporaries like reba mcentire and george strait. you didn’t necessarily have to be country to relate to their pain. now you have to perform suburban redneckness to enjoy luke bryan.

when was the last time you heard a sad country song?

after 9/11, cowboys (whether or not they had ever been near a cow) weren’t allowed to be sad anymore (no more done me wrong country), and they certainly weren’t allowed to question authority (no more outlaw country). partying hardy became the most important American Thing and if you don’t sing about that, our Enemies Will Win.

so – understanding that country music has always had bad stuff, and that like any genre it suffers from commercialization, 9/11 DESTROYED COUNTRY MUSIC. and toby keith gleefully helped destroy it.

for some further evidence of the decline of country music, please listen to the dixie chicks’ “long time gone” which is an indictment of the industry (i believe it was written before 9/11 but my point still stands – the genre was on the decline and 9/11 was the major cultural event that hastened the decline).

maybe i am a curmudgeon – almost every generation of country music has had its own “country music is not what it used to be” anthem, but i really think something distinct happened with 9/11.

THISSSSSSS! Soooo much this! I grew up on 90′s and classic country, both of which I still enjoy to this day. But starIting in my preteen years I really started to dislike anything new that was coming out, other than be a handful of female artists. I turned 11 six days after 9/11. 

Something that I hung up on here because I took a tally of it while working one day. (Our manager likes to listen to country music at work, so we all have to listen to country music at work.)

OP mentioned that the artists commonly played that work against the super-patriotic theme are women. The country station we listen to (and it’s an I Heart Radio station, so it’s going to be similar across the board) plays on average 4 female-lead songs for every 50 male-lead songs. (This is not counting duets… the majority of which are going to be Florida Georgia Line.)

 And this isn’t just a pop hit country station, they play classic hits, too. So to be unable to reach back within the decade and find literally any female country artist has to be a conscious choice. 

Interestingly, when Keith Urban’s “Female” came out, they played that four times a work day- equal to the amount of woman artists. This is not a request station. 

Now. 

I love angry girl country music. It fills my soul. But when 92% of your playlist is chill, happy, sappy, or goofy dudes singing about good times and nostalgia, that 8% of angry music is a disruption. And it further maligns women artists, despite female vocalists being some of the most iconic in the genre. (I know that some of the male singers are more popular, but if you played a male country singer at me right now, I’d struggle to tell you which Keith this one is. The female artists have a more distinct sound, but they play them so little that I’d struggle to think of a name.)

And I wouldn’t know how intentional that is. But I think that most people would agree that female country singers make some of the meanest songs. So from the viewer perspective, female artists are an outlier. 

It’s no wonder that the women artists are angry- if you were one of four women in a room full of men, you’d be pissed off too. 

But to bring it back to OP’s point-

Women are vocal about their discontent, so we play them less. And when we play them, they’re usually bookended with chill dudes singing songs about fishing. A passerby’s note on Miranda Lambert’s ‘Mama’s Broken Heart’ was:

“I don’t know what she’s mad about, but she’s mad about something. Man, chill lady.”

Bringing attention to our irrationality. Or, if not angry songs, they will play very emotional songs- which paints us as emotionally-driven. 

So that when you do actually hear a woman vocalist, you dismiss her. And with female country singers being very vocal in their discontent for the way things are, it’s a lot of dismissal. 

If we played more female country singers and got a wider sample of our culture, there would be less room for all this damn propaganda. 

PS- I miss Shania Twain. 

I have mixed feelings about this. 

Like, there were definitely happy songs in country music before 9/11 (’Don’t Rock the Jukebox’, ‘It’s Your Love’, ‘Wide Open Spaces’). And there are definitely still sad country songs (which, admittedly, I’ve moreso heard from women like the Dixie Chicks, Miranda Lambert, and songs like ‘Better Man’). And honestly, there’s been more mixing of genres in music lately than ever before, so yeah, on that level it’s not surprising there’s more country-rock or country-pop songs than before. So on that level I can’t be too annoyed honestly (or maybe I’m just too young). I like having uplifting and fun songs and as generations go, that definition changes. 

But when it comes to the uptick of America nationalism and the sudden demise of outlaw country since 9/11? Definitely. I’ve noticed it too. I’ve seen maybe a handful of outlaw country songs since 9/11 and maybe two of them were on the radio. The rest I had to google around to find – or, they were from Archer’s Cherlene album. Outlaw country music is dying and I’m not shocked if patriotism is killing it.

There’s a sudden…untouchable national narrative of Americana down on the farm where everyone knows everyone and wholesome family-ness, and shouldn’t everyone be so lucky? And it’s true, not all of those explicitly say America on them but there’s a definite layer there. Stuff like the majority of Toby Keith’s post 9/11 stuff, “May We All”, “It’s America”, etc. 

And while I would expect country music to include songs about life in the country (I mean…it’s right there in the name), I’ve also noticed the uptick in modern music. It’s not inherently nationalist, but it does get used to further the Americana nationalist narrative a lot.