Craig Jenkins is a pop culture writer and critic whose work includes his incisive analysis of contemporary country music. On Wednesday, he published a deep dive into Music Row’s current political realignment and, as is his wont, he brought the receipts. Craig’s analysis of country is always required reading– his appreciation for the music always shines through, and he has as finely-tuned a bullshit detector as anyone.
A couple of thoughts here after reflecting on this piece yesterday:
Kane Brown is, as he always is, an important case study. Far and away the most successful person of color in the country space of his generation, he spent the first act of his career outwardly claiming people like Aldean and Luke Bryan as personal friends while also distancing himself from their politics.
That seemed to work well for Brown: He scored an uninterrupted run of massive hit singles, as radio couldn’t ignore his streaming and social media popularity. But the industry itself still held him outside its main gates: We’ve noted his paltry number of CMA and ACM nominations many times.
And we’ve loudly championed the quality of his work and the important ways it’s different from his peers for a long while now, though he still lags behind the generalist critical acclaim of, say, a Luke Combs (who’s very good, yes).
More recently, though, Brown has been more open about centering his blackness in his music, which is obviously an important artistic and political decision. And it’s hardly a coincidence that radio has, simultaneously, cooled on him; his last (fantastic) album got just two singles.
It’s noteworthy, then, to see how Shaboozey (who we also love) has replaced Brown as mainstream country’s One Black Friend, as Craig accurately points out Shaboozey’s willingness to play nicely in the sandbox the way Brown had previously.
It highlights the genre’s fundamental conservatism in how anyone who isn’t a straight, white, Christian man is expected to conduct themselves. Just a few days ago, we pointed out on BlueSky how Kelsea Ballerini’s fortunes turned immediately upon a live performance with a bunch of drag queens. Her latest single, “Baggage,” spent 44 weeks trudging to a peak outside the top 20.
And Maren Morris, of course, has been sent into exile for daring to speak out in favor of trans rights in opposition to Aldean’s bigoted influencer wife.
It always comes back to who Music Row allows to succeed, and when.
To that end, I do think Morgan Wallen is more explicitly right-wing than Craig suggests. This is a man who performed for the inauguration of TN Gov. Bill Lee, in addition to all of the other things Wallen has done as a public figure. And even if Music Row might find some of his conduct distasteful and a poor reflection on their own conservatism (note, too, his shunning by the CMAs), the amount of money he generates for the genre means they’re quite happy to ignore his boorishness.
And– sorry but in literally no way sorry– Moroney falls into that camp, too: This is someone who chose to be romantically involved with Wallen after the N-word tape dropped. That’s worth interrogating far more than what the media has done with her with fawning profiles about, “Oh wow, the visual theme for her new album is pink!” Her chosen proximity to Wallen– and Robert E. Lee enthusiast Riley Green– is part of her public persona, and that speaks volumes.
It’s like when Illinois native Gretchen Wilson debuted, swathed in Confederate flag iconography, and I thought I was losing my mind that no one else seemed willing to recognize that as problematic. The tells are all there, and they aren’t subtle.
So if Wallen and Moroney are somehow indicative of a pivot to the “center,” I think it’s worth acknowledging how far to the right of a true center crux things are.
Personally, I think Marissa Moss’ recent, tremendous GQ profile of Combs places him at a more natural center than those two.
That point and some of those specific examples aside, I agree with Craig’s premise that the historic unpopularity of the current administration and its policies did not turn into the cash cow some artists banked on.
And there’s both a sense of karmic justice and actual relief in that.
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