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.
This was an interesting article. I wish I felt better about country music coming more to the center, but it still seems way too pro maga for me to feel very hopeful. So, I grasp at any straws that I can still.
He mentions Vince Gill singing at the Kennedy Center honors. I have to admit that my stomach dropped when I heard about it, but this interview with Rolling Stone Nashville Now made me feel a little better about it. He was at least very clear about how he feels about Trump when they asked him about it.
I feel like the mention of the Kennedy Center Honors leaves out an important piece of context, which is that George Strait was one of the honorees. Which unfortunately makes it feel a bit tainted that his well deserved turn being honored came under this administration, but I won’t hold it against other country artists coming to celebrate him independent of the politics involved.
Planning to circle back to this full interview later today because Vince is always so thoughtful. But, friend, I had to turn this off early on, after he said he’s planning to release *12* EPs in this series. I… just can’t.
But it only delights me!:)
I do love that for you, Leeann, as much as I cannot fathom reviewing 7 more of those EPs just by *volume*. I can’t think of any artist– not even Miranda before her heel turn– that I’d be excited about such a prospect!
Coming over here from Bluesky as a longtime reader to post here for the first time!
I’ve wanted to address this before—while also not letting my bias against her [Megan Moroney, to be clear] vocal tone influence my opinion too much—but as a white woman who is also a proud, self described Yee Haw Feminist Democrat, I struggle with how to deal with white women in the genre right now.
On one hand, I absolutely do not want to condone problematic behavior. On the other hand, I know, as someone with roots in rural areas/conservative states, how difficult it can be to break free from bad thinking largely perpetuated by men.
Not to mention how women with different beliefs somehow wind up with men on opposite sides of the spectrum. I personally could never do that but it is a thing, unfortunately.
And no, I’m not equating the N word incident to different beliefs!
Hello, friend! We’re delighted you’re here!
I love that you brought this perspective into the conversation, and I agree that there’s a lot of nuance to the subject that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a microblogging format. I’ve seen exactly what you describe play out in many friends, extended family, and colleagues. Even living in a very blue dot in a very red state– and even as someone who has a couple of heterodox beliefs that wouldn’t pass ideological purity tests– it’s easy for me to point to examples of that specific phenomenon, and I agree completely that it’s exponentially more difficult for women in these environments to separate from the “boys will be boys ruined by the manosphere.”
And honestly? I think that experience and perspective would make for a *fascinating* and *important* singer-songwriter in the country space. I would love to hear a pop-country record about that.
Moroney, specifically, is three full albums into her career now, though, and I think it’s clear that she isn’t that artist. She’s invited the same tiresome exegesis into her public persona that Swift did– the idea that her songs are littered with Easter Eggs for her fans to figure out who the flesh-and-blood human the song is “really about” is. And so many of those songs hinge on the idea that she’s gotten her heart broken by yet another guy who couldn’t live up to her standards… without any reflection on how, hey maybe just maybe, the fact that you keep choosing, as a woman with independent agency, to attach yourselves to the likes of Wallen and Green could be the source of the problem.
I don’t find “So close to getting it” to be an interesting or needed perspective, especially not given the other problematic aspects of her persona. But if that actually does click for her eventually and it shows up in her writing? I’ll happily acknowledge that within her career arc, though I can’t imagine I’ll still want to listen to her off-key mumbling. (But Swift actually put real work in on her voice, so maybe there’s hope for that, too!)
Edited with an additional realization:
Know who might be the act to pull off what we’re talking about here? Meghan Patrick, whose Golden Child remains one of the finest mainstream country albums of the past few years and who is, I learned just this week, married to Mitchell “Bitches” Tenpenny.
Welcome, Mary! Also very glad that you’re here!
For any artist, in my mind, it’s always a balance between singing, songwriting/song selection, production, and point of view that come together in some form or another to captivate my interest.
But this discussion brought another lens into focus that I truly appreciate: it matters to me whether an artist is reinforcing the narrative, or interrogating/subverting it, which is a fancy way of me saying: what do you have to contribute here?
The moment in time matters too. I don’t think a Maroney would be quite as disinteresting to me if she was operating during say, the late nineties, when we could take smart and independent women for granted on the radio.
But she wouldn’t have made it very far during the era where women dominated, and there’s a lesson in there about why she’s one of the only women who’s making it now.
I personally think that, besides being and becoming so monumentally unpopular because of its toxicity and its absolute mind-busing hypocrisy when it comes to “traditional American family values”, MAGA has just become plain B-O-R-I-N-G. They simply don’t have anything else to offer other than a lot of s**t, which is a good reason to leave them in the dustbin, especially in the country music genre (IMHO).
Coming from an outside (Australian) point of view, I feel the same. MAGA is boring and offers nothing I can see (but see: outside point of view). I do know I love country music and I listened to half a song by Morgan Wallen on Youtube and hated it.
I agree with this. But I also grew up steeped in the evangelical church and surrounded by right-wing talk radio. So whenever these folks talk about being “silenced,” it rings entirely hollow, because they’ve never once been quiet about what their beliefs are. There are no surprises or new insights to be gained or, in most instances, even stories to be told that are about anything other than those exact grievances.
No one told Lee Brice he can’t mow his lawn. Beyond being inept from a composition standpoint, that song is also *boring*, as both of you have noted.
I’d also add that the MAGA people like to think of themselves as the height of “political incorrectness”. And perhaps that’s true if that means being a xenophobe, a homophobe, a bigot, and a bully. But that’s too easy to do these days; and even worse, it makes our country as a whole (and country music as a genre) look even more racist and stupid than we already do in the eyes of the world (IMHO).
Oh yes, I know the type all too well (no Taylor Swift pun intended). It’s very easy and again from my outside perspective there is a lot of that. I love country music – my late father introduced me to the genre and is why I still love so many of the classic artists (Waylon Jennings is my current rediscovery). But there are a lot of great Americans and great singers. I just have to look at Dolly to know that.
Ah yes, I think I grew up with similar attitudes around me (luckily not in my immediate family, but some of the extended relatives…). I mean, it’s different but not so much I can’t understand the perspective, either. You’re not wrong that those types have never been silenced so much as ‘forced’ (from their perspective) to hear other voices occasionally.
Lee Brice too? Damn, he sings one of my favourite duets (I Hope You’re Happy Now with Carly Pearce). I’ll still listen to it but it’s not great.
…not so sure, if things are really just as red and blue like displayed on that illustration above. last year, there where two country artists that would not allow/have any press at their gigs here in switzerland: maren morris and oliver anthony. ms. morris always had favourable press coverage here (i know that for sure because i was largely that press). mr. anthony less so – i never let him off the hook for those “fudge rounds”. it just ain’t very considerate/human to hit on those, whose few little pleasures in life are so backfiring (around the hips) over time.
i never thought much of maga – their america has been great already since after world war I at least. in fact, i’ve come to despise maga-america as much as i hate communists (still, for their mindblowing ignorance after the obvious failure of that pipedream 1989). what’s so despicable about the exponents of that – unfortunately very deep rooted and truely historic american ideology – and so-called u.s. republicans is the outright perversion of republican virtues in their true sense (among those civic responsibilities that go further than potlucks after church service or exuberant fund raisers for most questionable people).in its current maga-form this purposely contorted way is nothing less than the reckless violation of the somewhat educated people’s minds. but even those minds must be put into question since after the last u.s. election. as for maren morris and oliver anthony, the appeared like bugs bunny and elmer fudd, the hunter, when they would distangle from each other front to front only to meet again a little later butt to butt. perhaps, in country music, like in society, the danger zones ain’t at the opposite poles but rather there, where things/people go full circle and the extremes touch again. after all, it wasn’t being more/most considerate that gave wokeism a bad name – it was the lure of the cancel culture.
just to highlight how bad things already can be in country music: kane brown’s “backseat driver” was hands down one of the best “songs” during the last cma eligibility period. it spoke so charmingly accurate to anybody who’s ever been driving around with young children on the backseat – i.e. the bedrock of any society – yet it couldn’t get a nomination for what it was literally worth. but the in every way hopeless “texas” by blake shelton made it to the finals. go figure.
then again, there has been so much great country music and remarkable artists for a while now, i couldn’t give a flying toss even about aldean and buddies. i much rather spend my time discovering interesting stuff, or perhaps ponder whether there is a homosexual undercurrent in ashley mcbryde’s clip to the terrifically intriguing “what if we don’t”.
Interesting anecdotes about Morris and Anthony. Anthony has been lugging around an anti-press cross for a while– he loves nothing more than making himself a victim– and Morris did almost no promotion at all for her recent ^dreamsicle^ project. Whether that was her choice or her label’s, I’m not sure, but it certainly resulted in her very good album bombing. Of course, her last major press cycle involved being branded “Lunatic Country Music Person” in the mainstream media, so perhaps she’s right to be guarded.