Earlier this year, a book by Mississippi State history professor Joseph M. Thompson shed new light on country music’s complex place in American culture. “Cold War Country: How Nashville’s Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism” traces the deliberate effort on the part of leadership in both music and the military to equate country music with a particular part of the American experience.
It was never etched in stone that what we have come to know as country music had to be white, Christian, or conservative. There have been liberal and socialist impulses running throughout the history of the genre. There has always been an overlooked contribution from Americans of all stripes – African, Native, Latin, etc…. I am not aware of any strong impulse in country music that grew out of a religion apart from Christianity, but I do know of significant country artists who never considered any religion to be vital to their music.
In parts one and two of this series, we have traced the fundamental split that was always part of country music. When Nashville ran the show in the post-war years, that split leaned heavily toward the type of music Thompson describes in “Cold War Country.”
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By 2024, that split, like the country at large, is much more evenly divided. You can see it very clearly in what is formally recognized by the “industry.” I suspect that come February, the Grammy for Album of the Year is going to be awarded to Beyonce for her country crossover, Cowboy Carter. The most prestigious award focused entirely on country music – the Country Music Awards (CMAs) did not even see fit to nominate Beyonce’s work.
The CMAs did nominate a lot of artists associated with more progressive country music – Jelly Roll, Kacey Musgraves, Luke Combs, and the biggest star out there today, Chris Stapleton. The award was ultimately won by Cody Johnson, who may be the most traditional of those five performers. But he is still a far cry from the music that Nashville has been promoting for more than a decade.
Bro-country took the genre – and much of the nation – by storm beginning about fifteen years ago. Bro-country married Nashville’s infatuation with crossover country-pop with decidedly masculine subject matter. It was often the most sophomoric brand of masculinity devoted almost exclusively to pretty girls and cheap beer. Cars, fighting, and a general distrust of anyone who seemed opposed to cars and fighting gradually seeped into Bro’s bloodstream.
Against that, you had artists from all over, pushing back with more incisive lyrics and outside musical influences. Many were rooted in tradition, but it was a tradition that allowed for glances outside the orthodoxy. In the same way that Johnny Cash once shook up country music by including mariachi horns in “Ring of Fire,” many country artists began looking for new ways to tell old stories. Others, particularly those writing and singing about sexuality and gender issues, began telling new stories altogether.
As in the rest of the country, these divides grew larger and larger and birthed angry words and worse. The Dixie Chicks dropped the “Dixie” from their name in 2020. Maren Morris, who won three major CMA awards in 2020, including Single of the Year, announced she was abandoning country music. Recently, she has been working with producer Jack Antonoff, who helped another one-time country singer depart the genre for the greener pasture of pop music. You may know her name. If you don’t, ask a Swiftie.
So country music finds itself at a major crossroads in 2024, but it’s not exactly like it hasn’t been here before. Today, in part three of our series on country songs you are guaranteed to love, we’ll look at this recent era, going back about 20 years, with special attention paid to the 2020s. We won’t include any Taylor Swift because we tend to do that a lot. But if you want to listen to Taylor as a country artist, give “Teardrops on My Guitar” a spin.
2005-2020: the pushback against Bro-Country
“Ride Through the Country” by Colt Ford (featuring John Michael Montgomery) (2008)
Colt Ford grew up in Athens, GA in the 1970s and ‘80s. Being one of the birthplaces of alternative music, it may not be surprising that Athens spawned one of the first successful country rap artists. Ford presented a very traditional country image, championing a simple life described on his debut album, Ride Through the Country. And he did it with a level of self-deprecating wit that stood apart from the early Bros, who were often saying the exact same thing. “You can leave your door open, ain’t nothing’ll happen – Most country folks can sing, but I couldn’t so I’m rappin’.”
The debut album is comprised of duets he performs with artists who can actually sing – on this one, it’s John Michael Montgomery. Ford’s association with alpha-Bro Jason Aldean (he wrote several of Aldean’s hits) has tended to land him on a particular side of the political divide, though Ford has often maintained he doesn’t do politics. Ford, who has dealt with a series of health problems, suffered a heart attack earlier this year. He hopes to resume performing at some point, but that has yet to happen.
“Miss You Being Gone” by the Band Perry (2010)
The siblings from Mississippi (Kimberly, Reid, and Neil) hit the country-pop world hard in 2010 with their self-titled debut album and its monster hit “If I Die Young.” “Miss You Being Gone” shows the harder rock edge they brought to many of their songs, along with Kimberly's fabulously snarky and vindictive lyrical styling. “I’ll admit that I was wrong – You said I’d miss you – Of yes I do – Honey I miss you being gone.” After a follow-up album that yielded several more country-pop hits, the band somewhat inexplicably signed on with mega-label Interscope. Word spread rather quickly that the Perrys were going pop.
However, a third album never materialized, and the Band soon parted ways with Interscope. They released a few singles with Benny Cassette – most known at the time for his work with Kanye West, and it seemed that the Band Perry didn’t have a place in country music – or pop for that matter. Not much was heard from them until Kimberly announced last year that they had disbanded and she was working on a solo project. Being gone, I do kinda miss them.
“Hit ‘Em Up Style” by the Carolina Chocolate Drops (2010)
In the 1975 movie Nashville, which we referenced in part 1 of this series, there was a character named Tommy Brown played by the actor Timothy Brown. He was the token minority recording artist promoted by Music Row in an attempt to prove Nashville did not have a race problem. The character Tommy Brown closely resembled the actual country star Charley Pride, who, for a very long time, was the only African American who could claim to be a country music star.
Several decades later, and with little progress on the diversity front, Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, and Justin Robinson formed the Carolina Chocolate Drops to help revive a form of traditional music played by African Americans from the birth of country. If it wasn’t initially called country music, it sure shared a lot of country’s hallmarks. On “Hit ‘Em Up Style,” Giddons plays fiddle, Flemons plucks the banjo, and Robinson and Sule Greg Wilson handle percussion. Giddens, in her clear, literate vocals, offers advice on how to deal with a cheater, and if that isn’t country…
“Nobody to Blame” by Chris Stapleton (2015)
Chris Stapleton was 36 years old when he reset country music’s compass with his debut album, Traveller, in 2015. He did it by eschewing the Bro braggadocio and returning to a more traditional type of song. “Nobody to Blame” featured his electric guitar playing alongside pedal steel and mandolin. It was managed by legendary progressive country producer Dave Cobb.
And instead of reveling in booze and broads, it is an upbeat-yet-sad-eyed heartbreak song about accepting responsibility for a failed relationship. All delivered in Stapleton’s gruff, tender baritone. Since the release of Traveller, Stapleton has won the CMA Male Artist of the Year seven times, including the most recent award.
“Redesigning Women” by the Highwomen (2019)
Outlaw country music fans have been debating for years who the new version of the original Highwaymen would be. The Highwaymen were the country music supergroup from the 1980s, comprised of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Johnny Cash. Chris Stapleton was long rumored to be a likely member of the new Highwaymen, along with the likes of Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson. Then, wonder of wonders, while everyone was talking about the new Highwaymen, the Highwomen burst onto the scene.
They were led by progressive country titans Brandi Carlile and Maren Morris, along with Natalie Hemby and Isbell’s wife at the time, Amanda Shires. The first single, written by Hemby and Rodney Clawson and sung by all four, was “Redesigning Women,” a mid-tempo rocker about female empowerment in an ever-changing landscape. “Redesigning women – Runnin’ the world while we’re cleaning up the kitchen – Makin’ bank, shakin’ hands, drivin’ eighty – Tryin’ to get home just to feed the baby.”
“Burn One With John Prine” by Kacey Musgraves (2019)
The year isn’t right. I don’t know when Musgraves wrote this beautiful tribute to one of the godfathers of the entire Americana movement. She has never released it either on an album or as a single. But she has played it often, most notably in 2019 when she took the stage with Prine himself and after some of his folksiest storytelling about this young woman who once tried to get him high, Musgraves – by this point a major star herself – played the song as Prine, beaming with pride, looked on.
The song is obviously a loving tribute to one of Musgraves’ inspirations, but it is also a beautiful statement about the way she sees the world - “I ain’t good at being careful – I just say what’s on my mind – Like my idea of heaven – Is to burn one with John Prine.” Not long after this, Prine, among the greatest of all American singer-songwriters, would succumb to COVID.
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“Lilacs” by Waxahatchee (2020)
Waxahatchee is both the stage name singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield took for herself and the name she gave to her band in subsequent years. Saint Cloud was her fifth album, and it was the closest thing she has released to a full-fledged collection of country songs. Crutchfield has always vacillated between being an indie rocker with a twang and a country singer with a healthy dose of indie rock.
“Lilacs” may be the most breezily country song she has ever recorded, and its timing – being released at the onset of the pandemic - offered a perspective on life that didn’t brush off reality but also refused to succumb to despair. “When I live a sparse existence, I’ll drop down in the fold – Lean into an urgent falter, spin silence into gold.”
“Trinity River” by Charley Crockett (2022)
There’s no rule that says you have to have lived a certain number of years or had a particular back story to make it in country music. But the fact that artists like Chris Stapleton and Charley Crockett were well into their 30s before finding mainstream success as solo artists suggests that sometimes a world-weary knowledge can go a long way. We are somewhat removed from the era of Charley Pride, but Crockett still stands out as one of the few African Americans who has built a substantial following in country music.
Crockett had been releasing his unique blend of country and R&B over more than ten albums before 2022’s The Man From Waco won him both critical and popular acclaim. “Trinity River” has Crockett’s straightforward delivery, which sounds like Bill Withers singing country, with a jazzy sheen served up by Kullen Fox’s trumpet. Crockett always comes across crystal clear on his studio releases, but if you ever have the chance to see him live, he positively blows the roof off of wherever he is playing.
“Brenda Put Your Bra On” by Ashley McBryde (2022)
Ashley McBryde’s album Lindeville is one of the three best country albums of the past five years. The conceit is wonderful. McBryde and a group of her singer-songwriters pals including Brandy Clark, Pillbox Patti (Nicolette Hayford), Aaron Raitiere, and Benjy Davis, got together to write a song cycle about the fictional small town Lindeville – named for songwriter Dennis Linde (who wrote the Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl,” from part two of this series).
McBryde serves as the band leader, but they all write, sing, and perform throughout the disc. It opens with the brilliant table-setter, “Brenda Put Your Bra on,” sung by McBryde, Patti, and Caylee Hammack about some “s**t going down in the trailerhood.”
“Going to Hell” by Adeem the Artist (2002)
If Lindeville is one of the best country albums of the 2020s, then Adeem the Artist’s song “Middle of the Heart” may be the single best country song released in the last five years. And that’s not even the one I'm picking for this discussion. “Middle of the Heart” is gorgeous, meaningful, and devastatingly sad. To hook you with something a little more upbeat, listen to the song that follows it on Adeem’s White Trash Revelry album, ”Going to Hell.”
Adeem, who identifies as non-binary, uses fiddles, banjos, and mandolin on a veritable rip-roaring hoedown posing the simple question “Do you really want to go the heaven when we get this rapture started – Or do you want to go to hell, children, with Adeem the Artist?” and concluding with a final argument “They play country songs in heaven but in hell, we play ‘em loud.”
“Liar” by Jelly Roll (2024)
It has just been a few months since one of 2023’s biggest breakout stars, Jelly Roll, sang his song “Liar” on Saturday Night Live. He had already introduced it to the country world at the Opry and the CMA Awards, but SNL showed the non-country world what modern country could be. With the vigor of a fire and brimstone preacher, Jelly Roll rails against false promises of every stripe – from drugs to people and beyond. It is one more tour de force from one of the biggest voices in country music in 2024.
“Billy Miller” by Low Gap (2024)
I figured Jelly Roll’s song would be the most recent one I’d include on this list. After all, I had plenty of other fantastic tracks from the likes of Luke Combs, Maren Morris, and Ian Noe on a short list. Then I listened to Low Gap's brand new three-song EP, Say a Prayer, and decided to bypass some of the more established voices in modern country for what may well be the next chapter.
Brothers Gus and Phin Johnson have yet to reach their 20th birthdays but they have been putting out country music that feels both old and new for three years now. Beginning with the earworm song “Mockingbird” from 2021, they have been improving their writing to the point that we now have “Billy Miller,” a mid-tempo rocker about a misfit that has the warmth of a John Prine song – high praise indeed.
OK, that’s twelve more songs, bringing our total to 36. If you don’t find anything you like in these songs, then I’ll stop bugging you. Country music isn’t for you, and that’s just fine. But I’m betting you won’t just find one song that you love. You’ll find a dozen or more.
One of the songs I wrote about in part one, Buck Owens’ “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail,” was co-written by Harlan Howard, among the most iconic of all country songwriters. His quote about a great country song –“three chords and the truth” – remains as pertinent today as ever, regardless of the new voices, new instruments, and new debates that have helped keep an old tradition very fresh. Give it a try. There’s a lot to be gained.