When I was a young girl growing up in North Idaho, my parents didn’t listen to the country radio stations that dominated half the airwaves. My only real memory of listening to the radio was when “I’ll Make Love To You” by Boyz II Men came on and I wanted to evaporate from the passenger’s seat. My musical tastes were mostly shaped by what my parents listened to at home, on tapes and, later, CDs: Bruce Springsteen, Annie Lennox, Simon & Garfunkel, Billy Idol, Fine Young Cannibals. But then I went to junior high, and realized none of those things were as cool as I thought they were (note to self: they were cool, junior high wasn’t cool). I started learning musical taste from MTV (rap) and Entertainment Weekly (grunge).
But in 8th grade, I figured out what the cool girls listened to: country. They were obsessed with Tim McGraw in particular: his (now horrible and effectively banned) hit “Indian Outlaw,” but also the crushing ballad “Don't Take the Girl.” We listened to the CD in the locker room after PE on a Discman: “It’s just so sad!” someone would say, with great emotion, and then start singing the chorus with appropriate McGraw twang. The last song at the school dance was Garth Brooks' "The Dance."
Some of my friends started driving a year later (Idaho, land of the 15-year-old drivers) and the soundtrack in their cars was either Tupac or Country. Sometimes the radio station (106.9, THE OUTLAW, was the favorite) but tapes cobbled from the radio and CDs: Garth Brooks Greatest Hits, that first Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Shania Twain, Mindy McCready, Brooks & Dunn, Vince Gill. The songs from the women were either self-impressed anthems — one of our favorites to blast was Jo Dee Messina's “I’m Alright" and Shania Twain’s “That Don’t Impress Me Much” or songs about domestic violence/shitty dudes (Faith Hill’s “Bed of Roses”) or sweet first love (Deanna Carter’s “Strawberry Wine,” one of our MVPs). The men mostly sang about how they messed everything up (“Who's That Man” Toby Keith) but promise to fix it (“Her Man,” Gary Allen). There were some bucolic odes — Tim McGraw’s “Where the Green Grass Grows” was a big hit — but I don’t remember ever connected the semi-rural life I lived with the content of these songs. Every song was set In Texas or the South, not the Mountain West; it was as exotic to me as songs about the city. We didn't listen to country because it reflected our lifestyles, or channeled something pure and true about our existence. We picked it because the melodies were simple, and the messages were legibly sad or triumphant.
When I went to college — also in a small town, but this time in rural Washington — I thought country was uncool again. But turns out one of the frat boys who controlled the music in the basement of the house where we spent most of our time was from a ranch up north, and all those city girls started learning the words to Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Lonestar, George Straight. Country was getting a bit more pop (see: the Dixie Chicks) but the themes of the music I listened to in high school remained largely the same. Then 9/11 and the second Iraq War happened. Not all of country music responded, but Toby Keith — whose songs had never been explicitly political — released “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue." It became a fixture on Walla Walla country radio, distinguished by the line "You'll be sorry that you messed with The U.S. of A. / Cause We'll put a boot in your ass / "It's the American way."
When the Dixie Chicks said that they were ashamed that George Bush was from Texas, Keith went in; when several friends and I went to his concert at the Yakima Rodeo Grounds, I don’t know what we were expecting, but somehow it wasn’t roaring applause when a video showed the Dixie Chicks getting a boot in their ass. In that moment, country soured —or, for the first time, showed its jingoistic, nationalist roots. Watching that concert was like holding a mirror up to the parts of myself and where I grew up I was most desperate to leave behind. I left the concert feeling vaguely nauseous.
I didn't stop listening to country, but it gradually receded from the soundtrack of my life. But after undergrad, I lived in places — Seattle, Eugene, Austin, Vermont — where you had to search to find the one decent country station, if you could find one at all. I moved to New York, where country is even more rare than the coastal parts of the West, and sold my car — always the primary vehicle for country listening. About 18 months ago, something changed: I started traveling to report more, which meant I rented cars, and nothing soothed me more when I was trying to navigate a new place. The great thing about country, after all, is how easy it is to learn the words: every song follows a standard verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus progression; the rhymes are straightforward and easy to anticipate. I figured out that I love Eric Church, hate Blake Shelton, still dislike Keith Urban, still love Tim McGraw. Did you know that Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish IS A GREAT COUNTRY SINGER? When I started covering the Montana special election in May, driving 4-6 hours a day, I would listen to one country station until I lost reception and tuned into the next. They were filled with ads for both candidates. It was re-immersion, but it was also reporting.
Now that I’ve made the permanent move to Montana — and re-acquired a car — I feel like I’m in 8th grade again, only this time, I’m the one who’s trying to convince other people that this music is cool. My boyfriend is totally baffled as to how I seem to know every song that comes on the radio; most recently, he slowly walked away when I demi-screamed “I LOVE THIS SONG!” when “There Is No Arizona” came on in Cabella’s. Part of me feels bad that I’ve stopped listening to podcasts on long drives; part of me feels great, because after six weeks here, I now know every song in heavy rotation. What I’m fascinated by, though, is how un-political these songs are: country may be the genre of Trump’s America, but it’s carefully avoiding acknowledging itself as such. (My BuzzFeed colleague Reggie Ugwu wrote a smart piece about this earlier this year — every artist/star/musician, even those in country, are struggling to navigate the reality of a "polarized as fuck" cultural landscape).
What I’m fascinated by, then, is the way the ideologies that hover around the idea of Trump’s (white) America pop up instead. There’s the forgotten, misunderstood rural towns (Jason Aldeen's “They Don’t Know”) and the fetishization of the values of the small town (Dustin Lynch's “Small Town Boy”). (Choice "They Don't Know Lyric": "All they see is tractors, barbwire and tall green grass / They don't see the years spent working, busting their ass"). There’s resignation/apathy, specifically as a reaction to odd idea that the “market’s down” and everything sucks (“I Can Fix A Drink”). But there’s also something going on with how men represent and understand themselves — namely, as washed-up, failing, depressed, or desperate. See: “Drinking Problem," "Round Here Buzz," "Make You Miss Me," "If I Told You," and John Mayer's "In the Blood," which some stations are trying to sell as a country song.
I realize that country music stars have long represented themselves as lackluster failures that don’t deserve their women, but I’m also compelled by this particular ideological tangle: everything should be great now that Trump’s been elected. So why, listening to the latest country, do I get the sense that white rural masculinity is still very much in crisis?
That's the thing about country, and why it can remain so popular in places like Idaho and Montana and Wyoming, so far from where the music originates. It's not about describing the way you live. It's about describing the way you feel — your emotional and psychological posture towards others. And while country masculinity has long oscillated between "I am awesome and my way of life is awesome" and "I suck and someday I hope to be a real man who deserves you, a good woman," the strength of those extremes seems to be growing. It's pride, but it's quiet rage that others misunderstand you; it's sadness at your small and large failures at a man, but without the commitment to be better. It's resentment apathy. And it's deeply Trumpian — while still studiously (ostensibly) apolitical.
I'm still working through these ideas, so I'd love to hear about some country song that's stuck in your head lately — whoever analyzes "Body Like a Back Road," currently the worst crossover country hit in the nation, will win a special place in my heart. Just reply to this message and promise not to talk about Lady Antebellum.
Thanks to all of you who showed up for my book reading in Seattle this weekend — if you're in Portland on Monday, I'll be reading at Powell's at 7:30 pm. Then I'm going on vacation for a few weeks, but this newsletter will return in mid-September, as will my first big story in my official capacity as Western Correspondent. But for now —
Things I Read and Loved This Week:
- Hilary Mantel wrote one of the smartest things I've ever read on Kate Middleton; it is no wonder she is exquisite when it comes to Princess Diana.
- A true masterpiece: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah on The Making of Dylann Roof
- Fascinating piece on the advocacy of deaf music fans
- The truly bonkers story of Native American Lit's "Living Con Job"
- I'm a sucker for profiles of food companies, especially one like Driscoll's Fruit
And finally: here's a really solid write-up of all the ways you can help those affected by the Hurricane. As always, if you known someone who'd like this sort of thing in their inbox once a week, forward it their way — and I'll see you in three weeks, with even more weird and local musings.