Disdainful and outraged, Eric Church, the most accessible contemporary heretic in country music, begins his new single, “Stick That in Your Country Song”, with an image of a decayed America:
Take me to Detroit city
Prisons are full, factories are empty
Mom crying, boys dying
Beneath that red, white and blue still flying
The church never explicitly refers to race, but it is clear that the nation it is singing about contains multitudes, and it is failing; The lyrics of the song are very far from the benign happiness that floods the rest of the genre, even at this very marked moment. By the time Church gets to the choir, she mocks her ideologically empty peers: “Paste that in your country song / Take that to number 1,” she scoffs, knowing full well that they never would.
There’s a similar spike in “March March,” the latest single from “Gaslighter,” the comeback album by The Chicks (formerly Dixie Chicks), the outcasts of country music. The lyrics denounce climate change, the laws that seek to control a woman’s body and armed violence: “Standing with Emma and our sons and daughters / Seeing our youth having to solve our problems / I will follow them, so who is coming with me”.
The video amplifies the song’s lyrical provocations, collecting protest images from the early 20th century to the present, encompassing various causes but largely addressing the Black Lives Matter movement, concluding with a list of on-screen names of the names of the black victims of police violence.
“Stick That in Your Country Song” and “March March” are not directly about the current political moment, both were written before the recent protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd, but this is a nation that was already in crisis, and it has been for decades. Seen through that lens, they are perfectly synchronized.
But that the two most prominent quasi-protest songs that come from the sprawling country music ecosystem are from artists who, in very different ways, have made a cut-off point against their orthodoxy, only underscoring how poorly prepared country music is: gender and industry – is for current racial justice conversations.
This is not a surprise. For most of the last decade, mainstream country music has distilled down to the bleakest version of itself, over-indexing lighthearted flirting and rural tropes. Even the muscular, quasi-militaristic chest swelling of the early 2000s, exemplified by Toby Keith, Trace Adkins, etc., has been removed. Luke Bryan is singing about drinking, Morgan Wallen is singing nothing sweet, Justin Moore is singing about drinking, Chris Janson is singing nothing sweet: More than at almost any time in its history, country music is a pool party.
In the rest of the world, industries that have long been crossed with blinders have been damaged. Parts of the music industry operating from New York and Los Angeles have begun taking steps to redress decades of injustice, or at least have given the idea a touch of grace.
Nashville, however, has been surprised, an essentially predestined outcome, given that the country music business has always been woefully inadequate in the way it approaches race, leaving out the black music that was essential in its formation, passing He overlooks the ways in which the genre still intersects with contemporary black music and constantly gives little importance to black artists. Building an identity based on black erasing leaves the country music world reeling when it should be considered.
Nowhere has this been more evident than in the case of Lady Antebellum, who finally realized that the name she has been using for a decade and a half carries unwelcome connotations from the era of slavery. The band announced that it was changing the name of Lady A, a nickname that it has used for a long time (and a registered trademark that it owns), only to discover that a Seattle blues singer, a black woman, also performs under that same name. Name.
What started as a late attempt at a act of good faith has turned into a comedy of errors. After negotiations between the two sides, which included the possibility of a collaboration song, broke down, Lady A, the blues singer, requested a payment of $ 10 million, half of which would be donated to charities. In response, Lady A the band filed a lawsuit to assert their right to use the name. Whether or not a judge offers relief from the gang, he has already been deeply hurt in the court of public opinion: blind to the associations that had his original name, and equally blind to the implications of trying to shoot a black artist. on his way to the attempted redemption.
This is what happens when racial consciousness is an afterthought. But while it is easy to smear the group for its stumbling block, it is by no means alone. And the case of the old Dixie Chicks is instructive here. In 2003, the group was effectively exiled from the genre when Natalie Maines expressed her discontent with President Bush. This was the most jingoistic era of country music, and the most openly politically conservative. But even as liberal outcasts, the trio took no steps to address the implications of their name. Even when she released a challenging comeback album in 2006, it was still from Dixie Chicks. Only now has the group name been changed.
It is important to remember that harmful language can be perpetuated with cruel intent and also with deaf ears. Country music has largely aligned itself with contemporary conservative values and has neglected the contributions and concerns of non-white and non-male artists. In this climate, it can be shocking to hear even the slightest hint of dissent, such as “How They Remember You”, the latest single from the trio of naked ballads Rascal Flatts, featuring this benign ponderable: “Did you stand up or Did you fall? / Did you build a bridge or a wall?
The genre is often at the center of culture wars, as happened in June when singer Chase Rice performed a concert in Tennessee in which fans were unmasked and did not practice social distancing, sparking widespread anger, even from some of his companions. (More promisingly, country superstars Garth Brooks, Brad Paisley, and Alan Jackson have recently done drive-in concert versions.)
But there are signs of changes in sentiment and in the ways the country’s stars are willing to be frank. Mississippi natives Faith Hill and Charlie Worsham were in favor of removing the Confederate iconography from the Mississippi state flag. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Lorie Liebig, a country music journalist and publicist, put together a spreadsheet detailing how dozens of country musicians had (or had not) addressed the protests, though many were silent, a not insignificant number. they were actively committed to the subject.
An easy way to make the genre less cloistered would be to simply pay more attention to its black artists, who remain highly marginalized, with the notable exceptions of Darius Rucker and Kane Brown.
Singer-songwriter Jimmie Allen has just released a promising EP, “Bettie James,” featuring his soft voice and pop instincts. Next week, singer Rissi Palmer will premiere a podcast, Color Me Country, dedicated to the stories of black and brown country women. And last month, Mickey Guyton, a singer who has been knocking on the door of Nashville’s mainstream for years, released a new song, “Black Like Me,” which explicitly links the casually blinked stories that country music tells about America. with the weakness of his ally. :
It’s a hard life on the easy street
Only white painted picket fences as far as you can see
If you think we live in the land of the free
You should try to be black like me
