BIG DISCLAIMER: i was 9 when 9/11 happened, so this might be more about my own crystalizing tastes than anything else. i think itâs a pretty darn good theory tho and other people have validated it.
BIGGER DISCLAIMER: i am not saying that country music prior to 9/11 was free from nationalist, racist, misogynist undertones - i just think that these themes became more the norm!
with very few exceptions, including goodbye earl, before he cheats, and daddy Iessons (side note - all women!) 9/11 ruined country music. around 2014 onward weâve got margo price, sturgill simpson, jason isbell etc., who are making country music great again (wink), but those folks are mostly considered âalternativeâ country. the mainstream country music for well over a decade now is a glut of trash performative patriotic / working-class-but-not-really lab-crafted budweiser-sponsored nonsense that has managed to sound rebellious (or has convinced its fans that it sounds rebellious) without ever actually questioning any power structure. so much so that artists who ACTUALLY criticized the government were literally blacklisted for nearly a decade (the dixie chicks)
pre-9/11 country music, though not perfect or ideologically pure by any stretch, did not have the raging american flag painted truck boner that comes to mind for a lot of people who say âi like everything except rap and countryâ
SPECIFICALLY, toby keithâs âcourtesy of the red, white, and blue (the angry american)â (2002) literally destroyed country music. it was a direct answer to the 9/11 attacks and war song in support of the invasion of afghanistan. the lyrics read like a disjointed feverish email chain letter forwarded from your great uncle sprinkled with glittering american flag gifs and heavily saturated pictures of bald eagles. the entire song is lifted from an estimated 248 peeling bumper stickers collected from rusted trucks on cinder blocks in overgrown yards, cut up and arranged to fit a catchy, formulaic tune that is almost certainly the background music playing in george w. bushâs head at all times.
âweâll put a boot in your ass, itâs the american way
and uncle sam put your name at the top of his list
and the statue of liberty started shakinâ her fist
and the eagle will fly, and itâs gonna be hell, when you hear mother freedom start a'ringinâ her bellâ
country music and the new country musicians that toby keith paved the way for became so pro establishment and so unquestioningly nationalistic that, again, the dixie chicks who went against this grain were blacklisted by the industry and received death threats from country music fans. hell, there are folks who STILL froth at the mouth at the mere mention of the dixie chicks.
9/11 killed outlaw country - how can you sing the praises of law breakers when your main circuit consists of singing to troops? there are some great classic country songs critiquing the police state - especially from johnny cash and merle haggard - now country music artists hold fundraisers for FOPs. new country music is basically in-law country music.
you donât have to write a pro-bush patriotic anthem to be part of this post-9/11 ruination. playing meaningless songs about living in the heart of (read: white) america, eschewing the city (read: not white), and cracking open a cold one with the boys for âauthenticâ country music is also important to the war effort.
thereâs a progression of themes here:
post 9/11 top tier: war anthem, vocally patriotic, directly used as pro war propaganda;
which paved the way for: âthings used to be so much betterâ thinly veiled racist laments, good for campaign ads;
which paved the way for meaningless party anthems - attempts to make things âlike they used to beâ and craft a reality that neither the artist nor listener likely ever experience.
that brings us to what most people think of today when they say they hate country music: the country party anthem - âtiny hot gal in tight jean shorts who can drink beer like the guys, she doesnât like beyoncĂŠ Like Other Girls, oh sheâs so into me and my truck, iâm gonna take her fishing after i finish sowing my corn - sung by a guy whoâs never touched a tractorâ - has overtaken the tragic, done me wrong, despairing country ballads of tammy wynette, george jones, and even up into pre-9/11 contemporaries like reba mcentire and george strait. you didnât necessarily have to be country to relate to their pain. now you have to perform suburban redneckness to enjoy luke bryan.
when was the last time you heard a sad country song?
after 9/11, cowboys (whether or not they had ever been near a cow) werenât allowed to be sad anymore (no more done me wrong country), and they certainly werenât allowed to question authority (no more outlaw country). partying hardy became the most important American Thing and if you donât sing about that, our Enemies Will Win.
so - understanding that country music has always had bad stuff, and that like any genre it suffers from commercialization, 9/11 DESTROYED COUNTRY MUSIC. and toby keith gleefully helped destroy it.
for some further evidence of the decline of country music, please listen to the dixie chicksâ âlong time goneâ which is an indictment of the industry (i believe it was written before 9/11 but my point still stands - the genre was on the decline and 9/11 was the major cultural event that hastened the decline).
maybe i am a curmudgeon - almost every generation of country music has had its own âcountry music is not what it used to beâ anthem, but i really think something distinct happened with 9/11.
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