Country Music
Story Stream
On Jelly Roll's 'Beautifully Broken' October 17, 2024
In his 1999 autobiography My House of Memories, Merle Haggard marveled at his stardom, knowing it’d be a pipe dream by the standards of the day. “Can you imagine what would happen today if I were 24, just out of prison, and trying to get a record dea...
Nashville Hot October 14, 2024
In 1979, you could turn an alley corner in Nashville and find the Greatest Country Singer Ever living in his car surviving on alcohol and hillocks of cocaine. At under 100 pounds, George Jones would be trying to keep his diet of junk food down, talki...
Mental Pastoral September 20, 2024
What does it mean to be “country?” Is it a location, a disposition, or an attitude? Or, as some people say of conservatism, is it something more mysterious, like a sensibility?What is the “pastoral” in art and literature? Is it a genre or a mode? Doe...
Can a Rapper Make Real Country Music? September 20, 2024
“I told him it was not the perfect country and western song—because he hadn’t said anything at all about mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or gettin’ drunk.”–David Allan Coe, “You Never Even Called Me by My Name”Is the rapper Post Malone a count...
Midland’s Giant Leap September 17, 2024
By all rights, Midland should be hitting the slots right now. The Austin, Texas, trio are the funnest thing going in country music, the types of guys who, last April, hosted their own Caribbean cruise, where singer Mark Wystrach blew a cool $1,200 on...
The “Return” of Miranda Lambert September 13, 2024
Miranda Lambert grinned as she stood on the smallest stage she’s played in years. She’d just debuted an irreverent, rowdy hook—“Are we in love, or are we just drunk?” from “Bitch on the Sauce (Just Drunk)”—to the thrilled screams of 180 dedicated fan...
Music Row Is Dying August 30, 2024
How can you write about Nashville without writing in cliché? Everything in the town is shaped like a guitar. Or a guitar pick. Or a music note. Blake Shelton’s booming voice blasts over the airport PA system when you land, promising The Real Country ...
Post Malone Made Himself at Home in Country Music August 22, 2024
In 1994, the country singer Alan Jackson released a hit country song about country songs by non-country singers. Instead of criticizing these new arrivals, he just chuckled. “The whole world’s gone country,” Jackson sang, and in the video he flashed ...
Post Malone Went Full Country August 21, 2024
In the 1997 romp Spice World, a producer commends the Spice Girls on their run-through of a song by saying, “That was absolutely perfect—without being actually any good.” There, it was an ironic dig about how little the girl-power-peddling Brit quint...
On Post Malone's 'F-1 Trillion' August 21, 2024
Is country a lifestyle or an accessory? Depends on who you ask. Presently it’s fashionable to try and bridge that gap. Blue-state dwellers with email jobs are dressing up like duck hunters, donning Carhartt and Realtree camo to the warehouse rave or ...
Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion Is Too Big to Fail August 20, 2024
“Rap is like country music,” said the always visionary Ice-T way back in 1993. “They both sing to their own neighborhood, they wear jeans and hats to the Grammys, they sing in their own language, to their own people, and they sell millions of records...
Shaboozey Is Doing What Even Beyoncé Couldn’t August 01, 2024
In popular music, the hype machine works in delightfully mysterious ways. You never know who will benefit from our fickle hit parade. A vice president turned presidential candidate gets a meme boost from a British pop star named Charli XCX. An album ...
Zach Bryan Won't Be Your Jukebox Hero July 05, 2024
I happen to believe that great American novels are written by osmosis, an accumulation of the stories you hear if you spend enough time in your neighborhood bar. At least that’s my excuse. I go to the Lighthouse Tavern, where the carpets are stained,...
Home on the Range June 28, 2024
On March 29th, pop megastar Beyoncé released her eighth solo album, Cowboy Carter. It is also her first country album. known for sleek, hip-hop-inflected R&B tracks like “Crazy in Love” and “Formation,” Beyoncé has reinvented herself via banjos and D...
The Politics of Life June 26, 2024
The following excerpt is adapted from The Politics of Life: My Road to the Middle of a Hostile and Adversarial World (Regan Arts.) by Douglas E. SchoenPenn, Schoen & Berland had been a successful consulting firm for almost 20 years, but we were still...
Having a Bad Bey May 03, 2024
There’s a rule for writing about Beyoncé, and it’s simple: you just have to say that every single thing she does is the most amazing, medium-redefining thing ever done by anyone. For a long time, it was an easy rule to follow, because doing so involv...
On Beyoncé April 15, 2024
What happens when your delusions of grandeur are not delusions; when you accrue the talent, resources, and courage to execute any dream or vision you possess, and there will invariably be an audience from which detractors will be cast as lunatics or ...
In Beyoncé’s Country, All Are Welcome April 08, 2024
Beyoncé is the ultimate American cowboy.Now, before anyone starts airin’ their lungs, the proof is right there in her blazing displays of bravura, burn-the-breeze grit, and unprecedented levels of Southern swag. This is, after all, the woman who turn...
Has Beyoncé Killed Jolene? April 05, 2024
Not long ago, a post crossed my timeline featuring a black-and-white, heart-stoppingly gorgeous photo of Dolly Parton in the Sixties. The caption read, simply: “What the hell did Jolene look like?” One can only wonder.As a musical artefact, “Jolene” ...
Beyoncé Won’t Burn Down the Barn with 'Cowboy Carter' April 03, 2024
Here she comes round again, the horse goddess. When Beyoncé released “Renaissance,” in the summer of 2022—a paean to house music and disco, and to the Black queer people who invented them—the album cover featured the artist perched on a glittering be...
The Violence of 'Cowboy Carter' April 01, 2024
The power of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” is that Dolly Parton sounds powerless. The guitar riff prickles nervously; the melody pleads in the manner of a hungry pet; Parton sings, in a trembling tone, about the woman who could and very well might take her...
This Is Not a Cowboy Hat March 29, 2024
A high-quality cowboy hat should travel far and last long, and the 10-gallon topper’s frontier currently extends behind some tightly managed velvet ropes. Just this year, it has made it to the Oscars, to Paris Fashion Week, and on the cover of Vogue....
Beyoncé’s Country Roots March 27, 2024
If you somehow haven’t heard: Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, her eighth studio album and the much-anticipated sequel to Renaissance, drops on Friday. Its lead single “Texas Hold ‘Em” made history when it debuted at the top of the country charts last month....
The Fight Over Country Music’s Politics March 20, 2024
Even if you want to, it’s impossible to forget a Beyoncé performance. Just ask the Country Music Association.On Wednesday, Beyoncé performed with the Dixie Chicks at the CMA Awards — one of the biggest stories of the awards show and one of the bigges...
The Cult of Townes Van Zandt March 15, 2024
On 20 September 1977 Townes Van Zandt played the first of two nights at the Lone Star Cafe, then New York City’s premier country music venue. By this point the Texas-born musician had recorded six albums, made over the course of just four years. The ...
