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I thought there were some interesting observations in this piece. I like how it isn't all "one side is bad, one side is good" but rather digs into the general zeitgeist of the moment. It is particularly interesting to see the author draw parallels between 90s second-stage grunge (Creed, Nickleback, Bush, etc.) and today's modern male country artists --- very good observation about how both genres mask vulnerability with gruffness and pseudo-machismo.
By Spencer Kornhaber
AUGUST 8, 2023, 12:10 PM ET
Country music, the century-old genre of nostalgia, tradition, and twang, has never been more in style. Last week, for the first time in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, the three most popular songs in America were country songs. One explanation for the milestone is that the genre’s artists and audiences are finally leaning into streaming: This year, country has experienced a 20 percent rise in listenership, a surge outpaced only by those of Latin music and K-pop.
But this is a strange victory to celebrate—and not only because last week’s No. 1 song, Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” has proved to be a political flash point. The tracks breaking through right now each sound like something other than country. The genre always conveys some amount of underdog defiance, but lately, the music and the conversation around it have a distinct tinge of resentment.
In “Try That in a Small Town,” Aldean, the 46-year-old Georgia hitmaker, salutes supposedly rural values (honor, neighborliness, gun ownership) by warning the listener that supposedly urban pathologies (robbery, spitting at cops, burning flags) don’t fly in what some would call “Real America.” “Around here, we take care of our own,” he boasts. But the music hardly brings to mind peaceful pastures or sawdust-strewn saloons. As soon as I heard the song’s grumbling guitars, drooping minor chords, and riff ripped from Foo Fighters’ “Everlong,” I felt transported back to my suburban-male adolescence, circa Y2K—a time when I lived in an oversize black hoodie, listening to the groaning of men with soul patches. Aldean’s song is country in name, but its sound is post-grunge alternative rock.
In the early ’90s, Nirvana and its peers opened space for a new strain of mainstream manliness: vulnerable about feelings of failure and alienation, but with a hard, noisy edge that no one could possibly construe as sissy. Soon came a flock of melodically moaning bands, such as Bush, Creed, and Nickelback, that sheared grunge of its punk disposition, creating a broadly appealing template for directionless angst. Now Aldean has updated that template with pedal steel and right-wing talking points.
You’ve probably heard that the song is controversial. Aldean set a perfect discursive trap, taking advantage of America’s current split between two theories of its own history, and the predictability and profitability of backlash-to-backlash cycles. Though the song makes no mention of race, many listeners heard a dog whistle in it: The “good ol’ boy” vigilantism endorsed by Aldean’s lyrics has historically been affiliated with white-supremacist violence. His music video included images of Black Lives Matter protesters (though that footage was later edited out), and was shot in front of a Tennessee courthouse where a Black man was lynched in 1927. (The production company that made the video told The Washington Post that it had chosen a “popular filming location outside of Nashville.”) But critiques of the song have only amplified it: After Country Music Television banned the video, the track’s streams shot up 999 percent.
Aldean professes mystification at the dustup he’s provoked. The song, he has said, simply “refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up.” (Aldean, for what it’s worth, grew up in the midsize city of Macon, Georgia.) This insistence, more than the southern lilt of Aldean’s voice, makes the track country. Aldean is working in a tradition of music that disses cities while celebrating rural can-do. But he’s not singing with the wry, plucky tone of Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee” or even with the gruff confidence of Hank Williams Jr.’s “A Country Boy Can Survive.” Nor is he delivering provocative slogans with the rock-star panache of Toby Keith. Rather, Aldean sounds wallowing and fearful in that distinctly post-grunge way—even as his words profess action.
Perhaps that vibe of sublimated anxiety reflects the tragedy underlying the song: small-town America’s decades-long economic decline. The big-city problems Aldean laments—violent crime, sedition, even fraying communal ties—are, in many cases, worse problems outside the cities than in them. This reality is a major driver of right-wing resentment—and music about it should, by all rights, have a hint of malaise. Aldean was previously known for anthems of carefree country living (although his 2018 single “Rearview Town” did almost seem like a dirge for rural dreams, it was actually a breakup song). A better precedent for “Small Town” is Staind’s 2001 hit, “It’s Been Awhile”: “It’s been a while / Since I could hold my head up high.” Not coincidentally, Staind’s Aaron Lewis is now a popular country musician—and one of the most effective right-wing protest singers in memory.
When Small-Town Pride Sounds Like Anger
By Spencer Kornhaber
AUGUST 8, 2023, 12:10 PM ET
Country music, the century-old genre of nostalgia, tradition, and twang, has never been more in style. Last week, for the first time in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, the three most popular songs in America were country songs. One explanation for the milestone is that the genre’s artists and audiences are finally leaning into streaming: This year, country has experienced a 20 percent rise in listenership, a surge outpaced only by those of Latin music and K-pop.
But this is a strange victory to celebrate—and not only because last week’s No. 1 song, Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” has proved to be a political flash point. The tracks breaking through right now each sound like something other than country. The genre always conveys some amount of underdog defiance, but lately, the music and the conversation around it have a distinct tinge of resentment.
In “Try That in a Small Town,” Aldean, the 46-year-old Georgia hitmaker, salutes supposedly rural values (honor, neighborliness, gun ownership) by warning the listener that supposedly urban pathologies (robbery, spitting at cops, burning flags) don’t fly in what some would call “Real America.” “Around here, we take care of our own,” he boasts. But the music hardly brings to mind peaceful pastures or sawdust-strewn saloons. As soon as I heard the song’s grumbling guitars, drooping minor chords, and riff ripped from Foo Fighters’ “Everlong,” I felt transported back to my suburban-male adolescence, circa Y2K—a time when I lived in an oversize black hoodie, listening to the groaning of men with soul patches. Aldean’s song is country in name, but its sound is post-grunge alternative rock.
In the early ’90s, Nirvana and its peers opened space for a new strain of mainstream manliness: vulnerable about feelings of failure and alienation, but with a hard, noisy edge that no one could possibly construe as sissy. Soon came a flock of melodically moaning bands, such as Bush, Creed, and Nickelback, that sheared grunge of its punk disposition, creating a broadly appealing template for directionless angst. Now Aldean has updated that template with pedal steel and right-wing talking points.
You’ve probably heard that the song is controversial. Aldean set a perfect discursive trap, taking advantage of America’s current split between two theories of its own history, and the predictability and profitability of backlash-to-backlash cycles. Though the song makes no mention of race, many listeners heard a dog whistle in it: The “good ol’ boy” vigilantism endorsed by Aldean’s lyrics has historically been affiliated with white-supremacist violence. His music video included images of Black Lives Matter protesters (though that footage was later edited out), and was shot in front of a Tennessee courthouse where a Black man was lynched in 1927. (The production company that made the video told The Washington Post that it had chosen a “popular filming location outside of Nashville.”) But critiques of the song have only amplified it: After Country Music Television banned the video, the track’s streams shot up 999 percent.
Aldean professes mystification at the dustup he’s provoked. The song, he has said, simply “refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up.” (Aldean, for what it’s worth, grew up in the midsize city of Macon, Georgia.) This insistence, more than the southern lilt of Aldean’s voice, makes the track country. Aldean is working in a tradition of music that disses cities while celebrating rural can-do. But he’s not singing with the wry, plucky tone of Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee” or even with the gruff confidence of Hank Williams Jr.’s “A Country Boy Can Survive.” Nor is he delivering provocative slogans with the rock-star panache of Toby Keith. Rather, Aldean sounds wallowing and fearful in that distinctly post-grunge way—even as his words profess action.
Perhaps that vibe of sublimated anxiety reflects the tragedy underlying the song: small-town America’s decades-long economic decline. The big-city problems Aldean laments—violent crime, sedition, even fraying communal ties—are, in many cases, worse problems outside the cities than in them. This reality is a major driver of right-wing resentment—and music about it should, by all rights, have a hint of malaise. Aldean was previously known for anthems of carefree country living (although his 2018 single “Rearview Town” did almost seem like a dirge for rural dreams, it was actually a breakup song). A better precedent for “Small Town” is Staind’s 2001 hit, “It’s Been Awhile”: “It’s been a while / Since I could hold my head up high.” Not coincidentally, Staind’s Aaron Lewis is now a popular country musician—and one of the most effective right-wing protest singers in memory.
