Garage Bands or Banjos? My Flirtation with Country Music
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Sunset and dry grass. Photo by Jack Redgate
Whether we’re country haters, country lovers, or something in between, we can all agree on one thing: Artists in the genre love to sing about beer and trucks. Or do they? This week, I took it upon myself to dive into the genre’s content and see if I’ve been wrong. I looked at its lyrics, style, and statistics, and what I found made me second-guess what I thought I knew about the genre. For a moment, it even made me wonder if I could give pop, punk, and rock a break to be a country fan myself.
Pickup truck on highway. Photo by athena
In 2020, Youtuber and country fan Grady Smith released a video titled “Every country song has these lyrics. Right?” In it, he provides a breakdown of the most common lyrics from Country Billboard's top 30 songs from 2014 to 2019. Surprisingly, “truck” only appeared in 46 of the 471 songs, and “beer” appeared even less. It only appeared in 32 of the 471 songs. Yeah, I was shocked, too. And if you’re anything like me, you’re probably wondering what did show up in most of these songs. What really sits at the heart of country music?
In a twist anyone could see, it turns out country’s key themes are romantic. That’s right. Most country music isn’t about trucks, beer, or tailgates. It’s about men and women. Smith’s analysis ranks the word “girl” as the third most common country lyric, with almost as many mentions of it in one year as “truck” had in the study’s full run. Suddenly, country music feels a lot more accessible. After all, what genre isn’t filled with songs about guys, girls, and their attraction toward each other?
Maybe that common ground can help explain country rap, a genre fusion that I never saw coming. I had a good laugh when I found out about it. But the combination isn’t completely uncalled for. As Country Rap News points out (Yes, that’s a real website,) artists in the genre have been making “Talking Tunes” since Tex Williams released the song “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette,)” in 1947. But it didn’t stop there. The world had a full-on genre crossover on its hands when the Bellamy Brothers released their album titled Country Rap in 1987. This trend has continued into the present day, with Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” being an obvious example.
People at concert. Photo by elise bunting
Unfortunately, things like hick-hop (Yes, people really call it that.) are the exception rather than the rule when it comes to country culture, and the genre is nowhere near as diverse as the crossover would indicate. In a 2021 report by The SongData Project, Dr. Jada E. Watson highlights some troubling statistics in modern country. It turns out that 98 percent of the country music artists from the years 2000 to 2020 were white, and 74.3 percent of them were white men.
Those stats raise enough red flags alone. But alongside coverage, like this article by NBC, of racially charged controversies around artists like Morgan Wallen, it’s impossible not to draw some damning conclusions. It all makes sense in hindsight. The same article on Wallen also highlights how modern country has its roots in the 1920s when record labels were sorting music by race. The survival of those sentiments in the present day is clear when black country artists like Darius Rucker report receiving racially charged hate mail.
Maybe I’ll be a country fan one day, but the genre has some serious work to do before I’m ready to take it seriously. I used to dislike the genre for the wrong reasons, and now I dislike it for the right ones.
I’m Owen, and you can think of me as the group’s roadie, just along for the ride. I’m the type of guy who hops in his car, turns the discovery playlist on and lets the algorithm choose his music. This has led to my commutes having backtracks that range from metal to pop and everything in between. Maybe I’ll be more decisive about my listening habits one day, but for now, I’m just going to ride the soundwave.
