The original clickbait title was going to be "Is country music good?" but that's a ridiculous question. Of course country music is good. It's enjoyed by millions of people every day. My enjoyment or lack thereof has no bearing on its objective quality. If it wasn't good, people wouldn't listen to it. End of answer.
But do I like country music? That's a harder one. If someone asked me whether I do, and I had to give a binary yes/no answer, I would have to say no. It's historically a genre for which my feelings are more negative than positive. But I want to dig into the question a little bit and see if that answer still holds up.
Angela Collier recently released a video called Red Flag Romance: 90s Country Edition. It's great, go watch it, even if you don't like country music it's very fun and informative. But in the description for the video, she indirectly calls me out:
People are so weird about country music. Country is a huge genre with thousands of artists. It has roots in African folk music, Gaelic, and Celtic tradition. It's hundreds of years old. Saying 'I don't like country music' tells me you haven't listened to enough. Get it together. Get some culture.
It's true that country music covers a huge range of styles and traditions, and a blanket statement like "I don't like country music" is nearly impossible to justify. Indeed, there have been many songs over the years that I would consider country-adjacent that I've liked, but for some reason in each instance I've convinced myself that it "doesn't count", and I want to try to unpack why.
When I was a teenager, there's no question that it was about snobbery. I was one of those annoying "I like all music except rap and country", which is just a thought-terminating cliche that's never actually true. Like, you like death metal? Power electronics? Gabber? Steve Reich's tape loop experiments? The stultifying compositions of Edvard Greig? The Beatles' "Revolution 9"? Nobody likes Revolution 9, and it's not rap or country.
Since my less enlightened teenage years, I've come around on rap and hip-hop. It's not a genre with which I keep up with all the new developments, but that's not true of any genre these days. I have a catalog of hip-hop styles and artists I enjoy, and I usually don't mind hearing it in public. Even as a teenager, there were songs that I would've had to admit I liked under the influence of sodium pentothol. My refusal to admit what I liked was probably rooted in a combination of implicit racism, hipsterism, and fear of social judgment.
I'm sure my dislike of country music is mostly rooted in cultural baggage too. The liberal arts graduates who wrote most of the media I consumed in the 1990s and 2000s loved to use country music as a punching bag. It made me feel superior when the smart people on TV agreed with me and not the majority of people around me. I'm not immune to propaganda, I internalized a lot of that bullshit, and I'd like to think I'm a much more tolerant and open-minded person now. But apparently not, because I still don't like country music! At least, I don't think I do.
The music I like that I feel "doesn't count" as country, that used to be out of snobbery, no doubt. I didn't want to think of myself as a person who likes country music. But now, the reason I think it "doesn't count" is more fear of being a poseur: is it meaningful to say I like country music if the country music I like has very little in common with the mainstream contemporary country music people actually listen to? I dunno. Let's have a think about it.
💡 Note
If you want to listen to the songs featured in this post,
Johnny Cash
- Ring of Fire
- One Piece at a Time
- Singin' in Viet Nam Talkin' Blues
Invoking Johnny Cash is almost cheating. I've never met anyone, country music fan or no, who says they don't like Johnny Cash. He almost transcends the genre.
The "talking blues"1 style of country is well-suited for me. Songs like A Boy Named Sue and One Piece at a Time, which tell stories with rhythmic speech rather than melodic vocals, are easy for me to listen to and comprehend. I have a speech processing thing, I guess a disorder, that makes it hard for me to parse lyrics. I mostly listen to music for the sound of it, not the meaning. Unless the vocals have clear enunciation and are mixed such that they're clearly audible over the surrounding music, lyrics kind of fade into the background for me. Which is fine, that's how I've always experienced music so I don't feel like I'm missing anything. But the "talking blues" songs are a rare breed, because I can understand the words, and they usually tell an interesting story that I want to listen to. It's a sub-genre I really appreciate and enjoy.
But I feel like these can be de-legitimized by applying the label "novelty song". Country is a genre that's often intentionally funny, especially the crossover hits, so I feel like only liking the "novelty songs" would make me a "fake country fan". I don't know where this feeling comes from. Johnny Cash is one of the most beloved and respected artists in country music history. I'm sure I'm overthinking this.
Cake
- Stickshifts and Safetybelts
- Pentagram
- She'll Come Back to Me
- Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town
Cake is one of my favorite bands, and their music has been heavily influenced by country from the beginning of their career. The more explicitly country-tinged songs aren't always my favorite, but I don't dislike them. Discovering Cake as a teenager was one of those moments where I first went "wait, maybe I do like country?!" But Cake is a pop rock band who use a wide variety of styles. They only have a few songs I would classify as "country", but I have to ask: if their whole catalog sounded like the above songs, would I think of Cake as a country band? It would be hard for me to classify them that way, because John McCrea sings with his normal voice, without affecting a drawl or twang universal in mainstream country music. It's almost like I'm defining the genre by the twang, and that can't be right. You can't define an entire genre by a single vocal characteristic, right? I think this factor is going to be key.
Madonna
- Don't tell me
When I first heard this, I thought "wow, finally a country song I like and it's by Madonna!" I mostly bring it up now because, in 2000, calling it a "country song" was fairly controversial. Mainstream country music was not yet ready to embrace the dance/pop elements seen here, but fast-forward to today, and a lot of the country music you hear on the radio sounds a lot like this. As usual, Madonna was ahead of her time. I still think this song holds up okay, but on re-listening to it, I feel like it's a little over-produced. I think it'd be better if it were stripped down a little more. So here's an example of a song I wish sounded more country! Weird.
Woody Guthrie
- All You Fascists Bound To Lose
- I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore
- Hobo's Lullaby
When you google Woody Guthrie, one of the first results is a Reddit thread of people debating whether Woody Guthrie is a country music artist. I'm glad I'm not the only one who worries about this stuff. I say debate, but there's not a lot of argument: Someone asks the question, and most people in the thread agree that the answer is "yes". The further you go back in time, the blurrier the lines get between American Country, Folk and Blues music.
And yet, it's hard to imagine anything more anathema to modern mainstream country music fans than Woody Guthrie's socialist anticapitalist messages. Fascists still like to appropriate Woody's less explicitly political songs--see the DHS's recent use of "This Land is Your Land"--but they would never admit the explicitly left-wing anthems as part of their cultural heritage. That's another factor that makes it hard for me to say "I like country music" -- the genre and the label has been thoroughly co-opted by right wing culture war bullshit for as long as I've been alive. The capital cultural machine has disconnected the genre from its socialist roots. But disavowing country music can't the answer, right? That would be letting them win. We can't just abandon the genre to the fascists.
Crooked Still
- Can't You Hear Me Callin'
- Ecstasy
I know bluegrass isn't the same as country. But isn't bluegrass a sub-genre? Saying I like bluegrass but not country doesn't make any sense. It'd be like saying I like thrash but not heavy metal.
But I have to admit, Crooked Still is one of the only examples of vocal bluegrass I've been able to vibe with. Much of the bluegrass I've been exposed to features male vocalists with a certain "whiny" vocal characteristic that seems like a trademark of the genre. Again, it comes down to a distaste for a certain way of singing, and feeling like a high prevalence of this way of singing defines the genre. I don't think that's how it should be!
The Seatbelts
- Felt Tip Pen
- Waltz For Zizi
On the whole, I prefer instrumental music to vocal music. As I've mentioned, lyrics often don't make a big impression on me, so the voice is perceived as just another instrument, and it's one that I'm a lot pickier about than other instruments. It's worth recognizing that I like all of the instruments associated with country music. Banjos, fiddles, pedal steel guitars, upright bass, mandolins, all of them make sounds that are good as hell, that I love listening to.
So it looks like I enjoy every aspect of country music, except for a specific vocal style and and a rightward political shift. This isn't unique to one genre: to whatever extent heavy metal has a "mainstream" in 2025, there are two things you can say about it: (1) a lot of the vocals are cookie monster growls, and (2) there are lot of nazis. I certainly wouldn't say I "don't like heavy metal", and I don't think I should say I "don't like country music", either. I don't like the version of country music that's been culturally dominant for decades. It's become so culturally dominant that country music which doesn't slot into this marketing niche gets labeled "folk", or "roots", or "americana". We can't let the marketers dictate the terms of our reality. If not liking what's popular disqualifies us from participating, then I wouldn't be a true fan of any music. Fuck that shit.
All that said, the music featured in the video is still not for me. But at least I got some culture.
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The term "talking blues" is usually only applied to songs with a more serious subject matter, like Cash's anti-Vietnam war song. Which makes sense, "blues" usually doesn't apply to fun or lighthearted songs, but I don't know what else to call songs like "One Piece at a Time" or "A Boy Named Sue". Talking goofs? ↩
Hm. While nothing against Country, I wouldn't in general make the leap that popular = good. I think there are a number of counterexamples to that! Twilight. Smoking. xD
Still, always good to investigate these things and how they sit with you!
(originally posted Aug 07 2025)
Yeah, good point. I shouldn't have glossed over this: I make exceptions for things that cause harm. Smoking is a great example. For as many problems as Twilight has, I don't think it can be labeled harmful. I don't think most media is harmful in a vacuum, which is why I'm hesitant to moralize or use subjective terms like "good" and "bad". Twilight is good to the people who like reading it. Country music is good to the people who like listening to it.
(originally posted Aug 07 2025)
I like Rutford and Sons. I like bluegrass arrangements of old rock songs, from before the divide in guitar bands was so big. I mean like Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire! I like a bunch of poppy girly 90s rock songs, which have been recycled as poppy girly 90s country songs. I like a live local performance of bluegrass the same way I do hip-hop open mike.
There is a chunk of people who ask "do you like country" with the same conspirational meaning as a man asking if another man likes fancy teas, when homosexuality was illegal. As though it would get one fired if he came out about it to the wrong people. Bit of persecution complex, perhaps because people kept in fear are easier to control. I do have a family history of paranoia, though, so I try to take such thoughts with a grain of salt.
(originally posted Aug 09 2025)