from discussing gun control and its corresponding tribal politics — “is becoming the soundtrack of a nonexistent, apolitical no-place.”had been filled with incessant platitudes about the all-encompassing universality of country music. “I love the way we’ve all come together,” the show’s host Brad Paisley proclaimed during the broadcast, a sentiment — country music bridging gaps as a family — echoed by everyone from Carrie Underwood to Garth Brooks throughout the night.
The implied argument of a song like “Humble and Kind” is that modern life has become rude and harsh. In country music, the subtext of the type of nostalgia embedded in songs like “Get Along” and “Humble and Kind” is deeply tied to white identity, according to the scholar Geoff Mann. In his articleMann argues that country music’s disenchantment with contemporary life is an integral way the genre has learned to signify whiteness, in its appeal to a predominantly white listenership.
It’s easy to dismiss songs that pine for the good ol’ days where everyone got along just fine as simply something we do as Americans — wishing for better times is practically tradition. But the country songs of this past decade are actually something altogether new for the genre: they reflect a carefully articulated centrism and feel-good messaging aimed at signaling to white-identity nostalgia.
Country Music is so male dominated on radio, and in award shows, I get why Taylor left. No respect for women
Jesus who is running your end of the decade shit it is atrocious.
Not until there's a public apology from CountryMusic for dissing the dixiechicks. All of county music owes them a huge apology!