Social Issues and Country
Dec. 19th, 2020 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitI love country music. I love it deeply and ferociously. I'm also very, very aware of its cultural problems, and so periodically I go look at one of the major country news sites to find out about all the songs that are critical darlings and will never, ever get radio airplay because they're trying to change the culture of country. I've found some lovely songs this way. (Also some utterly heartwrenching ones; if you want to hear a stunning country take on being a rape survivor, go check out Lindsay Ell's "Make You".)
Which is how I came across a song released in early November called "The Problem," sung by Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell, which strikes me as being very much in the same tradition as Reba McEntire's "She Thinks His Name Was John".
Both songs strive to draw attention to a topic your many if not most country music fans would really much rather victim-blame about, and they both do it somewhat obliquely without ever outright mentioning what they're talking about, in such a way that if you're not living in that moment you might not know what they're talking about-- I guessed fairly quickly that "The Problem" was about abortion, but I didn't know "She Thinks His Name Was John" was about AIDS until I went looking for the lyrics and found articles about how historic it was. (By the time I was old enough to notice, AIDS was well on its way to being under control in the US.)
We're actually in a really wonderful cultural moment for country songs starting to explicitly call out country culture-- Keith Urban's "Female" may have gotten dragged by progressives outside the country community, but a lot of people on the inside were well aware of the importance of a major A-list star publicly identifying as feminist. (From my perspective, the important thing about that song was that something explicitly referencing the idea of "she asked for it" being wrong went on to get actually played on the radio.) And the lovely-but-no-radio songs are more accessible than ever because of the internet-- note that I'm finding all these songs from one fairly mainstream country news site which is also talking about the gender gap in radio time. Relatively recent songs: "Black Like Me" and "What Are You Gonna Tell Her" by Mickey Guyton (and I could enthuse for SO LONG about "What Are You Gonna Tell Her"; she's addressing the issue of growing up told you can do anything and then hitting the world and discovering sexism exists), "The Daughters" by Little Big Town, "Get It Girl, You Go" by Laura Bundy (which is a very *weird* song), and the entire Highwomen album.
On a related note, while not a callout of country culture per se, country music is also now in the sort of place where a song like "To Break Hers"-- which is about the fallout of finally admitting you're gay after years of long-term relationship with a woman-- can exist at *all*. (I like it because it manages to thread the needle of "everyone involved in this has a good reason to be upset" while still making it clear that being gay is not, in fact, the problem here; having a serious relationship based on a lie is.)
Which is how I came across a song released in early November called "The Problem," sung by Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell, which strikes me as being very much in the same tradition as Reba McEntire's "She Thinks His Name Was John".
Both songs strive to draw attention to a topic your many if not most country music fans would really much rather victim-blame about, and they both do it somewhat obliquely without ever outright mentioning what they're talking about, in such a way that if you're not living in that moment you might not know what they're talking about-- I guessed fairly quickly that "The Problem" was about abortion, but I didn't know "She Thinks His Name Was John" was about AIDS until I went looking for the lyrics and found articles about how historic it was. (By the time I was old enough to notice, AIDS was well on its way to being under control in the US.)
We're actually in a really wonderful cultural moment for country songs starting to explicitly call out country culture-- Keith Urban's "Female" may have gotten dragged by progressives outside the country community, but a lot of people on the inside were well aware of the importance of a major A-list star publicly identifying as feminist. (From my perspective, the important thing about that song was that something explicitly referencing the idea of "she asked for it" being wrong went on to get actually played on the radio.) And the lovely-but-no-radio songs are more accessible than ever because of the internet-- note that I'm finding all these songs from one fairly mainstream country news site which is also talking about the gender gap in radio time. Relatively recent songs: "Black Like Me" and "What Are You Gonna Tell Her" by Mickey Guyton (and I could enthuse for SO LONG about "What Are You Gonna Tell Her"; she's addressing the issue of growing up told you can do anything and then hitting the world and discovering sexism exists), "The Daughters" by Little Big Town, "Get It Girl, You Go" by Laura Bundy (which is a very *weird* song), and the entire Highwomen album.
On a related note, while not a callout of country culture per se, country music is also now in the sort of place where a song like "To Break Hers"-- which is about the fallout of finally admitting you're gay after years of long-term relationship with a woman-- can exist at *all*. (I like it because it manages to thread the needle of "everyone involved in this has a good reason to be upset" while still making it clear that being gay is not, in fact, the problem here; having a serious relationship based on a lie is.)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-20 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-20 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-20 09:21 pm (UTC)Truly it is the finest explanation of white privilege I have ever heard.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 01:46 am (UTC)