In case you’ve paid any consideration currently to mainstream radio, Billboard rankings, or viral web hits, you’ll have observed that nation music has been getting all the eye. Specifically, a string of nation crossovers has been burning up the charts — every one constructing on the final in the identical tradition struggle controversy.
Perennial nation favourite Morgan Wallen has been having fun with a marathon chart-topping streak for his newest album, One Factor at a Time — his first since a leaked 2021 video of the star casually dropping the n-word practically value him his profession. One in all 4 singles from the album to zoom up the charts, an ode to a messy breakup referred to as “Final Night time,” has loved a whopping 28 weeks and relying on the Scorching 100, 16 of them within the prime spot.
Wallen’s Scorching 100 streak was briefly interrupted by Jason Aldean’s viral success for “Attempt That in a Small City,” a music replete with thinly veiled references to lynching outsiders. Launched in Could, the music didn’t make an enormous splash till the controversial music video — shot on the web site of a historic lynching — dropped in mid-July. The backlash over the video prompted a conservative counter-backlash, which propelled Aldean’s music up the charts — though no sooner had the music hit No. 1 than it tumbled a full 20 spots again down. It’s presently hovering simply exterior the highest 20 on the Scorching 100.
Arduous on the heels of Aldean and Wallen, full unknown Oliver Anthony went viral in August for his oppressed common-man anthem “Wealthy Males North of Richmond,” after a YouTube consumer launched a video of Anthony performing the music dwell. Regardless of lyrics that reference QAnon themes and mock folks on welfare with what many have learn as racist stereotypes, the music is so widespread that Anthony now has 18 songs presently rating within the Apple Music Prime 100. He additionally simply turned the first artist in Billboard historical past to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Scorching 100 with none prior chart historical past.
At a distance, Anthony is a very legendary success story — till you take into account the context of that success. Certainly, the throughline of those current nation hits just isn’t their musical fashion. Wallen is arguably nearer, aesthetically, to a twangy Submit Malone than to Anthony, who performs conventional folks, with Aldean someplace within the center.
Reasonably, these artists all arguably charted at the least partly as a result of they — purposely or not — tapped the vein of conservative resentment that has fueled quite a few different consumerist actions this yr. From the backlash towards Goal and Budweiser over their queer and trans-friendly advertising and marketing, to the viral push to advertise the anti-human trafficking movie Sound of Freedom and its QAnon-adjacent rhetoric, every of those campaigns has arisen out of conservative disgruntlement with the mainstream, a sense of being ostracized and marginalized. The motivation to “combat again” towards the evils of liberal morality more and more entails wielding particular person buying energy as a approach to make a collective assertion. Boycotting and promotion have labored in equal measure all through 2023 for conservatives; each have yielded outcomes.
Now, that consumerist mentality has discovered new topics: Wallen, Aldean, and Anthony — with different, extra unapologetically far-right artists, ready within the wings.
Morgan Wallen isn’t fairly just like the others — however context issues
With out the bigger context of the period we’re in, Morgan Wallen may not match into this sample. In any case, one of many traits of his music, particularly within the latest album, is a form of strategic ambivalence about his personal dirtbaggery. His songs are replete with the catchy themes nation lyrics are well-known for: wordplay, whiskey, and pickup vans, with wry prospers of bitterness and self-defeat.
By songs like “Final Night time” and “Cash On Me” — key lyric: “I wouldn’t put my cash on me” — his lyrical stand-in comes throughout as a barely guilt-ridden white man, a person who vaguely understands that he’s gained an uncomfortable stage of standing and privilege however not somebody who has the perception to do greater than sardonically reference his previous missteps. It’s the form of post-ironic tackle trendy masculinity we’re extra used to seeing in pop stars like Submit Malone and even The Wknd. His music goes effectively with a food regimen of pop or nation, and his repute as a pleasant man made it go down straightforward.
No less than it did till Wallen’s repute as a partier backfired on him. Wallen had weathered minor storms earlier than, together with getting caught going maskless throughout a social gathering weekend in Alabama in 2021 — a stunt that resulted in Saturday Night time Dwell canceling a scheduled look of Wallen as musical visitor. (They rescheduled.) Then, in February 2021, TMZ revealed footage of what seems to be an intoxicated Wallen returning to his Nashville house late following an evening in town. After making a ruckus on the road along with his social gathering, he calls to a good friend to “handle this pussy-ass n*****.” As many individuals, together with BuzzFeed Information’ Elamin Abdelmahmoud, identified, Wallen dropped that racial slur with zero hesitation. He comes throughout within the video as somebody who makes use of it on a regular basis.
“I’ve no hassle imagining he mentioned it like he’s acquainted with it, like his mouth has been there earlier than,” Abdelmahmoud wrote. “That is an artist who has traded on his authenticity since he first got here on the scene … Wallen has positioned himself as a mullet-and-blue-jeans, what-you-see-is-what-you-get form of man. And it’s unimaginable to observe the video with out this in thoughts.”
That nod to authenticity is essential as a result of one of many hallmarks of nation music marketability is that the star is who they are saying they’re; artists who fail the authenticity take a look at don’t usually fare effectively. The 30-year-old Wallen, who grew up in a bona fide small city in East Tennessee earlier than transferring to the Knoxville suburbs as a teen, might have gotten his begin via probably the most Hollywood of strategies — a season-six stint on The Voice — however he’s an excellent ol’ nation boy who subsequently labored his means up via the Nashville ranks. He’s received a well-known mullet; he goes looking; he even speculates he received booted off The Voice as a result of he selected to sing nation as an alternative of pop. Arduous to get extra genuine than that. However did that additionally imply Wallen was authentically racist? When he subsequently apologized, was that an genuine apology?
The business repercussions Wallen confronted had been speedy: Wallen’s file label, Massive Loud Information, suspended his contract “indefinitely.” The Academy of Nation Music additionally rescinded his eligibility for the upcoming Nation Music Awards cycle. Radio and tv networks from IHeart to CMT dropped his music from their playlists and censured the artist.
But Wallen’s efforts to apologize may not have in the end mattered in any respect. His use of the racist slur had a direct and profoundly constructive impression on his gross sales. In response to a Billboard report, within the days following the leaked TMZ video, Wallen’s gross sales elevated by 339 p.c within the US, leaping from 5,000 copies bought the day earlier than the leak to 22,500 copies bought the day after. (Lest you assume the bump in recognition may need been on account of his gracious apology, notice that the gross sales improve occurred instantly; Wallen didn’t launch his full apology video through Instagram till every week later.) By the tip of the yr, his most up-to-date album, Harmful, was the bestselling album of 2021, and it wasn’t shut.
One might argue that Wallen, of all three singers, is the Chick-fil-A to a crop of Cracker Barrels: That’s, he’s the providing that’s simply mainstream and interesting sufficient to override any ethical objections the common listener may need to his music. In any case, he was drunk and he did apologize. There’s nonetheless room for development and alter. If Wallen can flip his mea culpas — honest or not — into some of the profitable comebacks of the last decade, maybe that’s an indication of nothing deeper than slick songwriting and the general public’s willingness to forgive and overlook.
It’s additionally seemingly Wallen’s music resonates with the kind of fan who, like Wallen himself, doesn’t wish to introspect too deeply. And as with so many different features of the tradition struggle, there are many apologists round to do the work of redeeming Wallen — a man who, in spite of everything, is simply making an attempt to have an excellent time. Finally, his ambivalence works in his favor.
But it’s a lot more durable to make an analogous argument concerning the different two nation artists who every, in succession, interrupted “Final Night time”’s Scorching 100 streak. Their success, coming alongside Wallen’s, makes Wallen’s really feel slightly grimier; “Attempt That In a Small City” and “Wealthy Males North of Richmond” are something however ambivalent.
Jason Aldean makes the subtext textual content with a controversial music video
Jason Aldean’s music ceaselessly will get classed inside the nebulous subgenre generally referred to as “bro-country” — a bunch of unapologetically dude-ish male nation artists, together with artists like Wallen and the Florida Georgia Line. Precisely what’s wrapped up within the “bro” ethos varies from artist to artist, however a refusal to be cowed by woke politics definitely appears to lurk on the edges. In 2015, Aldean wore blackface at a celebration, an act his publicist confirmed however for which Aldean has by no means apologized. As a substitute, the nation music veteran who gained the CMA Album of the Yr award in 2011, has doubled down on his controversial and, to many, blatantly racist provocations as an artist.
Aldean has lambasted the label of “bro nation,” calling it condescending. “It’s meant to explain guys whose songs are all about pickup vans, consuming beer, and women. It’s meant to speak right down to us,” he instructed Billboard in 2016. “They haven’t bothered to hearken to the physique of labor I’ve recorded through the years.”
Many would possibly argue, although, that the issue with Aldean’s physique of labor just isn’t that nobody is listening to it however that they’re listening and so they approve. As an illustration, the lyrics to Aldean’s “Small City” closely insinuate that Southern lynch mobs are alive and effectively and able to come for anybody who transgresses on (white) small-town values. He additionally advocates stockpiling weapons in case the federal government tries to bodily take them away from gun house owners — widespread rhetoric amongst gun rights extremists. When a music like that enjoys a viral recognition increase, it’s unsettling.
It’s additionally troublesome to disentangle the fandom for the music from the backlash to the music after which the following counter-backlash. “Small City” turned one of many few songs in historical past to concurrently prime each the Scorching Nation and Scorching 100 Billboard charts — however solely in spite of everything of the media consideration given to its racist subtext. That means that reasonably than media alarmism reducing curiosity within the music, its target market flocked to it due to its coded racism and references to violence.
In the long run, Aldean’s music solely lasted a second atop the Scorching 100. Nonetheless, it’s a big achievement for a sure sort of disgruntled conservative; in spite of everything, it’s seemingly many extra folks watched Aldean’s music video, with its codes and canine whistles, than would have paid consideration to the music with out the accompanying controversy. Along with the video’s use of a location with a fraught racial historical past, Aldean makes use of inventory footage taken from protests in Canada, filmed effectively earlier than the Black Lives Matter motion. Apparently, this footage appeared alongside unlicensed footage of precise Black Lives Matter protests (which has since reportedly been eliminated) to create a conflation between violent protests and the primarily peaceable Black Lives Matter protests. This conflation implies that rioting, looting, and dysfunction is what “small cities” within the trendy US are up towards. The “authenticity” argument would possibly usually work towards Aldean right here — he’s singing a few small city regardless of by no means having lived wherever smaller than mid-sized Macon, Georgia — however the music’s recognition amongst its target market appears to have forestalled criticism.
And whereas the music didn’t final on the prime of the charts, it has but to drop off of them. In truth, on the iTunes charts, the place Anthony’s songs have flooded the rankings, “Small City” has shot again up to No. 3 on the Prime 100 listing, proper behind Anthony. That’s most likely not a coincidence.
Oliver Anthony brings QAnon bugbears and overt welfare fat-shaming to bluegrass YouTube
As troublesome as it’s to say that Aldean’s music just isn’t racist, many have tried — together with Aldean himself, who claimed that it was about “the sensation of neighborhood” and the will for a return to “a way of normalcy.” Despite the fact that in apply that logic falls aside, it clearly has its enchantment to a selected viewers. Throughout his burgeoning repertoire, Oliver Anthony’s lyrics voice an analogous rhetoric — the concept that he’s “an outdated soul” trapped in “a brand new world.” The brand new world, Anthony closely implies, is indolent, hypocritical, and oppressive. Though Anthony has achieved huge recognition in a short while for the blunt, offended edge of those lyrics, they masks a a lot deeper, uglier sort of ideology.
“Wealthy Males” has drawn over 30 million views within the week since YouTube consumer radiowv, Anthony’s co-manager, uploaded an acoustic efficiency of it. In it, Anthony strums a guitar and wails impassioned lyrics with acquainted nation themes concerning the plight of the working-class man who suffers on the expense of the “wealthy males north of Richmond.”
Anthony’s articulation of those themes — the working man is overworked, overtaxed, and exploited — has gained him an enormous outpouring of reward from the audiences which have flocked to stream the music since its launch. In between these extra universalized themes, nonetheless, is a jarring and discordant resentment directed at folks on welfare, with all the embedded racism that suggests. “Lord, we received of us on the street, ain’t received nothin’ to eat / And the overweight milkin’ welfare,” Anthony sings. “Nicely, God, in the event you’re 5-foot-3 and also you’re 300 kilos / Taxes ought to not pay on your baggage of Fudge Rounds.”
Conservatives have lengthy rallied round demonizing the welfare state. One purpose for that’s that though white folks obtain extra public help than Black folks, many conservatives view welfare as a system set as much as assist city Black households. And though analysis has repeatedly proven that welfare recipients work no much less and sometimes work extra whereas on welfare, conservatives usually view these households as undeserving grifters residing off federal funds as an alternative of serving to themselves. The time period “welfare queen,” for instance, ceaselessly will get used as a racist canine whistle. In 1970, the one-hit nation marvel “Welfare Cadilac” [sic] drew criticism as “disgustingly racist” when it hit the charts.
Anthony’s abrupt shift from wealthy males to fat-shaming welfare recipients makes it very troublesome to learn the music in its entirety as merely a populist working-class anthem. There’s additionally a muddy reference to Jeffrey Epstein’s island property, a line that appears to place Anthony as QAnon-adjacent; he additionally seems to be a proponent of antisemitic conspiracies about 9/11.
As an unknown folks singer from West Virginia, Anthony — who’s purported to be a high-school drop-out residing in a $750 camper, writing music whereas struggling along with his psychological well being — had no actual music business expertise. His supervisor runs the tiny West Virginia YouTube channel the place his songs had been first uploaded. In a YouTube video uploaded alongside the discharge of his songs, Anthony describes himself as a political centrist.
His songs, nonetheless, have been championed by many outstanding conservatives, together with a number of writers for Ben Shapiro’s Each day Wire, and a number of established musical artists resembling former Mumford and Sons member Winston Marshall. Regardless of myriad accusations that Anthony’s virality has been manufactured by music business conservatives and right-wing extremists, it seems, per reporting by the New York Occasions, that Anthony’s music went viral organically — or at the least, not due to paid business manipulation. As a substitute, followers of the music utilized longstanding chart-gaming ways codified by Ok-pop followers and different pop music stans, like shopping for the music and all of Anthony’s different choices through iTunes to be able to improve their Billboard ranks. The music was additionally streamed over 17 million occasions in its first week alone.
However the audiences for Anthony’s music and the common Ok-pop band share little or no overlap. As a substitute, we appear to be witnessing a brand new area for gamified conservative rancor.
Is that this the way forward for nation music? Not fully.
It’s not that the nation music business itself is at fault for the virality of those three artists. Whereas the business continues to battle with marginalizing and even erasing Black artists, it has diversified and made room for genre-stretching interpretations of what “nation music” is, from Lil Nas X to Brandi Carlile and Sturgill Simpson — although not with out controversy alongside the way in which. Even anodyne singers like Keith City have tentatively addressed points like Me Too.
What’s extra, it’s not as if the complete Scorching 100 chart is simply this now. There are nonetheless, fortunately, so-far-untainted nation artists making the rounds. There’s Luke Combs’ widespread cowl of “Quick Automotive” alongside Chris Stapleton’s “White Horse” and several other different artists whose music routinely enjoys crossover enchantment.
Nevertheless it’s additionally value noting that additional down the iTunes chart is an much more poisonous musical group. Tom MacDonald and Adam Calhoun, who Rolling Stone beforehand referred to as “troll rappers,” might not have the sound of nation music, however they appear to have tapped the identical effectively of reactionary extremist conservative ire; their songs, like “Your America” and “American Flag,” are rife with virulent racist, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and significantly hateful anti-trans lyrics. Final week, whereas Anthony went viral, MacDonald and Calhoun floated increased and better on the listing earlier than lastly falling — however not utterly off.
Their presence within the rankings is a pernicious indicator that extra of this is likely to be on the way in which. It’s additionally, maybe, a clue that none of that is about nation artists, genuine or not; that in the end, none of it’s concerning the music in any respect.
