Episode 119: How the Right Shaped Pop Country Music

<div class="_2TO-components-SimpleRichTextEditor--paragraphElement" data-block="true" data-editor="fu8r4" data-offset-key="2du4s-0-0"> <div class= "public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="2du4s-0-0"><span data-offset-key="2du4s-0-0">By now, it's largely taken for granted that country music is a racialized signifier, interchangeable with right-wing politics. And it’s not such an unreasonable generalization: the political currents of twanged and drawled patriotic paeans like Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)," and Brooks & Dunn's "Only In America" leave little to the imagination.</span></div> <div class= "public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="2du4s-0-0"> </div> </div> <div class="_2TO-components-SimpleRichTextEditor--paragraphElement" data-block="true" data-editor="fu8r4" data-offset-key="ae0d-0-0"> <div class= "public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="ae0d-0-0"><span data-offset-key="ae0d-0-0">But how, exactly, did this come to be? After all, country music, a descendant of the blues, folk, Tejano, and other genres, with connections to labor organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World and social-justice movements, has historically attracted musicians spanning the political spectrum, and didn’t necessarily emerge from such a staunchly right-wing political tradition.</span></div> <div class= "public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="ae0d-0-0"> </div> </div> <div class="_2TO-components-SimpleRichTextEditor--paragraphElement" data-block="true" data-editor="fu8r4" data-offset-key="cd24t-0-0"> <div class= "public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="cd24t-0-0"><span data-offset-key= "cd24t-0-0">Rather, popular conceptions of country music have long been deliberately shaped by a series of broader ideological projects. Throughout the 20th and early 21st ce