Memes

For me good country music is about growing up rural poor and making rebellious music with heart and soul. You can't authentically make that music while hating people (be they women, brown, queer, trans, foreign etc.). You can't make that music without being against cops and corporations like Nestle and United Health.

I had typed out an overly long rant about modern country losing its soul and just being pop music with a guitar twang veneer and classic country shit heels like David Allen Coe who still managed to make some memorable songs. Instead I'll just list some contemporary artists that I'd put on the same playlist and call it country.

In no particular order: Jesse Welles, Sturgill Simpson, Lil Nas X, Robert Ellis, Father John Misty, Old Crow Medicine Show, Courtney Barnett, Kurt Vile, The Texas Gentlemen, etc. I'm sure others can suggest more and some will dispute some of these. I make no claims that any of these people won't turn out to be bad guys later. After all, I do still kind of like that David Allen Coe song about being drunk the day his mom got out of prison and he went to pick her up in the rain, but before he could get to the station in his pickup truck she got run over by a damned old train.

Some modern country is also great! Tyler Childers has multiple songs about fucking around and being a cokehead in Kentucky (he's thankfully clean now). Then there's his Country Squire album that's very fun to watch videos from while stoned. It's like some southern Yellow Submarine.

Zach Bryan released an anti ICE song that I can't currently remember the title of for the life of me.

If you want more folk, Haunted Windchimes, The Ghost of Paul Revere, and Poor Man's Poison are all excellent, with Poor Man's Poison just straight up having multiple leftist as fuck songs. More mainstream you'd find Noah Kahan, who's done some excellent music. It's more pop folk than normal folk, but I'm still a fan personally.

Basically, just avoid artists like that whiny little bitch boy Morgan Wallen or basically any of the mainstream musicians from the 80s to the 2000s and you can find some actually good shit.

Also, both are mainstream, but Travis Tritt's Trouble and John Michael Montgomery's Sold are both absolute bangers.

Johnny Cash was his own genre.

I find actual classic country to just be boring, but not boring with a beat enough for work music like Classical music.

The modern country stuff I loathe for just like you said, being Republicunt siren songs lol

drinking shitting beer

Please keep this in, it's hilarious!