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.