Despite Billy Ray Cyrus’s best efforts on inauguration day, this year was a year of country music. As seen at this weekend’s Grammys, country music has taken over the mainstream. After taking note of the meteoric rise of neotraditional, big-chinned artists like Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan, everybody and their desperately-trying-to-pull-off-a-cowboy-hat mother has been hopping onto the country bandwagon. Post Malone, Yung Gravy, and many more random white men have embraced the power of forced Southern twang and a little bit of banjo. Even the queen mother Lana Del Rey claims to be cooking up a little Nashville-flavored something. The real question is, why have we, the profit-generating masses, gotten so into country music lately? Why are we so eager to stomp our boots and shake our denim-clad behinds to a genre that was a cultural laughing stock just 10 years ago? When you truly interrogate the state of our nation the reason is clear. Our western-tinted Spotify Wrappeds reflect a communal rejection of modernity.
Read More