One Step to the Right. Then Run Me to the Left.
The prevailing narrative around country music in 2024, perhaps inevitably, was unprepared to meet the moment. Reducing the genre to just two primary, intertwined talking points– endless iterations of “the pop mainstream went country!” and “Beyoncé!”– meant that the more insidious aspects of the genre’s institutional goings-on were rarely given more than a cursory glance.
I keep going back to that statement by the late Toni Morrison I cited when we reviewed Beyoncé’s “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” what feels like a lifetime ago but what the calendar tells me was, improbably, just last February. “It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is,” Morrison commented. “The very serious function of racism… is distraction.”
And so much of the last year has felt like just that: Distraction.
What I’ve often found myself distracted from was what was, start to finish, the most artistically rich year for country music I can recall in my adult life. I went on record here about more than 270 albums that swirl about the greater country universe, and we reviewed more than 150 new singles. And so much of that new music was tremendous work, inspired by the best of the genre’s storied past and pointing the way toward a brighter and more inclusive future.
That music is important. And, if our civilization endures, cultural anthropologists generations from now will study the country music of 2024 and note the hopefulness and empathy in the art made by artists from marginalized groups and the anger and invented grievance in the music made by the privileged few on Music Row. The last year in country music wasn’t about the forays of pop stars into the genre, though there are sources of real joy and inspiration in things like Chappel Roan’s Chicks-inspired SNL performance or Sabrina Carpenter’s twangy Tiny Desk concert.
No, the story of country music in 2024 is how we had a legion of Cassandras– with names like Amythyst, Jett, Kaia, Adeem, Joy, Jake, Lindi, Yasmin, and Willi– whose visions of impending cultural doom were too often dismissed because they were spoken by those who were out of turn. Beyoncé, also dismissed and misunderstood in this moment, knew this would happen, too. What is her COWBOY CARTER but a dare to the country music industry to look itself in the eye and to reckon with the most powerful black woman in the modern entertainment business?
She knew the gatekeepers on Music Row wouldn’t– couldn’t– do it. Hell, she even gave them an out by saying that her album isn’t a country album. And they still couldn’t rise to the moment and own their history and present of exclusion and oppression.
So they found new audiences to distract, and they doubled-down in 2024. Courting the white, Southern “state college” demographic proved lucrative. Bailey Zimmerman staged his absolutely horrific CMA performance like a literal frat party, complete with a beer pong table and a creepy old dude in a sleeveless shirt who had no business being around college kids. Megan Moroney’s entire persona is of a sorority girl who’s punching down at people she sees as beneath her in one way or another. And what could be more endemic to Music Row than going all-in on institutions that uphold patriarchal white supremacy? The only surprise is that it took them this long to recognize the collegiate Greek system as a potential cash cow.
The distraction is certainly part of it, and it’s one way of ensuring that no one in any position of privilege ever sits too long in any real discomfort. But, again, the story isn’t just about pop crossovers or Beyoncé. It goes deeper– the rot at the roots is the root of the problem, after all– and the notion of distraction, alone, doesn’t account for the ways that the country industry just felt meaner in 2024.
What I saw in the country music space in 2024 is what the brilliant Dr. Koritha Mitchell, one of the sharpest and most important cultural critics working today, has dubbed “know-your-place aggression.” In a May 2024 interview with Harvey Young, Dr. Mitchell describes this phenomenon as such:
“It is the flexible, dynamic array of forces that answer the achievements of marginalized groups such that their success brings aggression as often as praise. Studying lynching taught me that you were most often targeted by the mob when you were successful in some way. You might need to be put in your “proper” place because you had financial success. Or, maybe you didn’t know your place as a Black man because you were trying to protect your daughter or wife from sexual harassment or assault… Any time we’re studying Black art through the lens of protest, we’re missing something. Those plays about lynching were not about protesting. They were about saying, ‘Here we are, marching toward success, and here comes the mob to interrupt that march’.”
Although Dr. Mitchell is primarily a literary and cultural scholar, the parallels between her radical recontextualizations of works like A Raisin in the Sun and the treatment of black creators in the country music space are clear. Not a sole woman of color had a single added at country radio in the wake of “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM,” in no small part due to the endless series of “proper” hoops the country radio industry has established to gatekeep out any unwanted acts. Kane Brown remains one of the genre’s most commercially successful and artistically underestimated acts, and he’s never won a CMA award as a solo artist or been nominated in a major category. Shaboozey had the biggest multi-format single of the year, and he was treated as a punchline during the CMA broadcast and gave a nervous, listless performance. Luke Bryan had the unmitigated gall to suggest that Beyoncé, if she wanted to be included as part of the country music “family,” needed to show up for industry events, as though he hadn’t been a performer on the very CMA broadcast when she performed “Daddy Lessons” with The Chicks and received a reception that was, at best, mixed.
None of this is particularly subtle, either. And, increasingly, Dr. Mitchell’s premise extrapolates to other groups who’d dare get out of line. Even LGBTQ+ artists like Lily Rose, Chris Housman, and Brothers Osborne who make radio-ready country singles can’t get significant traction at radio, while openly left-leaning women like Maren Morris and Kelsea Ballerini have seen their already-limited spots on playlists get reallocated to the likes of Moroney and Ella Langley.
Know-your-place aggression. That’s the underlying story of country music in 2024. And there are countless signs, just days into the new year, that there will be those hellbent on making it the genre’s story in 2025, too, and they’ll couch their acts of cultural violence in the guise of “answer[ing] the call” in “the spirit of unity.”
As ever, our goal here is to champion a vision of country music as an essential form of cultural capital, rooted first and foremost in radical empathy and the belief that “authenticity” comes not from adherence to a narrow vision of history or a single, privileged worldview, but from genuine lived experience. 2024, in spite of its attempts to distract and put people in their rightful place, offered no shortage of country music worth celebrating.
2025 will, as well, and we’ll be here to share that with you. Paraphrasing another bit of inspiration from Dr. Mitchell, “[We] don’t have to be persuaded by the incentives to embrace mediocrity. [We] can work deliberately to make every space they enter less hostile for more people. [We] can work deliberately toward making society more decent.”
We may just be a tiny little corner of the greater country universe, but we’re here to put in the work. As we– finally– look back on the best of 2024, we thank you, as ever, for being along for the ride.
The Best of 2024
Best Singles of 2024 | Best Albums of 2024
Single of the Year (2004-present) | Album of the Year (2004-present)
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