country music
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When Hippies and Rednecks Joined Forces
I can’t tell you how much these guys scared Nashville. Texans didn’t know who was boss. Texas Monthly has a must-read oral history of the creation of a new type of country music in Austin in the ’70s. Musicians like…
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Country Music’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriends
Why is it that despite country music’s overall conservatism and exaltation of rural, small-town culture, female country artists routinely write songs that would make a simple country farmer’s eyes bug out? Why do the men sing about inoffensive, patriotic good…
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Why Country Music Loves Me
In a lace-curtained living room of a cabin by the Greenbrier River, four men I had just met picked up a banjo, a guitar, a mandolin, and an upright bass and cracked my world open.
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Hootie Populism: Darius Rucker Is Country Music’s Newest Hit-Maker
Editor’s Note: We realize this breaks our “no pop” rule, but this essay was too good to pass up. Darius Rucker is not Hootie. Instead, he’s Darius, the former lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish, a band that since…
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Country Music in Kenya & Mumbai
“Country music has fans wherever people are departing rural areas. In other words, worldwide. Turns out that the weeping tunes about better days can be understood even without understanding the lyrics. That crying slide guitar is the perfect accompaniment for…