Tag Archives: music

Can Country Music Be Cool? 

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beyonce cowboy carter album cover

It’s probably obvious that this post is a response to the release of Beyoncé’s new countrified album Cowboy Carter, to which I have been listening religiously. Despite her insistence that Cowboy Carter “ain’t a country album, [it’s] a Beyoncé album”, the album is a self-admitted response to “an experience I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and where it was very clear that I wasn’t.” Fans suspect this is a reference to her 2016 performance with The Chicks at the Country Music Awards, during which they performed Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons” to a chilly audience. As (sadly) expected, some folks in the country community still have their hackles raised at (the horror!) a Black woman daring to wade into the country waters, despite being from literal Texas and shouting out Houston every chance she gets (their argument might be that Beyoncé is a pop artist and therefore doesn’t have the chops for country, but I don’t remember any hubbub when the loudly Italian-American pop queen Lady Gaga released Joanne).  

When I ask if country music can be “cool”, perhaps I should clarify what I mean by that vague descriptor. Maybe it’s different for the kids now, I don’t know! But for me “cool” indicates that timeless quality of being slightly outside—and, to channel 90s smugness, slightly above—the mainstream, of possessing an effortless je ne sais quoi, of challenging social norms instead of supporting the status quo. It’s by this definition that today’s mainstream country music misses the mark: as a genre (and this is speaking broadly), it is dedicated to upholding the conservative, patriarchal, exclusionary values of a certain racial and social class. It’s not the only popular genre dominated by white (blond, even!), straight, cis men—rock music has that in spades as well, but rock musicians tend to lean more alternative. Not so with mainstream country. Ontario’s annual Boots and Hearts festival returns this year boasting Jason Aldean as a headliner, the singer whose controversial “Try That in a Small Town” has been derided even by a Tennessee State Representative as a “pro-gun, pro-violence, modern lynching song.” It’s the opposite of cool (apologies to Luke Combs, whose cover of “Fast Car” is lovely, and he seems chill enough). 

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Lorde’s Solar Power is Here!

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When Lorde dropped onto the scene with 2013’s Pure Heroine, she was a strange, dark, enigmatic force. A 16 year old from New Zealand, her signature sound of slow drums and deep beats shook up the music charts (her competition: Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop”, Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”, “Ho Hey” by The Lumineers—even the “Harlem Shake” made it onto the charts). “Royals” signaled an exciting direction for chartable music, one not predicated only on exuberant silliness but that made space for something a little darker, a little deeper, a little quasi-gothy. She was a weirdo before Jughead made the claim, with effortless cool. The heavy, slow beat-and-clap of “Royals” and “Team” became a real thing. It’s not for nothing that literal David Bowie called her sound “the future of music”—and of course, he was right.

With her follow-up album Melodrama, Lorde built on her previous sound and reputation for idiosyncrasy. In a recent article detailing just why Lorde’s music seems so different from contemporary pop music, Time got into the actual structure of her biggest hits, which employ the difficultly-named “mixolydian mode”. As someone who doesn’t understand music theory, this doesn’t mean a whole lot to me, but it essentially means she’s adopting a scale historically used in blues and rock unexpectedly in pop music. Pop is incredibly formulaic (that’s not necessarily a bad thing—it’s a successful genre for a reason), but we love Lorde precisely for bucking that formula and still making it work. Think of the song “Green Light”, which shifts to a surprise chord at the pre-chorus (“But I hear sounds in my mind…”), a shift that doesn’t make sense in pop theory but one that gives the song its unsettling power. She is always tightly in control of her sound, sure-footed in her formula-breaking. Melodrama was not as commercially successful as Pure Heroine, but Lorde’s artistic influence carries on in current chart toppers like Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish. It’s very hard, for example, to hear the swelling bridge of “drivers license”, with its layered voices and slow claps, and not think of Lorde.  

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Music to Get You Up and Get You Through It!

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What to do when you’re cooped up inside? Across the globe, our regular routines have been completely decimated. For a lot us, that might mean the simple fact of moving your body around or stimulating your mind is happening at a drastically reduced rate. I’m sure we’re all desperate to latch onto something to keep us sane. Blessedly, we live in a time of ample streaming, and with a simple few clicks we can get a book or a movie or a TV show up and running within a matter of seconds. Truly, I would like to apologize to technology for anything bad I may have said about it in the past. So yes, we can get all the sit-on-the-couch content our hearts desire, but what about something to get you moving? Personally, what’s keeping me from going stir-crazy is music. Is there a better feeling than finding a song that vibes with your very soul, or makes you want to jump around in your bedroom, or maybe even inspires you artistically? Luckily, Hoopla gives you access to all sorts of music to stream on your computer or a mobile device—and all you need is your library card. And bonus: the per-month checkout limit has been raised from 5 titles to 10! All the better to get your groove on.  

I have been listening to a few albums on repeat this quarantine season (sorry, neighbours!). First on the list: the masked cowboy, Orville Peck. If you haven’t heard of him, you’re welcome. I always forget that I actually really like country music, because most of it is just so….ugh. But when a country song slaps, it slaps (I’m still waiting on Beyoncé to make a country album ever since she put out “Daddy Lessons”). Peck’s version of country is a far cry from whatever passes as a hit in Nashville these days—in fact, it’s practically a genre reset. A callback to when country wasn’t just about trucks and beer (or, if you’re a woman, killing your husband) but was instead the refuge of outsiders: outlaws, rebels, misfits, wayward souls. It was Johnny Cash singing to prisoners, and Willie Nelson championing marijuana in the red states. Peck, then, is a return to form, and his version of “outsider” is being an openly gay crooner with a heightened, Dolly Parton-esque camp aesthetic and a voice that could melt butter. His music has all the twang and warble of old country, but is softened by influences like new wave synth and dreamy shoegaze. Think of The Smiths sung by Elvis, with lyrics by Lana Del Rey, and you’re halfway to Peck. Never seen without his cowboy hat and mask, he’s the sort of enigmatic figure that inspires immediate and intense devotion—I know, because I’m living it.  

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