Emily Nussbaum on the Culture Wars in Country Music
b'Last month, the country singer Jason Aldean released a music video for \\u201cTry That in a Small Town,\\u201d a song that initially received little attention. But the video cast the song\\u2019s lyrics in a new light. While Aldean sings, \\u201cTry that in a small town / See how far ya make it down the road / \\u2019Round here, we take care of our own,\\u201d images of protests against police brutality are interspersed with Aldean singing outside a county courthouse where a lynching once took place. Aldean\\u2019s defenders\\u2014and there are many\\u2014say the song praises small-town values and respect for the law, rather than promoting violence and vigilantism. The controversy eventually pushed the song to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The staff writer Emily Nussbaum has been reporting from Nashville throughout the past few months on the very complicated politics of country music. On the one hand, she found a self-perpetuating culture war, fuelled by outrage; on the other, there\\u2019s a music scene that\\u2019s diversifying, with increasing numbers of women, Black artists, and L.G.B.T.Q. performers claiming country music as their own. \\u201cI set out to talk about music, but politics are inseparable from it,\\u201d Nussbaum tells David Remnick. \\u201cThe narrowing of commercial country music to a form of pop country dominated by white guys singing a certain kind of clich\\xe9-ridden bro country song\\u2014it\\u2019s not like I don\\u2019t like every song like that, but the absolute domination of that keeps out all sorts of other musicians.\\u201d Nussbaum also speaks with Adeem the Artist, a nonbinary country singer and songwriter based in East Tennessee, who has found success with audiences but has not broken through on mainstream country radio. \\u201cI think that it\\u2019s important that people walk into a music experience where they expect to feel comforted in their bigotry and they are instead challenged on it and made to imagine a world where different people exist,\\u201d Adeem says. \\u201cBut, as a general rule, I try really hard to connect with people even if I\\u2019m making them uncomfortable.\\u201d'