Think Politics Is Gone From Country Music? Listen Closer
Recall the collective cringing when bloggers discovered Brad Paisley's LL Cool J-assisted song "Accidental Racist" in April 2013. Paisley had made an admirable attempt to speak across racial and regional divides, but badly fumbled both the message and the execution. Though the cartoonish track was merely an album cut, not a single, it went viral, making Paisley the target of popular and critical ridicule and biting, primetime TV satire that cast him as clueless. There was little recognition of the fact that he, of all the country stars of his generation, was the most invested in facilitating long term dialogue between his audience and broader culture — that he'd spent years alternating between genially modeling openness toward difference and change and reaffirming the core country value of stability.
That was a cautionary tale, an example of what's at stake when country acts try to speak to their fans about matters of social or political significance, opening themselves up to broader scrutiny in the process. Outside interpretations of country songs have long been clouded by class-based perceptions that dismiss working-class sentiments as trivial expressions of resentment and don't quite know what to make of the genre's drift toward suburban respectability and popular taste since the '60s.
Country performers are also haunted by another notorious episode: country radio's blacklisting of the Dixie Chicks over the group's refusal to make penance for singer Natalie Maines's offhand criticism of the second President Bush during a U.K. concert. That was one of the ugliest episodes in the modern history of country music, and demonstrated
