Country music’s unlikely boom
WHEN THE CORONAVIRUS HIT THE U.S., GABBY Barrett’s breakout year was thrown into peril. The 20-year-old country singer-songwriter had just found her footing in Nashville with the steady rise of her fiery breakup single, “I Hope.” She planned to build on the momentum with a debut album and a global tour with country idol Brad Paisley. Instead, the tour was canceled, forcing Barrett into the longest break of her life. “It was strange not being on the road,” she says. “It’s pretty much all that I know.”
It looked as if country music itself were facing hard times. The scaling back of the physical spaces where the genre thrives—concert halls and bars; radio and concert tours—emphasized its vulnerability in the virtual realm. Having long prided itself on
