The latest issue of The Atlantic has a very interesting piece on how country as a genre has been famously resistant to change but this has been upended by the pandemic and protests around Black Lives Matter. The author comments: “How does a genre in love with routine respond to a moment in which everyone’s lives have been disrupted? One way is by pretending everything is fine—with the psychological escape provided by a song like “One Margarita,” but also perhaps in more concrete ways.It feels telling that the rural-ish and red-voting areas like Georgia and Texas where country music thrives have in many cases been slow to implement shutdowns and quick to reopen. Even as infections have spiked in such places, control measures such as mask-wearing have proved especially controversial. The country-music industry, to be clear, has largely supported pandemic-containment measures, and most of its large events have been canceled. But the genre’s also been home to artists and fans insisting that, one way or another, the show should go on, shutdown be damned.”
You can read the whole piece here.
