‘New York Times’ Column Offers Angry, Inaccurate Take on Race and Country Music

Random Notes 259 Comments


It remains an unfortunate aspect of the modern media landscape that whenever higher institutions broach the subject of country music, it’s commonly done by someone uniquely unqualified to speak on the matter, peddling empirically false and easily disprovable misnomers, with a sneering, down-looking attitude towards the genre, its fans, and its performers, and often with an overt political agenda, while neither soliciting nor entertaining counter-viewpoints from people who can speak about country music with knowledge, authority, or from a perspective challenging their own.

This practice is frustratingly common, but was much more prevalent in previous years, reaching a fevered pitch during the pandemic, and in the aftermath of Morgan Wallen’s N-word incident in February of 2021. It has since ratcheted down, especially after the political project launched during President Trump’s first term by academics and political apparatchiks to reshape the rural American electorate from red to blue through co-opting country music as a political tool spectacularly failed and backfired, resulting in the re-election of Trump, and the “vibe shift” in American culture.

But in an unusually angry and uninformed opinion column published in The New York Times on May 18th, PhD, professor, author, and MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award Recipient Tressie McMillan Cottom asks “The Country’s Gone Country. What Gives?”

Not only are multiple assertions made in the column categorically false, they’re so irresponsible, they have the opportunity to be devastatingly counter-productive to the efforts by people throughout the country music community attempting to institute racial equality, potentially setting back those efforts by years. The only saving grace for the column is that it’s perhaps so seething in its anger, so misinformed, and since it’s set behind a paywall at a newspaper that already has lost so much credibility, nobody will take it seriously. This is the best case scenario The New York Times, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and her surrogates can hope for.

The article starts off with some false, but common misnomers. Cottom cites Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter as a Grammy-winning country album. Cowboy Carter was Grammy winning, and it even won the Grammy for Best Country Album. But as Beyoncé said herself on March 20th, 2024, “This ain’t a country album. It’s a Beyoncé album.” Asserting the album is country is an insult to Beyoncé’s artistic intent. And this wasn’t just the assessment of Saving Country Music. NPR, The Washington Post, The Ringer, and other outlets concluded the same thing.

Cottom herself has claimed she’s received a lot of feedback from the article pushing back on her claim Cowboy Carter is country. Anyone who wants to dive deeper into Cowboy Carter country question can do so in the article Dispelling The Myth That Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is a Country Album, or via the video below.


The New York Times column goes on to talk about how all kinds of artists are getting into country music, including Ed Sheeran, Lana Del Rey, and Snoop Dogg. But Snoop Dogg has not made any kind of pronouncement of intent to “go country.” He simply performed a song with Ernest recently that happened to be surprisingly country. Saying Snoop Dogg is “going country” is a good example of multiple assertions from the column that are just flat out wrong, yet are embedded into the article to help bolster the opinion.

Another example of this is the very next point the column makes, saying: “Occam’s razor would chalk their genre-switching up to politics: American pop culture typically goes country when the White House goes Republican.”

Again, Snoop Dogg is not switching genres. For all we know, neither is Ed Sheeran or Lana Del Rey. They might be making one-off country-adjacent projects, just like Beyoncé did. But nobody expects the next album from Beyoncé to be country. Ed Sheeran isn’t even American.

More importantly though, the timing of Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Republican assertion is all off. The genre-crossing albums from Beyoncé and Post Malone were released during the Biden Administration. That’s also when the country efforts by Ed Sheeran and Lana Del Rey were instigated. The popular country resurgence unquestionably first took form during the Biden years, not in the last few months since Trump took office.

But beyond these finer points, it’s the fourth paragraph of The New York Times column that is so full of categorically false assertions, it completely undermines any and all credibility the article could attempt to cobble together through it’s borderline incoherent and often conflicting arguments. Tressie McMillan Cottom attempts to forward to the public,

To understand the tension at the heart of country music, it helps to look at a holy trinity of artists widely lauded for country music’s resurgence with mainstream audiences: Jelly Roll, Morgan Wallen and Zach Top. These good ol’ boys — and they are all boys — aren’t outlaw country. They are “8 Mile” country, white acts making country inflected with contemporary Black music for mass audiences. Where Jelly Roll and Wallen’s country is hip-hop inflected, Top is channeling 1980s big-hat, traditional male country singers. Their success, though, is cut from the same cloth. These aren’t country music outsiders storming the gates. They are anointed by the industry as the genre’s white, male saviors … They’re saving country music from the musical summer I am having.

There are so many falsehoods in the above paragraph, it’s hard to know where to start dissecting. But let’s start with the idea that Jelly Roll, Morgan Wallen, and Zach Top are the “holy trinity of artists widely lauded for country music’s resurgence.” This quote makes it seem like these three are unquestionably country music’s top stars, or the catalysts for its current popularity. But Zach Bryan blows Jelly Roll and Zach Top out of the water with streams, sales, and touring purses by many multipliers. On September 27th, Zach Bryan will be playing the biggest single ticketed show in North American history at Michigan Stadium.

So why is Zach Bryan not included in the conversation? Because you can’t claim he’s “anointed by the industry,” nor that he’s not an “outsider.” Zach Bryan clearly rose to popularity without the help of the Nashville, Music Row system. This undercuts Cottom’s entire argument.

You would also have to at least mention Luke Combs in this conversation as well. And though Lainey Wilson might not be as commercially successful, she has now won Entertainer of the Year trophies from both the CMA and ACM Awards—country’s biggest accolade. Simply put, when asked who country music’s three biggest stars are at the moment, everyone might agree on Morgan Wallen at #1, but few if anyone would agree the other two names are Jelly Roll and Zach Top to where you could call them a “holy trinity.”

But the most ludicrous assertion that any country fan will laugh out loud about is when the column lumps in Zach Top with “…acts making country inflected with contemporary Black music for mass audiences.” Cottom does go on to say Top is also “channeling 1980s big-hat, traditional male country singers.” But the way she words the paragraph seems to be saying Top is making songs “inflected with contemporary Black music” too.

Also, even if you chalk up the Zach Top characterization to bad wording, Zach Top is not inspired by 1980s country. Top is known for his ’90s country sound, which might only be a decade apart, but is a world away in influence. For more information, you can read Understanding Zach Top and Neotraditionalist Country Music, or watch the video below.


The NYT column goes on to state about Morgan Wallen, Jelly Roll, and Zach Top, “These aren’t country music outsiders storming the gates. They are anointed by the industry as the genre’s white, male saviors.”

First off, who ever claimed these artists were “outsiders storming the gates“? Certainly, a strong case could be made that Morgan Wallen was “anointed by the industry.” You might could even claim that about Jelly Roll, though Cottom fails to mention that Jelly Roll spent nearly 20 years as a hip-hop and rock artist and had a massive following before moving into the country market. That definitely seems like an imperative part of this conversation.

And critical to Jelly Roll’s rise has been his championing by the media, and specifically by the media outside of country music, including The New York Times pop writer Jon Caramonica. Pop and hip-hop writers outside of country have been promoting Jelly Roll as the type of sonic “diversity” that country music needs to broaden its appeal, because these writers often loathe actual country music and actual country fans. Listeners native to country tend to disfavor Jelly Roll. Similar to Beyoncé, most of Jelly Roll’s chart success is simply measuring consumption outside of country fandom that is then published on country charts due to Billboard’s 2012 rule changes.

As for Zach Top, was he “anointed by the industry”? Absolutely not. Top is a traditionalist on an independent, upstart label (Leo33) who caught viral momentum on social media that the industry then accepted due to his viral appeal. Overall, lumping these three artists together is a disservice to them all, and stereotyping of all country music performers.

But none of this is the worst thing this paragraph from the NYT column contains. When Tressie McMillan Cottom says, “These good ol’ boys — and they are all boys” and then calls them “white acts making country inflected with contemporary Black music for mass audiences.” she’s doing much more than spreading misnomers based off her novice understanding and knowledge of country music. She is making expressly down-looking, dehumanizing, degrading, diminutive statements with the purpose of characterizing these artists as inferior human beings.

There is absolutely no need or reason to state about Zach Top, Morgan Wallen, and Jelly Roll that “they are all boys” except to insult and cut them down. This is open-faced bigotry, and potentially, racism, underscored by how Cottom capitalizes “Black” and leaves “white” lower case. The way the column also uses “whiteness” numerous times as a pejorative emphasizes the bigoted perspective she brings to this discussion. “Boy” is meant as a derogatory epithet, and underscores the surprising anger that’s palpable throughout the article.

Granted, both Morgan Wallen and Jelly Roll have criminal records, and have engaged in questionable behavior in their lives, though a redemption story is very much at the heart of Jelly Roll’s mass appeal. However, Zach Top has none of that behavior in his past, and has no reason to have his character questioned.

The article states early on, “Every interloper from outside the Nashville machine who flocks to the genre has to choose which version of country music they will embody: reactionary whiteness or reparative multiracialism.”

But what Tressie McMillan Cottom is engaging in with her dehumanizing language is directly damaging to the ongoing efforts at reparative multiracialism within the country genre. The New York Times article stokes more racism than it challenges.

There are also certain things that Tressie McMillan Cottom states in the column that are generally correct. She proclaims, “A generation of Black country artists that has been making music in the trenches is more than ready to serve it up to [audiences],” citing Rhiannon Giddens, The War & Treaty, and others specifically. This is true, though it goes far beyond this assessment to performers like Charley Crockett and Aaron Vance who get excluded from these conversations since they’re not mainstream facing.

It’s fair to clarify that Rhiannon Giddens has received opportunities to step into being a mainstream country artist. But aside from her collaborations with Eric Church and Beyoncé, Giddens has purposely side stepped those opportunities to stay authentic to herself, something she spoke specifically about recently. So characterizing any Black artist who has not reached superstar status as being the victim of racism is not always accurate.

These characterizations can also be inadvertently diminutive when you have an artist like Rhiannon Giddens who puts her integrity first and focuses on preserving tradition before concerning herself with the commercial application of her music. Insinuating that she is unaccomplished simply because she has not attained a conventional notion of superstardom is to misunderstand her career goals. Rhiannon Giddens has enjoyed an incredible career full of recognition and accolades.

Tressie McMillan Cottom correctly calls out the “Nashville aesthetic” as “…a cross between rural cosplay and high school prom court.” At one point she states, “Ignore what country music is singing. That’s mostly garbage anyway,” which many readers of a website like Saving Country Music would generally agree with when considering the country mainstream.

Cottom also states accurately that “artists [who] make music so sonically country that the twang makes your bicuspids itch, the industry uses aesthetic authenticity to push them into niche markets, like folk and Americana.”

It’s definitely true that more traditional and roots-based country artists are often pushed to Americana in an action that can feel very “othering.” Interestingly, Tressie McMillan Cottom served on the Board of Directors for the Americana Music Association in 2022 and 2023. I saw her speak at AmericanaFest in 2022 in hopes she could represent an important perspective on race in American roots music.

Instead—similar to The New York Times column—Cottom presented a laundry list of misnomers about country music that despite her passion for the subject, speak to a completely uninformed opinion from a person unwilling to devote the time to the topic that it takes to understand the nuance of race and the country genre. Cottom simply serves up rehashed race-based bromides and social media applause points, without offering any sort of solutions, let alone structural guidance of how we’re supposed to address the issues she hyperbolically serves up, and in a way that disrespects their complexity.

Tressie McMillan Cottom uses symbolic experiences like attending a Jason Isbell concert at the Ryman Auditorium as license to speak with authority on country music—the classic PhD/academic paradigm of attempting to circumvent experience and real world knowledge with academic accreditation.

Going back to The New York Times column itself and considering it more broadly, it is built from a classic set of inaccuracies that most all outside perspectives tend to impose on country music in these types of elite media pieces.

First, since these articles are authored by political activists who center identity, they view the entire world through these lenses, and assume their counterparts in the country music industry do the same. In other words, these academics and activists project political motivations and race-based decision making upon the country music industry, when in truth there is one thing that motivates the country music industry and one thing only: money.

If signing more Black artists and promoting more Black music would make country music more money than signing more White artists, they would do so in a heartbeat. In fact, the industry has already been doing this to a greater degree recently. There is no ideology behind major label motivations tied to race, politics, or anything else. Though it might be true that many of the individuals working in the country music industry lean more center right politically, their underlying motivations are exclusively economic.

But Tressie McMillan Cottom says, “Our nation’s politics have not merely gone conservative. They have gone white nationalist. That makes country music, and Nashville, a good fit for the moment. The music is a cover. The real goal is to have a home for political pop culture. That’s why Trumpist power brokers want to turn Nashville into the right wing’s Hollywood.”

But this is exactly what Tressie McMillan Cottom and others were attempting to do from a political left perspective through activist journalism and opinion columns over the last decade, and expressly stated as much through the first Trump Administration, and using race as a cover, and a cudgel.

Ironically, at that time, most all of Nashville’s major record labels had instituted a moratorium on artists speaking out politically at all. Country music mostly experienced a political truce through the era after the cancellation of the [Dixie] Chicks in 2003. It was when outlets such as Rolling Stone Country insisted performers come out for left-leaning causes, and The Washington Post and others attacked the wives of performers for making political statements on social media that artists themselves started speaking out politically, politicizing country music once again.

Keeping country stars quiet about their right-leaning political beliefs was the best case scenario for these political activists, and the idea that the media could reshape the political beliefs of performers through think pieces behind paywalls was the essence of hubris. But after attempting to goad and shame them into championing left leaning causes, country artists finally did start speaking out, and often on the right, resulting in the political project to turn country music into a political bullhorn for the left completely backfiring.

Now, country music is very much a politically right institution, unlike just a few years ago. For example, the major media outlet Whiskey Riff that is partially owned by the Grand Ole Opry regularly publishes outright right-leaning political posts, dwarfing any left-leaning country music content Rolling Stone or other outlets like The New York Times might publish.

Another misnomer commonly found in these elite opinion pieces is that country music is a monolith, and that it’s solely centered in Nashville, meaning the entire genre, its labels, its acts, radio, awards shows, and fans all move in one unified motion. This misconception is forwarded time and time again in The New York Times column, as is the idea that it is politically and racially-motivated White people operating “country music” as an express political project.

Tressie McMillan Cottom states at one point,

“[Morgan] Wallen, for example, arguably owes his entire career to country music embracing its cultural role as rhythm-keeper for white reactionarism. His success is a case of how the Nashville vanguard is bringing millions of new listeners into the country music fold. The vanguard is separating Black art from Black artists and repackaging it as white authenticity to white audiences. His music may be a sincere ode to the futility of genres (Is he making country music or watered-down trap?), but Wallen’s role as lead horseman of the white country reclamation is about white America’s power to police those genre boundaries.”

There is definitely some truth to Morgan Wallen’s music incorporating traditionally Black music modes, even though once again, this is something that is actually advocated for by music pundits outside of country who insist country music must “evolve” and embrace trap beats and hip-hop cadences. Cottom herself argues this at one point in her column.

But far from being embraced by the wide population of the country genre, these same Black music influences are what makes Morgan Wallen exceptionally polarizing in country. Most traditional country fans find Morgan Wallen repulsive, and because of his use of trap beats and hip-hop cadences specifically. “Policing genre boundaries” is done much more due to musical concerns as opposed to concerns involving race.

Similar to Jelly Roll, much of Morgan Wallen’s fan base pulls from pop and hip-hop fans, not country ones, including large amounts of Black listeners. In fact, ironically, Morgan Wallen might have the most racially diverse audiences in all of country music, while audiences for performers such as Rhiannon Giddens and The War & Treaty are almost exclusively White. This was actually one of the accurate points Cottam expressed when she spoke at AmericanaFest in 2022.

Another major dillema with what Tressie McMillan Cottom asserts about “white country reclamation” is the story of Candice Watkins. Who is Candice Watkins? She is a veteran country music executive who was the long-time Senior Vice President of Marketing at Morgan Wallen’s label Big Loud Records. Watkins oversaw the label’s Marketing, Digital, Creative, PR and Streaming departments through Morgan Wallen’s rise. Watkins is given direct credit for much of Morgan Wallen’s success, and the dramatic emergence of Big Loud Records as a Nashville power broker over the last few years.

Candice Watkins



Just last week, Candice Watkins was announced as the new President of Capitol Records Nashville, a newly-restructured label group that also includes the Capitol Christian Music Group. This makes Watkins one of the most powerful executives in all of Nashville, and in country music.

But of course, Tressie McMillan Cottom doesn’t mention Watkins or her recent appointment as a major label President. In The New York Times column, nowhere do you see any mention of Country Music Hall of Famers Charley Pride, DeFord Bailey, or Ray Charles. Nowhere is there mention of Darius Rucker, Kane Brown, or other Black country success stories, or mention of the countless Black artists surging in the independent ranks, from Charley Crockett, to Kashus Culpepper who is another Big Loud artist Candace Watkins helped to develop. Cottom barely even mentions Shaboozey.

In truth, if you are an advocate for Black artists in country music and Black representation in country music’s executive positions of power, there has never been a better time to celebrate.

The top song in country music at the moment according to Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart is Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” The 3rd top song is BigXthaPlug’s “All The Way” with Bailey Zimmerman. Beyoncé is the reining Grammy Country Album of the Year winner. Across the board, you’re not only seeing Black representation in country music, you’re seeing Black domination. Yet if you read The New York Times column, you’re being told country music is simply a bastion for White political reactionaries to reshape American in their White nationalist image.

Instead of attempting to instigate a race war within country music by condescending White performers and fans, and inciting Black ones, why doesn’t Tressie McMillan Cottom use the platform she’s been bestowed by The New York Times to highlight the Black creators in the country music space she believes deserve to be elevated? Why doesn’t she feature success stories like Candice Watkins?

The cynical take is that racial tension is the commodity Cottom and others trade in. Another possibility is that Cottom has no idea who someone like Candice Watkins is, and doesn’t want to put in the pragmatic, and often, time-consuming work and commitment that it takes to institute the kind of “reparative multiracialism” she purports to want to see bloom in the country music space.

But in truth, the motivation of The New York Times column is not to move country music forward at all. It is to seethe about the failures of the last few years to co-opt country music to do the bidding of the political left. In some respects, it’s outright jealousy. As Cottom says near the conclusion of the article,

“Capturing celebrities with national audiences could give the right real cultural power, not simply the illusion of it, propped up by a handful of genre-constrained stars. That is why country music’s boundaries are so politically insistent. Whoever controls country, it seems, will control the culture.”

But instead of insisting that it should be the left or the right who should be in hypothetical “control” of country music to then utilize it as a political machine, the genre should make the effort to be politically agnostic, and a place for all blue collar, rural, and agrarian people to find music that speaks to their experiences, and gives them a sense of cultural identity, irrespective of their racial one.

Cottom is correct that country music currently runs the risk of becoming a right wing mouthpiece if it is not careful. But we should also quit pretending that “country music” acts as one entity, with one singular ideology, and one united voice. Tim McGraw and Faith Hill have found a way to sustain as Democrats in the country space for decades. Eric Church and Brady Paisley, though more politically heterodox, have championed causes that code left in recent years. Just like the American electorate, country music is a lot more complex than the characterization of The New York Times column wants to give it credit for.

There are many, many other incorrect notions and outright contradictions that could be cited in Tressie McMillan Cottom’s column. She says in one breath, “There is no longer a penalty for going country, thanks in part to the way streaming has unlocked country music from country radio,” but then says in the next, “Country music has a tighter lock on music distribution than other genres. Country radio still breaks new artists in an age where every other genre has lost that power to TikTok.” And somehow, both of these characterizations feel incorrect.

Like so much of the media, Cottom can’t shake loose of the idea that country music almost solely exists in the mainstream and in Nashville. Meanwhile, independent artists have never held more power, and artists are rising left and right without the aid of the Music Row system. If more Black artists want to break through, there are more opportunities than ever to circumvent the conventional country music industry. This is what should be advocated for by Black and Brown artists, women, and others that Nashville continues to underserve as opposed to waiting for some miraculous reformation on Music Row.

Undoubtedly, Cottom’s column will be toasted exuberantly in well-heeled intellectual circles, as the results of her efforts circle the toilet bowl, or even worse, clog up the commode, causing it to overflow, and creating a mess that the people native to country music who are earnestly trying to open the music up for all people will have to clean up, taking their attention away from more productive activities in that important direction.

Of course the country music industry is insular, outmoded, incestuous, and in dramatic need of massive overhaul. Pointing this out in 2025 almost feels like a platitude. But criticizing its “whiteness” in The New York Times in 2025 is in no way going to inspire a more meritorious environment for creators. This whole thing feels so 2021, if not 2017, and like running the same tired playbook that already failed demonstrably, and has been rejected by the American population.

Articles like Tressie McMillan Cottom’s “The Country’s Gone Country. What Gives?” is the entire reason the left lost the last election, and outlets like The New York Times are losing cultural cachet. Meanwhile, as people are seeking out something more honest and real in media and entertainment, they’re finding favor with country music. That is the reason the “country has gone country.”

The sooner academics and political activists start honestly assessing why they’re losing relevancy as opposed to continuing to fall back on fractious identitarian name-calling, the sooner they can start attempting to offer a legitimate counterbalance to the rising right-leaning tendencies emerging in country music. The doubling down symbolized by Cottom’s column in The New York Times will only make matters worse for their cause.

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