The Failed Political Project To Reshape the American Electorate Through Country Music

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Eight years ago in the aftermath of the first win by Donald J. Trump for President of the United States, a plan was formulated among academics, activists, and journalists of how to combat the rising populist fervor building among America’s rural populations.

Crunching election data and maps that showed a clear divide between rural and urban voters—as well as voters in the American South compared to the North—a plan was hatched under the premise that if the institution of country music could be assuaged to become a political tool, it could help persuade the rural slice of the American electorate from red to blue.

Almost immediately after the 2016 election, you started seeing assertions tied to this political theory pop up in media think pieces and academic papers. Though there are numerous examples of this that could be cited, perhaps the most obvious and overt one was written by journalist Marcus K. Dowling, and published on Medium on August 8th, 2018. This is where the hypothesis was laid out in no uncertain terms.

“The backbone of Trump’s election success share demographic and locational similarities to the stereotypical demographics of country music,” the article observes. “Roots and perpetual appeal in Appalachia that extend along a similar line of white European immigrants Manifesting their Destiny across America’s plains and rural Southwest, near, around, and beside their one-time enslaved property.”

The articles goes on to surmise that if country music could be “radicalized,” then it could have “wildly advanced potential” for asserting a political agenda.

After publishing the article, Marcus K. Dowling would go on to write for numerous country music publications including Rolling Stone Country and The Boot on to his way to becoming the full-time staff writer for country music at The Tennessean in Nashville, which historically has been considered one of the most important positions in all of country journalism. The position was previously held by esteemed writers such as Peter Cooper and Craig Havighurst.

When Marcus K. Dowling made his move into country music journalism, he wasn’t on the cutting edge of this phenomenon, he was joining an already loud chorus of journalists and academics who were looking to take this political hypothesis on country music, and implement it in the real world.

When Rolling Stone launched a country music arm of its publication in 2014 called Rolling Stone Country, the founding editor Beville Dunkerley promised when asked if the subdomain would engage in politics, “As far as government politics, hell no! We’ll leave that to the magazine and RollingStone.com.”

But amid the inauguration of President Trump in 2017, this promise was broken. In an article titled “Why It’s Time For Country Stars to Speak Up About Trump,” Rolling Stone Country editor Joseph Hudak not only broke the original promise of the magazine to not veer into politics, he also did so in a politically aggressive manner, calling out artists for their “indefensible hypocrisy” if they claim reverence to Johnny Cash, but would not speak out against Donald Trump.

Joseph Hudak went on to claim that the situation was “too dangerous not to stand up,” and possibly most alarming, declared “there is no middle ground,” and how silence was tantamount to condoning any and all trespasses pinned on the Trump Administration.

Rolling Stone Country immediately started practicing what it preached, publishing most all of its content with a political slant, and posting articles completely unrelated to country music whatsoever from Rolling Stone proper onto its Rolling Stone Country social media feeds in an attempt to sway the mindset of country listeners. For example, in 2018 alone, Rolling Stone posted some 30 articles about Margo Price due to her left-leaning politics, and in a year that she didn’t even release a new album.

But Margo Price was in the minority when it came to country artists answering the call of Rolling Stone and numerous other media outlets for country stars to take strong political stances in opposition to the Trump Administration. So at times, in lieu of actual political outspokenness, the publication outright assigned political beliefs to country stars that they did not hold.

In July of 2018, Eric Church was featured on the Rolling Stone cover with a blurb that read, “Nashville’s renegade on loving Bernie [Sanders], almost dying, and why he opposes the NRA,” clearly characterizing the country star as left-leaning.


But of course this was incredibly misleading. In the article itself, Eric Church appeared to go out of his way to remain undeclared and pretty categorically distrusting of the entire political system. Though he did answer certain questions taking certain political stances, including some that would traditionally be considered left-leaning, the characterization of the headline was clear and categorical click-bait. Quantifying all of Church’s comments, he would probably come across as more conservative, if you had to categorize him one way or the other.

Even Eric Church said when posting a link to the article, “Read the full interview (don’t be misled by the headline).” Nonetheless, many thousands of Eric Church’s fans did not heed his warning. To this day if Eric Church is mentioned in an article or headline, it is common to see country fans pipe up about how he’s against the 2nd Amendment, a “lefty,” and other political-oriented criticisms, underscoring the implications of these mischaracterizations, the fortunes of performers who take strong political stances publicly, and how all of this often feeds into unnecessary acrimony.

All of this came at a time in country music when labels, managers, publicists, booking agents, and other professionals throughout the industry implored their performers to avoid politics altogether, whether on the right or on the left. This was the result of the post-Dixie Chicks world where political acrimony resulted in the cancellation of one of country music’s biggest acts. The backlash from the cancellation then resulted in a public relations nightmare for the entire country music industry.

This is also one of the reasons that organizations like the CMA (Country Music Association) distanced from Toby Keith despite his continued commercial success, and his more nuanced politics than the press gave him credit for. Despite being the most successful artist in the 2000-2010 decade, he only won three CMA Awards, and two for Video of the Year. Country music wanted to move as far away from political divisiveness as possible, understanding that taking any political stance was certain to alienate half of a performer’s fan base.

Furthermore, the journalists and academics forwarding the political project to reshape the American electorate failed to understand that most country music performers tended towards center to right political leanings to start, with some exceptions of course. The idea that country performers could be coaxed to the left simply through think pieces in elite-focused periodicals, social media goading, or outright shaming and bullying, was unequivocal hubris.

The country music political theory made the same mistake when it came to country music fans, considering them nothing more than unwitting pawns in a political game who would switch their lifelong political principles simply because a pop country star told them to, especially since the historical precedent with performers like the Dixie Chicks and Eric Church verified that country fans were much more likely to relinquish their fandom for a performer who spoke out in opposition to their belief system well before they would abandon their belief system itself.

This meant that the country music political project looking to turn country fans from red to blue didn’t just run the risk of being ineffective. In all likelihood, it could ultimately be counter-productive to the cause, and for a host of reasons. First, when you goad music performers to speaking out politically, you don’t always know what they’re going to say. In many instances with country stars, their silence was potentially advantageous to left-leaning causes, and their outspokenness potentially detrimental.

Second, by overly politicizing the music space, you run the risk of damaging it as a place where people from cross-ideological backgrounds can enjoy something together. The story and allegory of music, and its ability to allow a listener to see the world from a different perspective and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes is how it can reshape ideologies, open people up to new ideas, and soften hardened hearts. Polarizing the space or a specific performer via patent political leanings erodes this important capability of country music, or any music or art, to reshape hearts and minds.

Because of all of these concerns, as the country music left-leaning political project lumbered forward, Saving Country Music specifically cautioned how all of this would backfire in in the faces of these journalists, activists, and academics. Nonetheless, they moved forward undeterred, with journalists such as Marissa R. Moss, Lorie Liebig, and outlets like Rolling Stone Country acting like nothing more than political apparatchiks using politics as a musical curation point, and as a cudgel when they deemed it was necessary, while casting anyone ringing a bell of caution as “racist” or “MAGA.”

And since much of this activist activity was happening in elite circles and often behind paywalls, the message wasn’t actually trickling down to average country music fans. Actually persuading country fans seemed to be the least important part of the movement. What seemed most important to these actors was sowing clout in elite circles, building social capital, and creating seats of power on social media to then expend on shaming, undercutting, or outright cancelling anyone with dissenting views.

In academia, the subject of country music and exploiting it for political gain became fertile ground for building towards academic tenure. Canadian professor Dr. Jada E. Watson and professor Amanda Marie Martinez both broached the subject on a regular basis, and were cited and quoted in news stories, while counter-arguments and perspectives from within the country music community itself were rarely shared.

As the project continued to fail, the tactics became even more terse, and desperate. Any exercises in true intellectualism or perspective-sharing were sidelined for blunt force shaming, name-calling, and sometimes lying in a full court press to push the political project forward. This all was exacerbated during the pandemic when Black Lives Matter and pandemic restrictions created even more strongly polarizing moments and stress points in culture and country music specifically.

When an “accountability spreadsheet” was published enumerating artist that had not shown solidarity with Black Lives Matter, it underscored how the political movement wasn’t laboring to reshape hearts and minds. It was enacting a regime of forced compliance with decrees coming down from elite media and academic circles upon the perceived country music proletariat. This created a strong undercurrent of resentment among country artists and fans alike, even if many continued to remain silent due to the dominion of fear the movement was sowing about being cancelled.

All of this activity didn’t come without dissenting voices on the political right. John Rich and Aaron Lewis specifically spoke up, but we’re laughed off as terse voices only representing a small minority. They also spoke up imperfectly, with John Rich first proclaiming people should “Shut Up About Politics,” while constantly broaching politically polarizing subjects himself. Aaron Lewis and his song “Am I The Only One” stirred some spirited dissent and even became a minor hit, but contradicted itself when it poorly conflated the toppling of Confederate statues with being un-American.

All of this worked to define country music as ground zero in the culture war, with the media, activists, and academics on one side, and many country performers and their fans on the other. Many in the performer class and those working in the industry were resentful of the tense environment created by the political activity being advocated for in the media, but tolerated it because if you spoke out, you could run the risk of being cancelled or publicly admonished. There was also very clearly a classism divide between the two sides.

Where the political project ultimately crossed the line was around the inauguration of Joe Biden as President, and the enacting of vaccine mandates and other restrictions in the late stages of the pandemic. Though Biden had won the Presidency, Republicans remained dominant in rural areas, and so the political project targeting country music soldiered on.

The premier goal of the project was to get country music’s biggest stars to come out publicly to champion left-leaning causes and candidates. So when Jason Aldean’s wife Brittany Aldean started speaking out against left-leaning causes like vaccine mandates and the presidency of Joe Biden on her popular Instagram account through T-shirt merch, a full court press was called for by media activists to shame her into silence and/or discredit her.

Brittany Aldean Instagram Post


Beyond the usual suspects in the country music media class that worked to actively shame Brittany Aldean into submission, national publications started picking up the story, in part because the popular social media feeds of country reporters such as Marissa R. Moss that had become so influential. The Washington Post of all places ran no less than (three) (dedicated) (articles) on Brittany Aldean’s social media presence, including the first story that centered on the “wives of country music stars.”

Brittany Aldean was not a country music performer, despite her social media activity being characterized as a “country music problem.” She was simply a country performer’s wife. The wife of country music star Brian Kelley of Florida Georgia Line was targeted as well. This was no longer the domain of country music or even politics, and the performers whose wives were being admonished began to take it very personally, as most anyone would when their wives are being attacked publicly.

As The Washington Post obsessed over the sharing of political opinions that the newspaper characterized as verboten—despite some half of Americans agreeing with them, and the majority of country fans and artists—the situation boiled over, and country performers themselves started speaking out politically on the right, just as Saving Country Music had warned.

Previously, Jason Aldean had told Rolling Stone that he wanted to avoid politics altogether because it was too polarizing. But after his wife became the target of repeated attacks online including in major periodicals, he reversed course. Not only did he join his wife in modeling anti-Biden T-shirts, he started speaking out more directly. Other country music stars began doing the same.

The fight over Brittany Aldean’s Instagram account ultimately became the Waterloo for the political project to co-opt country music for political pourposes. As the media doubled and tripled down on their criticism of Brittany Aldean—and country stars such as Maren Morris and Cassadee Pope joined in the fracas—others country stars said enough’s enough, and started speaking out themselves.

In the heat of the melee, some of the activists and journalists involved the political movement started losing touch with the core principles. Much of the criticism for country was operated through the fair concern that women were being under-represented on country radio, and in the country genre in general.

But when Carrie Underwood simply liked a tweet from a conservative commentator who came out against masking elementary-aged children, she became a target. Miranda Lambert had been lauded for her “Y’all Means All” campaign supporting the LGBT community previously. Lambert’s brother happens to be gay. But when Lambert simply appeared at a Jason Aldean concert in October of 2022 to sing a previously-released duet with Aldean, she even became the victim of an attempted cancellation campaign.

Even country journalist Marcus K. Dowling, who was one of the architects of the country music political project, came under attack himself for simply covering the Jason Aldean concert for The Tennessean as an objective journalist assigned to the Nashville beat. Those forwarding the political movement had completely lost the plot, and had become outright craven in their ideological bent, looking to destroy anyone and everyone who stepped out of line and associated themselves in any way with Jason Aldean or Morgan Wallen after his ‘N’ Word controversy.

As the criticism of performers began to veer out of control, even fellow activist performers stepped up to criticize the direction of the movement. Black LGBT artist and activist Allison Russell tweeted at the time,“Our #negativitybias is accelerating a dystopian future I fear. We continually amplify those whom we wish to repudiate which distracts & derails us from coalition coalescing, creative communion & critical mass problem solving w/ those we esteem, respect, admire, learn better from.”


LGBT artist and Miranda Lambert songwriter Waylon Payne also said on Twitter, “Every day I see folks who are supposed to be friends just forget all of that and nail each other to a cross. Miranda Lambert is an ally to all who know her … I can’t stand [Jason Aldean’s and Morgan Wallen’s] views, but we’re all supposed to love each other. All the hatred has to stop. ON ALL SIDES. [Miranda Lambert] is an ally. Period.”

The calling out of country artists for supposed reprehensible behavior became very lucrative on social media, receiving thousands of “likes” and reposts. This created a perverse incentive for journalists to veer into this activity, even when it was unwarranted, and undermined the effectiveness of this media coverage when it was, like when Morgan Wallen engaged in numerous incidents that were worthy of criticism and concern.

Outright false reporting also dogged the movement and undermined the credibility of the journalists and the outlets advocating for it. Rolling Stone falsely reported that Morgan Wallen had not donated the $500,000 he pledged to Black organizations. TMZ reported a strange story accusing Wallen of pouring a drink on a woman in a Nashville bar before having to pull it entirely. The false reporting and hand-wringing only fed into a backlash from country fans who simply doubled down on their Morgan Wallen fandom. Once again, the pearl clutching was counter-productive.

Meanwhile, the performers that were being lauded by the political movement like Jason Isbell weren’t actively attempting to change the political alignment of listeners. They were actively advocating for excluding anyone who disagreed with them politically from their fan base. Not only did this result in less people hearing the political messages these performers were sharing on social media, but also removing them from the audience of songs that were supposed to be advocating for causes through the use of character and allegory.

In a puff piece published on October of 2023 in the Los Angeles Times titled “The Radical Empathy of Jason Isbell” written by Marissa R. Moss, Isbell stated in no uncertain terms, “I like running off people who are closed-minded. I’m not trying to sway them to one side politically, I’m just trying to tell them my story.” This quote was used as the subheading of the article, and singled out to illustrate Isbell’s political virtuosity. But it ultimately exposed the hubristic notions of the political movement, and it’s ineffectiveness in moving the political needle.


The country music political project was no longer about reshaping hearts and minds, or assuaging voters from red to blue. It was simply a way for an elitist clique to virtue signal to each other and paint the average country fans as being inferior to themselves. It underscored the smug, down-looking, and ultimately, counter-productive nature of the entire effort.

As country music media and the media in general failed to represent country fans, artists became more emboldened about speaking their minds on political causes, on social media, in the press, and in the music itself. The moratorium enacted after the cancellation of the Dixie Chicks on performers speaking out political quickly evaporated.

When Jason Aldean released the video for his song “Try That In A Small Town” and the media went on a full court press to try and characterize it as racist, it simply stimulated the Streisand Effect, and right-wing pundits rose up to support it, turning the song into a hit. “Rich Men North of Richmond” by a completely unknown and unsigned artist named Oliver Anthony became the #1 song in all of music off the energy of the “anti-woke” backlash that looked to stifle such expressions.

All of a sudden, “anti woke” protest songs became fashionable in country music. Songs like Randy Houser’s “Cancel” and Tennessee Jet’s “2 +2” spoke to the breadth of the backlash, while more subtle inferences in a song like “Miss America” by The Castellows became commonplace when in previous eras they would have never been released. Jason Aldean, who once told Rolling Stone Country he didn’t want to be involved in politics, showed up at dinners with Trump, and appeared at the Republican National Convention.

As the political pleading of social media handles, think pieces, and puff pieces proved to be futile from the left, instead of realigning tactics, looking into the mirror to ask what they were doing wrong, many that participated in the country music political realignment project just simply left, underscoring the lack of true commitment. Many were never really part of the country music community in the first place, with some of the performers more aligned with pop, and some of the journalists being nothing more than political apparatchiks larping as country fans/journalists.

Maren Morris and Cassadee Pope who both had been on the front lines of calling out Jason Aldean and his wife Brittany proclaimed they were leaving country music, frustrated they had been sidelined due to political acrimony. Rolling Stone Country even seemed to sideline most of its ideological slant in country coverage, and started promoting Morgan Wallen tour dates and music releases again as if his controversy over the ‘N’ Word incident and other issues never happened.

One final breath of life in the political project came about when Beyoncé announced that she would be releasing her latest album Cowboy Carter. Once again, think pieces galore were published in major periodicals about how Queen Bey’s presence in country music would cause a dramatic political realignment for country music, along with a racial reclamation of country music’s Black roots. That was the only conclusion to draw from the biggest music superstar in the world releasing a country album.

But this all turned out to be wishcasting. Beyoncé herself proclaimed, “This ain’t a country album,” but the media, the Billboard charts, and award shows ignored it, instead forwarding a canard that Cowboy Carter was indeed country. After the release, Beyoncé herself seemed perfectly uninterested in promoting the album whatsoever. While she pushed a new whiskey brand and a signature campaign for Levi’s jeans, Cowboy Carter saw one of the biggest craterings in sales and streams from an international superstar in modern music history, even as the media continued to declare it as a commercial, cultural and political victory.


At the Democratic National Convention in August where Jason Isbell performed, the big rumors were that Beyoncé would too. Dozens of stories were written about it. But Beyoncé never appeared. It felt symbolic of the way the media and public were continuing to impress magnanimous deeds and responsibility upon Beyoncé that she had no intention of fulfilling.

What did country fans get from the Democratic National Convention? Jason Isbell (who isn’t country), and Kamala Harris camo hats, which Rolling Stone vociferously praised as an olive branch to America’s rural electorate. Though it seemed like genius marketing to the same political activists that thought Maren Morris would persuade country fans to adopt gender theory, in truth the Kamala camo hat was just another miscalculation that put symbolism over substance when it came to reaching out to rural voters.

Even when Beyoncé finally did appear at a rally for Kamala Harris during her Presidential campaign, she didn’t perform. Beyoncé would have been the perfect performer to switch country music from red to blue according to the founding principles of the political project. But she seemed perfectly uninterested in promoting or even performing any of the Cowboy Carter music live, in any context.

When the 2024 Presidential election concluded and President Trump and Republicans not only won, but saw gains in America’s rural areas, gains in suburban and even some urban areas, and significant gains among Black and Brown voters, it dramatically underscored the hubristic nature of the theory that country music could be their vehicle for political realignment. All the political project ultimately really did was sow acrimony throughout the genre, and alienated country music fans from the media charged with covering it.

The Presidential election also paralleled a realignment in how media is consumed in America. As periodicals like Rolling Stone and The Washington Post do their business behind paywalls, consumers are much more likely to interact with independent media and podcasts, especially as false and biased reporting—including on country music—has eroded confidence in legacy media institutions.

Could it be said that the project to switch rural America from red to blue through co-opting country music was so counter-productive that it actually had meaningful implications on the Presidential election itself? The answer is that it probably didn’t. But it definitely fed into an overall failed strategy that believed that the edicts of pop stars from on high could have a significant impact on the electorate. Kamala Harris had most all of the pop star endorsements. It didn’t make a difference.

This all should be a lesson about the importance of keeping the music space free from political acrimony. This is not to advocate for performers to “shut up and sing.” They should have every right to assert their political opinions in whatever facet they see fit. But they should also be realistic about the effectiveness and outcomes of such activity, and the implications it can have on their careers and the music communities they work within. Bob Dylan didn’t change the world though his public statements and political endorsements. He did so through his music.

Ultimately, the greatest power of a musician does not lie within who they endorse, what they say on social media, or what they tell the press. The most powerful songwriters and performers among us have incredible agency to reshape heart and minds, and soften hardened hearts through the messages of their songs themselves. That is the opportunity before them to move needle, and make a difference. But that power can be squandered by performative political stunts that often work to alienate audiences.

Country music has always been a voice for the poor and forgotten, the working class, and the downtrodden. But the political realignment project didn’t make an effort to speak to these constituencies and make persuasive arguments. The effort was to shame them into submission and compliance as opposed to addressing their concerns, similar to the concerns shared by another populist, Bernie Sanders, in his assessment of what went wrong for Democrats in 2024.

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well,” Sanders said. “Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.”

The political project aimed at country music was for the elite class, and by the elite class. As they tried to frame the argument in the parameters of left vs. right and Black vs. White, country music fans were increasingly seeing things as top vs. bottom like the rest of the electorate, with the journalists and academics pushing the country music realignment agenda clearly being part of the top, and looking down with disdain upon them at the bottom.

Meanwhile, as right-leaning country fans cheer that left-leaning country stars like Maren Morris have ostensibly left the genre, the media has mostly realigned away from speaking down to fans, performers are now commonly referencing right-leaning causes instead of left ones, and Beyoncé has been rejected by the fans themselves (if not by music institutions), this potentially sets up the genre for more political trouble in the future.

It was the overconfident and mob-like perspective of right-leaning country fans that resulted in the irresponsible and embarrassing cancellation of the Dixie Chicks for saying something President Trump and the MAGA movement now see as a founding principle. According to many political pundits, one of the reasons Kamala Harris lost her bid for President was from cozying up to the architects of the Iraq War like Dick and Liz Cheney.

Similar to how Rolling Stone Country made a strong move to the left ahead of the first inauguration of Donald Trump as President, massively popular country and cultural website Whiskey Riff has made a massive swing to the right, and with a much more voluminous publishing schedule and deeper staff. Nearly a dozen right-leaning posts were made by the publication on Election Day alone. Similar to Barstool Sports and the Joe Rogan Experience, websites like Whiskey Riff have become major power brokers in the cultural narrative as the power of legacy media has diminished.


Similar to the warnings shared by Saving Country Music and others about trying to sway country music to the left in 2017, they’re now just as relevant to share towards the right in 2024. If country music becomes nothing more than a political mouthpiece for the right like it did in the early ’00s, it will once again run the risk of alienating itself from the rest of society, repelling potential listeners, and render itself ineffective for making strong cases for American’s rural and agrarian populations.

Country music is for everyone. And even larger than the demographic of right-leaning country music fans is the demographic of people who don’t really want to think or hear about politics at all when they listen to country music. They just want to hear humans like themselves sharing meaningful stories in the universal language of emotion and music. They want music to be a haven from all of the political acrimony that permeates so much of the rest of American life.



© 2024 Saving Country Music

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