Black Country
It's more than Shaboozie
Country Pride means Charley Pride
Beyoncé is an establishment hegemon who sells jeans
Readers concerned that America is spiraling into a permanently balkanized hellscape might find comfort in the Top 10 of the Billboard country chart. The cold robotic strum of the repeating acoustic guitar phrase in Morgan Wallen’s “Lies Lies Lies” competes with the icy hook in Dasha’s “Austin” for sheer lifelessness, while Kane Brown and the EDM producer Marshmello’s “Miles On It” is one of the year’s most perfunctory attempts at a big frat-party number. Jessie Murph at least finds a comfortable-enough pocket within the snares of the beat on Koe Wetzel’s “High Road,” while the year’s big chart-topper, Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song,” has been so ubiquitous for so long — as I write it has been #1 on the Hot 100 for 13 weeks — that it hasn’t mattered for a while whether it’s even all that good. The key thing is that hip-hop and country, superficially opposite racial and geographic poles of American folk creativity, have now basically merged into one sound. The last stratospheric mega-hit …