Memes

Shitty patriot country music has always been a thing and there are still tons of Outlaw country artists right now. This is literally just like those "rap in the 90s vs rap today" memes that ignore the fact that trap has been a thing since the 90s and old school hip hop is having a Renaissance right now

it's bro country now

What do they drink now? Since their precious Bud Light gave way to WOKENESS.

Every song by Johnny is a banger.

I know this is obvious, but Cash's beliefs are endlessly fascinating. The same man who recorded "Ragged Old Flag" also wrote "Man in Black" and covered "Out Among the Stars." The latter is a song about a kid who commits suicide by cop because he doesn't feel like his life matters.

Heard a lot of this growing up like Seeger, Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, but also Canadians like Lightfoot and Stan Rogers. Lately I've enjoyed some of the IWWs compilations of workers' songs, Utah Philips etc. Phil Ochs is up there too.

My mother's from an assimilated Mennonite background and it was one of the non-Christian genres that was permissible to her parents, because of the pacifist and civil rights sentiments in a lot of that music at the time. Also it lacked the sex and drugs themes which rock had. "I Aint Marching Anymore" and "Where have all the flowers gone?" I remember hearing quite often.

9 to 5 is also a socialist anthem!

It shocked me the first time I met a real anti-Semite, in real life, in Tennessee. I've worked in a lot of places all over the world and I've seen plenty of racism. No one else topped that guy in Tennessee. Other places racism was mostly contained to 'they stay over there and we stay over here.' Tons of problems but living together but apart was possible. That doesn't speak to every experience obviously. That old guy in Tennessee wanted another Holocaust, plain and simple. Anywhere else he'd get the shit kicked out of him, there it was tolerated.

That's a scarecrow!

And listened to by the same people who complain about rap music doing the same thing (in their eyes, anyway).

Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell too

I'd argue that Ring of Fire is a metaphor about forbidden love that you know is damning you but the feelings are too powerful to resist.

Rather than a harmless metaphor, I find it an incredibly powerful metaphor about the pain and suffering caused by helplessly loving the "wrong" person.

Plus, there's an opportunity to make STD jokes.

You clearly weren't there when the mountain broke its back

I don't imagine there's too many gay cowboys out there

I always get the sense that there are quite a few. Maybe even most of them.