Finding Your Yee-Haw: A Skeptic’s Guide to Country Music

“What kind of music do you listen to?”

“Pretty much everything except for country”

This was a refrain I heard many a time when I was in high school, mostly among my fellow city folk. We were all rap kids. “Good” music was boom bap NY-style rap. It took us a long while to even begin to accept someone as “outlandish” as Young Thug.

Times have changed. This week, Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road broke the record for most consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard top 100. Old Town Road is considered by many to be a “country rap” song. The “country” half of that title was boosted by the addition of Billy Ray Cyrus on the remix.

After high school, I moved to rural Oregon for college and was surrounded by country-loving freaks. That may be a strong term, as many of them became my best friends, but the idea of enjoying the country genre was actively discomforting to me. After about a year of forced ignorance, I started experimenting in hillbilly. Initially I was unconvinced. Much like frat parties, something I introduced to around the same time, I tried it and didn’t like it. I had confirmed my previous beliefs.

Then something happened, I found my country music lane. The wall began to come down, thanks to Sturgill Simpson. His 2016 album A Sailor’s Guide to the Earth was my entry point. I found a friend that also appreciated Simpson’s music and all of a sudden I was a part of it.

“After about a year of forced ignorance, I started experimenting in hillbilly.”

During Old Town Road’s uprising, a “yee haw” energy has infected the youth. Social media sites like TikTok have been flooded by cowboy hats and tucked in flannels. Country music is no longer the ignored hick cousin of popular city kids.

Will the success of Old Town Road lead to a greater acceptance of country music among popular music consumers? It will depend on the individual listener and their curiosity of the genre. Since I was introduced to Sturgill, that curiosity grew in me. I will take my still somewhat limited knowledge of the country landscape and guide those like me into previously unexplored territory.

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