Every once in a while I pop my head into the world of contemporary Country Music to hear what’s going on over there. Sometimes this means just turning on the local top 20 radio station while driving around town (though I never drive circles around this town–gas is expensive!), and sometimes it means checking to see what’s on the ol’ Billboard charts.
Apparently, a song called “Choosin’ Texas” by Ella Langley has been at the top of the Country charts for all of January. So I gave it a listen:
This is… a perfectly serviceable song. Thirty years ago I don’t know if it would have charted, but it is full of nostalgia and nods to what are now classic country songs that it hits well in our nostalgia-driven moment.
And be assured, this is a nostalgia-driven moment in Country music. If you listen not to what the CMA is putting in front of us, but what people are actually choosing to listen to, it is very much a 90s-driven mood. In one sense, contemporary country is pretending that the early 2000s never happened.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to push that too far. And Miranda Lambert has a writing credit on the song, so obviously they’re aware of what’s going on in 2000s and 2010s Country music. But still, the primary nods in the song are to older music.
And that’s not a bad place to be. Country music has always had a nostalgic streak. The fact that the formal institutions of the industry refuse to acknowledge doesn’t seem to change fan preferences. Which is to say, there’s still some good sense in rural America.
Dr. Coyle Neal co-hosts the City of Man Podcast and is an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog). He teaches Political Science, Philosophy, and History in Southwest Missouri.
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