Top of the Country: What I heard out West

I am still listening through the Top Country songs, but since Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” has stayed on top of the singles charts, I’ve started working my way through albums. I started with Morgan Wallen’s I’m the Problem. It turns out this album has thirty-seven tracks on it. Who on earth has time to listen to thirty-seven tracks, let alone record and produce them?

So that one will have to wait until… next week, maybe.

Until then, on a recent cross-country drive I took some time to listen to Country radio (I usually flip through the radio on long drives just to keep up with what is happening on the airwaves these days). A couple of songs stood out as exceptionally good–ones that might even climb the charts:

There’s a music video too, but I’ve not had the chance to watch it yet. I want to think a bit more about this one (though musically I’m not nuts about the bridge, which definitely puts me in the minority on that one), but on the first listen it’s a solid song.

The one that I think is most likely to hit the top of the charts is this one, which has Highwayman vibes but which also hits a critical theme in Country music:

I think, though I’ve not confirmed it, that they sing in order of age–from Tim McGraw to… the youngest (Morgan Wallen, I assume?). The challenge of passing values through generations, the place of the land in our lives, and the question mark at the end where we’re not sure if he will sell–these are all marks of a great song. And of course all things that Christians have to think about too–how do we pass our faith on to our kids? (Evangelism ain’t an exact science, after all.) What is the place of the land in our lives, especially in a world so disconnected from the old world of agriculture? (Read some Wendell Berry or his Christian knock-off for more on that.) And of course the place of conscience in our lives is a perpetual question.

All that to say, you should listen to these songs, as well as the number ones that get played on repeat.

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.