While Ella Langley continues to dominate the Country Charts, the Country Airplay list has been a bit more diverse over the last month. I don’t promise to make this a regular thing, but I gave Blake Shelton’s “Stay Country or Die Tryin'” a listen.
That is definitely an interesting music video, as we’d expect from Shelton. It’s not his most interesting song, and not even his catchiest one. But the video captures something only hinted at in the lyrics: the gentrification of rural America even as the lifestyle disappears.
And let’s be clear: it is a lifestyle. My grandfather could make a living in agriculture (in rural Montana, which is related to, but not the same as, the rural South where most Country music is set). I could not do so, even if I wanted to. The people I know who all live in rural America have other jobs to support their agricultural pursuits, or they work for factory farms.
That is certainly what we see in the video–the house expands and grows over time, but there is definitely a point when the economic well-being of the home shifts from the fields to… something else.
This shift is a real challenge both for those of us who grew up in rural America, and for the American Evangelical church which has historically been a rural-based phenomenon. Tim Keller made waves in 2012 when he emphasized ministry in the cities. Now, we need to reevaluate not just whether rural America matters (it certainly does), but what rural America is.
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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