One thing that will immediately make me cool on someone: When we’re talking about music and they say they listen to everything but country. They almost never have any sort of reason they can actually support. It’s just…the thing you say when you have a small minded view of an incredibly varied and popular genre of music.
If you do not know country music — that’s totally fine. I don’t really know jazz — but I enjoy it casually and I’m down for the ride with an experienced listener. But to just fullstop assert “Oh I don’t like country music.” What does that even mean?
You don’t like the song structure?
The only difference between a country ballad and an R&B ballad is some instrumentation and phrasing.
You don’t like the topics because it’s tractors and she shot my dog and drinking beer?
Well…that says more about your stereotypes about Southerners than it does about country music.
You don’t support racists and Republicans?
Well you don’t have to! Pop, hip-hop, and R&B is full of misogyny, yet you either ignore it or decide not to listen to those artists who you know to be terrible. You enjoy people’s art until you have a reason not to.
Plus! Quiet as its kept, as far as popular musicians making money, country is more consistently putting out good singers (who will sell out a concert) than any other genre. They don’t whisper and mumble and autotune. You get what you get. They can stand on a stage with just a guitar and give a show.
Country has roots in Black America just as much as any other genre. You could throw Rosetta Tharpe in the middle of any country artist’s set and it wouldn’t sound out of place.
Today we have Millennials like Kane Brown, Maren Morris, and Chris Lane who came of age during the R&B/hip-hop takeover of the 90s and you can hear that influence in the covers they choose…
…and the ballads they write.
Still, it’s hard for Black artists in country music. It’s easier for a white rapper like Eminem to find major success in rap music partly because white people buy rap albums. If every Black person in America ignored Eminem because they thought rap should belong to us, he still would’ve been a success through record sales to white people. Black country artists don’t have their skinfolk to fall back on, but we are going to support Brittney Spencer, do you hear me?!
I have already decided that we must, so tell your friends.
Brittney has three strikes against her: she’s Black, she’s not a size 2, and she’s from Baltimore. Taylor Swift is from Pennsylvania, so clearly the first two strikes are the bigger hurdle. When I was tweeting about country music I’m into currently, someone dropped her name into my mentions, and I was hooked from the first listen.
Brittney gives me so much of what I enjoy from a singer-songwriter. Authenticity, simplicity, and clarity. It’s just her and a guitar singing lyrics she wrote. So, I investigated further. She only has a handful of songs (no record deal, no album out) but if “Sober & Skinny” is any indication, this should be her breakout year. Listen to these lyrics and rejoice with me real quick.
She said “you want me to shrink, I think we should go to one” and I hollered. That is a country storyteller right there I don’t care where she came from.
Anyway, I haven’t been all that excited by a new artist in awhile. I enjoy them, but I am very much getting old and find myself looking around at some of the hype after hearing a new album like” this is what all the fuss was about?” But I am fully stanning Brittney Spencer and I wanted to share the good word.
Stan Black women in country music, period.
facebook.com/SoLetsTalkAbout/
twitter.com/RafiDAngelo
Email: rafi@soletstalkabout.com
Venmo: Rafi-DAngelo
CashApp: $RafiDAngelo
paypal.me/soletstalkabout
Leave a Reply