Real Country Music
By Erik makes an important point regarding the political backlash against the Dixie Chicks in his good commentary on J. Lester Feder’s fine article on the right wing shift of country music:
But it’s hardly just politics that has led to this scenario for them. They always existed on the margins of acceptability in mainstream country music. They sold well and that got them airplay but it is not as they ever represented the mainstream of the Nashville establishment. Their music (which I am quite tepid about by the way) is not Brooks & Dunn and therefore you didn’t see too much sadness by the music establishment when they were banished from the mainstream.
Exactly. The battle against the Dixie Chicks wasn’t just political; it was over the definition of country music. A lot of people on the Nashville scene don’t think that Faith Hill, Shania Twain, the Dixie Chicks et al are actually country music, and the fight to redefine those artists as part of the pop world has been going on for a long time. Now, I obviously have no patience with any genre that can define the reprehensible dreck vomited forth by the aesthetic monstrosity that calls itself Tim McGraw as within acceptable limits, but nevertheless.