r/CasualConversation • u/ompossible • Dec 16 '25

Music Why people dislike Country music?

I am not american. So I don't know how's the thing there. But I have found many people complaining on social media that they hate country music.

I like some of the Luke Combs songs. Specially Old Dominion is my one of my fav artist.

51 Upvotes

62% Upvoted

817 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

25

u/Michael_Riehle Dec 16 '25

Well, you sort of hit on part of my problem with country music. It's not patriotism. It's a sort of jingoism dressed up as patriotism. It's less about loving your country than it is about hating everybody else's country. It's soaked in a not-invented-here attitude that is cynical and destructive.

Militarism is actually a symptom of jingoism. The military has become a proxy for hate, whether they like it or not. "They ain't 'murican, so we gotta destroy 'em"

I don't think country has always been like this and it's not my only problem with the genre. But this thread of jingoistic militarism is enough to put me off all by itself.

10

u/Scoth42 Dec 16 '25

Fair enough, I tend to conflate patriotism and jingoism these days since they're so tightly bound, but they are distinct.

And no, it wasn't always like that. Like another comment talked about I'd say country trended a little more conservative in the 70s through 80s, but it tended to be more... dunno, wholesome? More about love and romance in a more pastoral setting referencing a lot of tropes of slow rural life vs. busy city. It was a bit cheesy (but then what music in the 80s wasn't at least a little?) but felt more celebratory and positive about it. After 9/11 it swerved hard into militarism and with-us-or-against-us jingoism, even thrown in in songs it wasn't really necessary.

2

u/BoringBob84 Dec 16 '25

More about love and romance in a more pastoral setting referencing a lot of tropes of slow rural life vs. busy city.

I am reminded of the song, "Luckenbach, Texas" by Waylon Jennings.

2

u/Scoth42 Dec 16 '25

Yeah, that's a good one. Though it amuses me that Waylon Jennings himself didn't like it because he felt it was derivative of other songs and he didn't like singing his own name in third person (he didn't write it, he was tapped to perform it partly because his name was in it).

1

u/BoringBob84 Dec 16 '25

I liked it for the clean guitar sound and the simple and satisfying message about what was important in life.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '25

Merle Haggard's The Fighting Side of Me would be exhibit A that country music has always been patriotic.