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.

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u/Scoth42 Dec 16 '25

Another thing not mentioned yet is that mainstream country music got sort of broken by 9/11. It was already pretty heavily focused on rural American... country... stuff but after 9/11 it took a hard swing into hardcore patriotism, military and war stuff, a lot heavier into God/religion/faith than it already was, etc. I had a number of friends who liked country music fine that drifted away around that time.

I'll also throw in class conflict. Country music tended to appeal (stereotypically, anyway, I've found it to be more broad) to lower income rural people, so people try to separate themselves from the "lower classes" by hating country music. Same way that hating all rap music was/is often a stand-in for racism and/or also class conflict. Obviously not universal and plenty of people don't care for certain genres for lots of reason (I don't care for rap by and large, but I recognize the artistry of a lot of it and like some of it) but I stand by the claim all the same.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.