Country music, you will always be famous.
With humble beginnings deep in Appalachia, the country sound has evolved over decades, seeing itself through the development of countless subgenres before becoming the pop-country juggernaut that blew up the mainstream in the 2000s and 2010s.
After a few years of fading popularity, the genre came back with a fervor; in the current era of Zach Bryan, Kacey Musgraves and associated acts, not only is it thriving it is, once again, evolving.
Gen Z listeners have been instrumental in the rise of country, particularly in audio streaming. According to music industry database Luminate, country streams increased by nearly 24% in 2023.
According to Luminate, the average country fan is a baby boomer who primarily gets their music from the radio. In fact, country listeners, on average, listen to terrestrial radio 7% more than fans of any other genre. However, newer artists like Zach Bryan, Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen, whose song “Last Night” fought on the Billboard Hot 100 charts for over 60 weeks until March, have garnered a following of Gen Z and Millennials, both of whom mainly get their music through streaming.
The sound of contemporary country has changed over time. Gone are the days where all these cowboys do is party and drink beer in the not-so-acoustic stylings of Florida Georgia Line. In recent years, pop culture’s country crooners have gone back to the genre’s roots doing what they do best: yearning.
More recently released love songs, like Kane and Katelyn Brown’s “Thank God” and Jordan Davis’ “Next Thing You Know” are more family friendly, tackling themes of devotion and even marriage— a stark contrast from the hedonistic country lyricism of years’ past.
Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves’ Grammy award-winning track “I Remember Everything” seems to advocate against the consumption of alcohol, describing a relationship falling apart due to a partner’s drinking. Billboard’s top song of 2023, “Last Night” by Morgan Wallen, is just three minutes of lamenting about drinking too much during a hookup and regretting it.
Perhaps it’s this wide-scale pining that makes 2020s contemporary country music embrace acoustic instrumentation with, generally, a more authentic twang to it.
Discussing the popularity of country music today is incomplete without addressing Beyoncé. Her release Cowboy Carter made enormous waves in the industry as a harmonious combination of pop, R&B and country with features from legends Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson, as well as modern pop outfits like Post Malone and Miley Cyrus.
A country-R&B fusion record might seem like an odd route for Beyoncé to take with her eighth studio album, but as country’s fanbase has grown, so too has the marriage of the genre with its seeming polar opposite: hip-hop. The progression into R&B, another rising genre which made up nearly a tenth of Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100 tracks last year, seems natural.
Mainstream’s shift toward country fusion was jump-started by Lil Nas X with his 2019 single “Old Town Road.” The track, which effectively coined the phrase ‘country rap’ in the popular music canon, stayed at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a record-breaking 19 weeks. Its cultural impact was lasting.
“[Old Town Road] became a massive hit,” said music culture expert and American University communication professor Aram Sinnreich. “The message that Lil Nas X was sharing in the song was this kind of violation of gender norms, sexual norms, racial norms, all in one big tasty package.”
Two other country rap songs appeared on the year-end chart for 2019: Calboy’s “Envy Me” and Blanco Brown’s “The Git Up.” This is no coincidence— 2019 is when a distinct transition in chart trends occurs: as the pop rap made mainstream by early Drake and various rapper-pop star collaborations fades from the charts, making room for more contemporary country and trap-inspired hip-hop.
Trap’s popularity peaked in 2020 with the release of Lil Baby’s My Turn, as well as the inception of a new trap subgenre consisting of innovative female rappers, aptly coined “Trap Queen” by Spotify data alchemist Glenn McDonald. Trap songs made up 20% of all Billboard Year-End Hot 100 tracks that year.
“Originally, there was the great trap schism between electronic trap and the hip-hop version of trap,” McDonald said in a Spotify blog post. “But at this point, it’s basically come to be the name for what the core of hip-hop is doing.”
The rise of trap and country, as well as reggaeton and latin trap à la Bad Bunny has paved the way for innovative blends of popular music. Tracks like “Dial Drunk” by Noah Kahan and Post Malone and “Broadway Girls” by Morgan Wallen and Lil Durk, released in 2022 and 2023, respectively, took the twang of folk and country and laid it over 808s and a rap cadence.
These, in addition to Jelly Roll’s 2023 track “Need a Favor,” which stayed on the charts for 37 weeks post-release and landed the #35 spot on the year-end chart, serve as lasting proof that Lil Nas X’s breakthrough fame was no unsupported phenomenon. Now, in the age of Cowboy Carter, the freedom to move within various genres is more prevalent than ever.
