No 1: ADORNO ON COUNTRY MUSIC
PHOTO BY LUCIA AUERBACH
YLAN LOCKWOOD
Country music got under my skin slowly, like some repellant disease I had tried to fight off. I first arrived in Utah as a native San Franciscan utterly horrified at the wide fields of horses and land, eager to serve my time in the mountain town and depart for college as quickly as possible. This paper will delve into the political complexities of this initial repulsion, but I’d like to start it at a moment in time. Dangerous, the country album by controversial star Morgan Wallen dropped in January of 2021, the latter portion of my senior year. As divine timing would have it, an album honoring every aspect of small-town life, from the renewing powers of the church to the revitalizing powers of the local bar dropped during these last months. The album is a rollercoaster of small-town serenades, beginning with the heartbreaking Sand in my Boots, presented by a weeping country boy who failed to convince the girl he met on vacation to return to East Tennessee with him, quickly turning into bitter breakup tracks like Wasted on You, where Wallen damns the very match he expends burning his exes clothing. At this moment, it’s 6:30 AM. I’m driving down the two-lane “highway” marking off the two halves of my hometown. The heartbreakingly gorgeous Seven Summers is still playing, “Bought a few acres a couple roads off the highways, guess you never saw things my way anyway”. I’m increasingly aware that claiming the lyrics to any country song is disingenuous, that I will not be around to watch my friends buy land and settle down by 22 with a husband from the University of Utah who probably grew up one town over from us, and that leaving is inevitably good.
A month later, Wallen made headlines for being caught using a racial slur on camera. It was a damning moment for all of country music, met with horror and repulsion at the confederate flag-waving good ol’ boy who had mistakenly been given influence. The incident proved to urban Americans that country as a genre was as backward as they had viewed it, music for the wife-beaters and Trump supporters that protected their house with God and the second amendment. His music was pulled from streaming platforms and his record label contract was suspended, and I assumed he was done. The political turmoil of 2020 had drawn divisive lines across America. As evidenced by the anecdote involving my physical attendance at school, one can guess which side I resided in. The industry had failed to account for the possibility of riling up a fan base that demographically consisted of far-right Republicans. Drawing bright lines at racism with the same fanbase that had been radicalized by forces that practically upended our democracy was a difficult task. Sales of his music increased by 339% as fans physically purchased his records in droves. Wallen penned a carefully worded handwritten note and posted it to his Twitter, scrawling out “y’all” on paper to solidify his small-town simpleton identity. Let me be perfectly clear: this paper is not a defense to Wallen nor is it a criticism. (It would take far too long for me to condemn his actions on every level). Hundreds of articles have been written from either side ranging from blinding fury to the exhaustingly repetitive “good ‘ol boy'' culture excuses. For the purpose of this paper, Wallen serves as a lens, and intermediary if you will. Emblematic of the continually strengthening political tides within music, Wallen is either the boogeyman hailing from Walmart-parking-lot conservative America or the unapologetic defier of cancel culture. The study of an artist of such controversy at such a pivotal time has deep historic and cultural connotations. Wallen is a medium by which we can observe and reconcile our relationship with country music, and, as a whole, the distant corners which have become almost fiction to urban America. This paper will examine how the demonization of country music, as well as the politicization of music genres', benefits the culture industry and is indicative of the growing elite divide seen in Los Angeles.
A large portion of LA’s appeal is that many of its current residents have settled into historic amnesia about the city. LA’s history was segmented into Hollywood early enough that there is a huge lack of an “origin story” for the city. While Hollywood is a large portion of this story, to tie LA’s origins with the conception of media only plays into the theories of popular music perpetuated by the culture industry. California in the 1800s was full of young, single men flocking in for the Gold Rush. Eternity Street, Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles outlines how early Los Angeles served as a blueprint for what many Western towns would become. The city, always ahead of its time, created the notion of a “Wild West”, “Raucous saloons and gambling houses teeming with crowds of Indians and Californios, Mexicans and Americans. Violent men ambling down dusty streets, armed with Colt’s revolvers and Bowie knives.” Los Angeles, of all places! We did it first!”(Faragher, John Mack, Eternity Street, Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles). The Vaqueros, an established group of Spaniard ranchers, were the first official “cowboys' in America. By the 1800s, a line of livestock outposts stretched from San Diego to San Francisco, and as men from all walks of life poured into California, the American ``cowboy” was born. While “country” music was born of the Appalachian mountains in the South, “Western” music, which would eventually combine to become “Country and Western”, was a product of these men. As the gaping and empty lands stretched in front of their cattle, songs of East coast and British origin were sung, often tweaked to fit the circumstance. Take, for example, “The Dying Cowboy”, a simple, lamenting tune of a man who premeditates his death on the open plain. The song is merely a lyrical change of “The Sailor’s Grave”, by Edwin Chapin, an East coast sailors song. The conception of Hollywood would merge together the banjos and harmonicas of Appalachia with the cowboy lyricism of the West to create a consumable product, effectively blurring the lines between Western and Southern and establishing a geographically inconsistent amalgamation of rural “country” music. Early Hollywood created the “Western” movie genre, and singers like Johnny Cash found fame in Los Angeles singing songs like “Folsom City Blues'', the cheery tune of an American outlaw that juxtaposes a strumming banjo with lyrics like “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die''. I could spend time walking through how tunes like this got us to Wallen singing “I got a Silverado for sale”, with little mention of bullets or old-timey prisons, but this paper simply isn’t long enough. Long story short: the proliferation of the culture industry successfully evolved the image of this genre from the cowboy trodding along the lonesome prairie to the red-blooded American boy with a Smith & Wesson k-22 in the cab. The creation of musical genres signified a massive shift in how easily music could be packaged and sent to consumers. Any nuances between California-born “Western” and Southern “Country” were wiped, and the genre continually distanced itself from the ranching lifestyle as the ranching demographic dwindled. To date, less than two percent of the American population lives on ranches, and country has become the genre of red-voting small-town Americana. The stigma surrounding this music is echoed in phrases such as “I listen to everything but country music” which is indicative of how advanced the culture industry has become.
For the sake of scope, I define the Culture Industry in this paper as the music industry executives directly profiting from the political and social division within music consumption. The CMA (Country Music Association) serves as the keeper to the keys of a diehard fan base that waits year after year for songs that align with traditionally Republican philosophies of gun rights and a “real” America. The CMA is limited to those whose sole income is generating country music, with a set bar for money brought in per year by this individual. Members receive access to in-depth market research and consumer trends backed by massive consulting firms. While the fanbase receives messages of blue-collar values and lifestyle, Big Four consultants work to perfectly segment consumers like mindless lemmings. While it’s easy to look at the CMA and write them off as an independent body of production, the entire music industry profits off of genre loyalty. Adorno posits that the culture industry has become attuned enough to the masses that it can fake a segmentation of “genres' ' that give the illusion of opinion or hierarchy despite the music being the same. The listener feels that if they do not correctly identify with the “higher class” of music, they will be deemed uncultured and ostracized. Behold the classic “yeah I hate country music”. “While Adorno thus regards the multilayered character of the culture industry, its ability to fit its products to the well-researched dispositions and expectations of various groups of culture consumers, as an important component of its power over them, at the same time he also categorically maintains: ‘Under monopoly, all mass culture is identical'’” (Markus: Adorno and Mass Culture, p. 73). This “Monopoly'' can also be understood as a “fully administered” culture industry, an idea that Adorno repeatedly circles back to and argues we are currently within. In this “fully administered” industry, almost all art has become “contemporary”, a stand-alone piece of work that is a blend of the past, present, and future, catered to be easily digestible to the fanbase. If we currently exist within this contemporary, or “fully administered” world, the only bisecting factor between all music we consume is a simple ideology.
I used to work in a mediocre boutique aimed at tourists, a job that introduced me to many characters. An older man once told me he appreciated the music playing in the store, but felt the need to supplement his opinion on it. For half an hour he drilled me about how this new “pop country” genre was no longer “real country”, and men like Johnny Cash and John Denver were the last voices of a truer country that had been free of politics and electronic syncopations. The newer songs about owning a big truck and shotgunning beers lacked the depth of songs like “I Walk the Line” by Johnny Cash, which sports an eighth-note strumming pattern and limited instrumentals. This argument is popular amongst the older generation, in line with the tendency for lovers of any genre to romanticize the past. Under the framework Adorno presents, however, I argue that country has suffered a continual contemporary evolution crafted by the culture industry since the conception of the Hollywood Western. The hallmark quality of such a devolved product is its ability to tie in themes that have nothing to do with the music itself: as the item becomes more digestible it requires more substance, often external traits that must be enmeshed into the music itself. “While Adorno thus regards the multilayered character of the culture industry, its ability to fit its products to the well-researched dispositions and expectations of various groups of culture consumers, as an important component of its power over them, at the same time he also categorically maintains: ‘Under monopoly all mass culture is identical” (Markus: Adorno and Mass Culture, p. 73). This quote demonstrates how two critical lines of thought can exist at the same time: Music can be tailored and segmented to an absolute extreme, yet under mass consumption, it all serves the same purpose.
The largest hurdle that you, as a reader, likely a college peer or professor of mine, is facing as you read this paper is the connotative subjects that contemporary country music has brought forth. This paper, whether I like it or not, is subject to politicization due to its subject content. A massive success of the culture industry is its proven ability to dupe listeners and create grandiose emotive reactions through objectively uniform beats. Postmodern music can be identified by its synonymy with cultural discourse, generating a strange elitism in conversations around music that has racial and class connotations. Country music has historically been used in political spheres. “Country Music in American politics has embraced a tremendous array of powerful themes. What they all held in common was a belief that stylistic choices in music could be used to establish authenticity. Politicians who used fiddlers and cowboy and hillbilly bands to attract crowds signaled that they were themselves political outsiders and thus well equipped to understand the problems of common people.”(Page ten, I'd Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music. ). The political roots of country were planted in the years just before its profitability exploded in the music industry. Oftentimes, politicians who came from wealth yet needed a rural, working-class vote would essentially masquerade as a “cowboy” in order to strike an empathetic chord with their base. Take, for example, Tom Watson. “In 1882, Tom Watson performed fiddle at barn dances in his efforts to win votes in his bid for a seat in Georgia’s state House'' (Page 13, I'd Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music. ) While Adorno was yet to put pen to paper, his ideas are present here. Music alone is not enough to keep the masses happy, there has to be a larger aspect accompanying it in order to create an emotional response. The fact that Tom Watson had likely never touched unhusked corn in his life only furthers the proof that these performances were a purposeful political move. “Bob Taylor, like many of the figures explored in this book, focused on painting his opponent as an elitist and used his music to entertain his constituents as well as to connect himself with a rustic identity that appealed to voters. Taylor was not, however, a rough mountain boy, as later press might bill him, but rather an adult of almost thirty who was the son of a prominent eastern Tennessee figure, Nathaniel Gree Taylor”(Page 15, I'd Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music. ) While this spectacle was unfolding in the South, the intersection of music, Hollywood, and politics was solidified in Los Angeles, in the early days of Hollywood production. “There is something peculiarly modern about the way Taylor and Watson fused entertainment, celebrity, and politics,”(Page 14, I'd Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music. ). While this book has nothing to do with Adorno, the author is cognizant of the distinctively modern manipulation of music. This modernization of the “hillbilly” music is one that is quickly recognized by urban Americans, and the massive gap that solidified the cognitive dissonance LA has about its Western past.
The second important cultural turning point for country was the attacks on 9/11 and the ensuing patriotism that followed. Post 9/11, country artists pulled on the collective fear and anger boiling in America to pen powerful anthems that were profitable enough to create a demand that lasts today. A study by Northeastern University ran a “word association” code that searched a huge database of “old corpus” and “new corpus” country music, marked by their production date. Pre-9/11 music has far fewer word associations linking America to the military, church, and ideas of exceptionalism. Increases in the word “god”, “hometown”, and “tragedy” cropped up next to “America”. The word “army” saw an increase in the word “rural”, “generation”, and “cousins”, indicative of the military's success in recruiting from rural, low-income areas. The war in the Middle East persisted long enough that generational ties between cousins, uncles, and fathers arose, a source of national pride for many country consumers. The code also ran for the word “gun” and found that pre-2001 songs associated “gun” with “shooting”, “mule”, or “knife”, words that indicate more of a cowboy feel to the weapon. Post-2001 there was an increase in “chapel”, “loaded”, and “shooting”, words that tie guns to religion and their actual use. Many political analysts argue that the attacks lead to a period of unity followed by a noted deeper division, a sentiment reflected through the increased association between country music and the right. The profitability of this increased market segmentation cannot be understated. The “Big Three” Record Labels (Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group) have close to eighty percent market share and sign everyone from Harry Styles to Luke Combs. Morgan Wallen himself is signed to “Big Loud Records”, a company that appears to be independently owned but is actually a division of Universal Music Group. The deeply nationalist lyrics penned by Wallen and his primary songwriter Hardy in songs such as “God’s Country” were a hit with rural America, which dominated lists of counties with the highest military recruitment during the conflict in the Middle East. According to Pentagon figures, more than forty-four percent of military recruits came from rural areas. The exploitation of these rural, Republican-held values became increasingly obvious as the years passed. The CMA had struck gold, and continued to circle back to the stories of red-blooded American men who aspired to buy land and dictate their lives by their own laws, a privilege they were granted as white men in America. Modern country navigates the modern Republican party by upholding ideas of wealth that have been destroyed by urbanization. Despite the pandemic exodus that lead to a large number of urbanites moving to the country, young people continually move to cities as places of opportunity. Rural-to-urban migration is the most common among young people, whilst urban-to-rural migration is common in retirement. For many young people, buying acres of land and residing off it with little to no income is impossible. I watched as hordes of boomer-age white men moved into my hometown in the years after the pandemic, hiring ranchhands to put sweat into the land and living out their millionaire cowboy fantasy. It’s this exodus that has propelled country music even further in the past two years. It tells people “what they’re chasing, you already have”.
Manufactured authenticity is what draws so many retired wealthy men into the cowboy lifestyle, a sort of fantasy. It’s why the theme of “leaving” has been prevalent in Country since the 90s. The engagement in historically “low” art and its contrived lifestyle becomes refined when those with large amounts of money take part in it. “Ultimately, the culture industry no longer even needs to directly pursue everywhere the profit interest from which it originated. These interests have become objectified in its ideology and have even made themselves independent of the compulsion to sell the cultural commodities which must be swallowed anyway.”(Adorno, The Culture Industry, page 100). The ability to simulate an entire lifestyle through participation in a genre shows the permeation of the culture industry. The pandemic marked a new trend amongst elites, the ability to play “cowboy” in a way that was distinctly separate from the “lower” form of the art, in that it was not done out of necessity, but in excess. The ability for music to “differentiate, classify and organize consumers.” is a hallmark of Adorno. ‘Something is provided for everyone, that no one may escape; the distinctions are emphasized and extended. The public is catered for with a hierarchical range of mass produced products of varying quality, thus advancing the rule of complete quantification’ (vol. 3: 123).” These products become commodities, cultural symbols that can be executed in a high-class fashion when done by a prominent enough member of the social class. Perhaps I am too much of a cynic, marred by the near misses with spotless Ford F-150s careening down the backroads to my neighborhood, becoming increasingly populated with compound-style ranch houses. Under a fully administered system of cultural reproduction, the art and its aesthetic become a commodity to partake in, a form of social currency reserved for those who can afford it.
Adornos theories can seem wildly pessimistic, seemingly pushing readers to go cold-turkey from their mass-produced musical genres. While there is value in his critique and framework, as noted by my interpretation of political country music, I find no value in abstaining from the machine that feeds us our music. Acknowledging that the machine exists and benefits off our division is helpful to consciously consume and analyze how we view different music biases, but defecting from it entirely would strip so many people of joy, which in itself has value. Sure, the music industry is a overbearing monster dominating our opinions, consumption, and even political connotation, but when I want to feel like I’m turning down a backroad instead of slogging to my 8 AM class, its the same “trashy”, low-art, unfashionable country music that I turn to.
The culture industry has expanded into something far bigger than any singular person can take down, and will likely continue to do so. Adorno has provided ways of understanding how genre segmentation is beneficial to this beast, and how all art is now uniform. The interpretation I have presented in this paper is that genre segmentation and its advancement is responsible for the division between country music and all other genres, as it serves as the necessary “low” art form. Genre separation has advanced to the point where it has now bled into political affiliation and personal identity, a direct byproduct of the mass consumption we have been subject to. Despite this, this art form still has value, and consciously consuming it allows us to look past the identities that the culture industry has tacked on in order to satiate us. The fact that my presentation was received well, with open and understanding minds, is proof that looking at music through Adornos framework does not require us to abandon it entirely, and allows us to become conscious consumers of the culture industry.
Los Angeles is a microcosm for the continuing urban/rural divide in America. The historic amnesia between LA natives and its Western past is part of the cultural commodification of the modern “cowboy” that began in Hollywood and extends to today. As this creation of a “country” genre grew, so did the culture industry, resulting in an increasingly political product that devolved from its historic origins. As I have shown through my historic account of the modern Western movie alongside a developing country genre, Los Angeles is the birthplace of the culture industry and genre segmentation. The advancement of this division has made country music a commodifiable good to some, a good deemed acceptable is one is able to distinguish themselves as “high class” and partake in it only to a certain degree. In this way, country music has become wholly contemporary. Adornos framework lends itself to the examination of deeply nationalist country music, illuminating the profit-driven motives behind mobilizing politics to back a genre. While much of this paper has been somewhat bleak, contending that the entire music system is rigged by a few key players, I find optimism in the way my peers have received these ideas. The music industry helped to create the image of poor, rural, white America that serves as a mythical horror story to urban elites, but perhaps its listeners can combat this sentiment. The sentiment that made country music a low-class art is the same sentiment that writes rural America off as a “lost cause” during election season, that furthers whispered fears of the deeply radicalized republican voter from a place you’ve never been to. Hearing multiple classmates tell me that my presentation made them feel better about their enjoyment of the genre made me think that perhaps this new generation is able to listen to country music without thinking entirely political. Perhaps if we looked at music through Adornos view, a product catered towards profit, we could consume country music without buying into its cultural commodity. I know that my experience with country music is not singular, there are thousands of people my age who have navigated a new normal in their transition to college. Despite the corruption of the joy that music is meant to bring us, the culture industry cannot turn me cynical to the songs I love.
Works Cited
Lamodi, Sarah. “The Country Corpora: An Analysis of Country Music Before and After 9/11.” Literature and Digital Diversity, 12 Apr. 2021, https://litdigitaldiversity.northeastern.edu/the-country-corpora/.
Magazine, Smithsonian. “The Cowboy in Country Music.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 7 Sept. 2011, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-cowboy-in-country-music-71339427/.
Caramanica, Jon. “The Morgan Wallen Conundrum.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 Jan. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/arts/music/morgan-wallen.html.
Printed:
Chapelle, Peter La. I'd Fight the World: A Political History of Old-Time, Hillbilly, and Country Music. University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Cusic, Don. The Cowboy in Country Music: An Historical Survey with Artist Profiles. Mc Farland & Company, 2011.
Adorno, Theodor W., and J. M. Bernstein. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. Routledge, 2015.
