11 Comments
Aug 29, 2023Liked by Franklin Einspruch

This is great analysis. I am working on a piece that looks at Oliver Anthony, Luke Combs and Jason Aldean and examines the prejudices us blue state liberals have against country music and the people who love it, how the country music industry reinforces those stereotypes, and how there's some real, nuanced, relatable messaging in the work of these three artists that transcends the genre and speaks to ordinary, working people from across the cultural and political spectrum.

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Jumping to NPR and NYT would've appeared inauthentic. You're right, he might believe the sentiment. I don't. The finger pointing is inaccurate. We The People have no complaint. We did everything he's kveching about to ourselves. What rings phony to me is a guy like that going on about an arrangement that is giving him everything he could ever hope for. The first entertainer I remember doing that was Bob Dylan in the late 1960s. Uh huh, sure, Bob.

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A fad, not a phenomenon. Anthony knows what he's doing. He's making a fortune with a populist gig. The nation isn't in agony at all. We haven't been charged enough for our potato chips to be angry yet.

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