The following article talks about the state of Country music, now.
Country music changes its tune
Quote:
ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON
COUNTRY music's soul is red, white and blue. It is, so the cliché has it, music for regular all-American guys - and their gals - who wear cowboy boots, drive pick-up trucks, chew tobacco and consider being called a redneck a compliment.
It is, quite unapologetically, music for the American heartland. And for the last five years you could judge the mood in the US by listening to the country music charts. The 9/11 terrorist attacks produced an outpouring of pumped-up patriotism from Nashville as country singers such as Toby Keith saluted the might of the US military and promised that the atrocity would be avenged.
...
There's all that, and then there's Merle Haggard. He wrote this pro-America song during the Vietname war called "The Fightin' Side of Me."
Welp, fast forward 30 some odd years, and he's written this song in 2005: 'America First'.
It's a song,
".. in which he recommended, 'Let's get out of Iraq, and get back on track.'"
Haggard says of his pro Vietnam war days:
... he was "dumb as a rock",
