Art
From autographs to photographs, and from behind the scenes to front of stage, we offer a sneak peek of country music fandom as found in the Grand Ole Opry archives. Southern Cultures will exhibit “Here We Come Again” at the Center for the Study of the American South in Spring 2026. Check back for more »
Music
July 20, 1969. I was twelve years old and at Jewish summer camp in Missouri, where we gathered in a giant circle in a field and sang “Aquarius” as Apollo 11, carrying three American astronauts, landed on the moon. The Woodstock “Music and Art Fair” happened a month later. That June, the Stonewall Riots took »
Memoir
“And some of us so country and so baaaad / like the daddy on Good Times when he gets up to / find a Western on TV and he pretends to be / John Wayne while he doing it” I saw Sissy in Urban CowboyA woman riding on a mechanical bullcould make men wake up »
Music
“Despite naming West Virginia,‘Country Roads’is placeless in the way that it draws upon a sense of mythical, imagined place-belonging and community.” Sometimes, I like to sidle up to a jukebox in a dive bar and select the iconic “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” What happens next tells me a lot about the other people in »
Music
In 1982, my cousin David “Hoss” Johnson was the last recruit Bear Bryant signed to the University of Alabama. He got his nickname at birth when he arrived on this earthly playing field at a whopping thirteen pounds, played in forty-eight games for Alabama, started in twenty-eight, and made the All-Decade ’80s Team. For five »
Interview
Reflecting on a century of country music, I could think of no one better to talk to than Frankie Staton, Rissi Palmer, and Holly G to get a finger on the pulse of the country music industry. Although the history of the country music business is a story of impressive commercial success, its growth has »
Music
“Riley’s continuous success in his lifetime . . . demonstrates that his musical talent and ambition transcended the marketing initiatives that ubiquitously upsold his disability.” A case study of Riley Puckett, a bestselling—yet largely forgotten—name in the fledgling country music industry of the early 1920s, starkly demonstrates how the genre’s century-long appeal to authenticity is »
Music
“Cowboy Carter has undeniably reignited mainstream conversations about Black contributions to country music and the banjo’s African diasporic origins.” In February 2024, during a Super Bowl 57 commercial, Beyoncé released a teaser hinting at what audiences speculated would be a country music album, released months later as Cowboy Carter. It featured Rhiannon Giddens performing a »
Music
I was nine years old when I heard country music for the first time. My favorite cousin, Ruthie, was watching my sister and me while my mom was away. I loved her because she never treated me like a kid. She had us learn the lyrics to some of her favorite CDs to keep us »
Music
“Country or hillbilly music and overalls are part of a modern vernacular; the music and garments evoke nostalgia for a ‘simpler’ past, while being the products of commercial enterprise and industrial modernity.” Westernwear is having a moment that’s bringing attention to the fashion of country artists past and present. It’s not the first time that »
Music
“By his own account, the model for the Grand Ole Opry radio show was a hoedown Hay attended ‘in a log cabin about a mile up a muddy road’ outside a little Arkansas burg called Mammoth Spring.” It’s a Monday in late August. I stand in the middle of a dirt road, flush on the »
Music
It’s a Tuesday afternoon at Southpoint Mall in Durham, North Carolina. As I window shop, I notice LeAnn Rimes’s “Nothin’ Better to Do” playing from the speakers. It’s followed by a pleasant but unassuming mix of songs from Kenny Chesney, Miranda Lambert, and Kacey Musgraves. This is a country music playlist. On my last two »