Contemporary Yeehaw

2 hours 50 minutes, contemporary country music by artists that are currently active or have released music in the 2000s. All compiled songs released after 2008 (majority released in the last 5-6 years).

Admittedly, the genre of Country Music has established a hostile reputation over the last 30 years as the mainstream leaned hard into conservative toxicity of Shock’n Y’all Post-9/11 patriotism. Even with a more generous reading, the mainstream sound has become dominated by the plastic production and hollow anthems of Bro Country, further cementing the notion that the music is not made “for us” unless you look like you’d be welcomed into the crowds of Stage Coach.

To that, I’d like to gently push back while also accepting that premise at face value. Which is to say, while all that may be true, it would be a shame to dismiss the genre wholesale when there are diverse voices fighting to take up space to be seen and heard like true punks (with good politics too). This is evident by just looking at the artists themselves. I won’t editorialize song by song or artist by artist, but these are artists that assert their identities proudly through a wide range of styles that you might have believed to be a thing of the past.

While there were so many more songs that could be included from sub genres like Roots, Americana, Folk, and Blue Grass, the scope of this playlist is limited to songs that have at least one foot firmly planted in recognizable country composition (steel pedal, twang, walk up bass line, that sort of thing). The one exception to this might be “The Body Electric,” which compositionally is furthest from traditional country but Alynda Lee Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff’s counterpoint to the murder ballad directly indicts a long tradition in music about gender-based violence, and again, demands that we reject hostility towards people of color, women, indigenous, and queer spaces.