Latest / The Matt Walsh Show / Country Music Is Absolutely DOMINATING. Here's Why.

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Country Music Is Absolutely DOMINATING. Here's Why. · The Matt Walsh Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A couple of months ago, we delivered the obituary for
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: rock music, a genre that was never going to survive
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: the post Obama cultural shifts in America, which punish experimentation
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and risk taking, as well as anything that's important to
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: white people generally, while rewarding manufactured solo acts that are
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: easier to market on social media and also much easier
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: to manage and control. There's no doubt that the death
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: of rock is a bad sign. And you might even
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: call it a leading indicator of cultural decay in this country. Now,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: of course, some people, some conservatives especially, might argue that
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: rock music itself was a driver of cultural decay. And
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: in some cases, they might be right. But generally speaking,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: rock was, still is, where you can find it, a
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: truly great art form in my view. And more than that,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: it is an American art form. Rock was both a
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: product of American culture and a producer of American culture.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Each decade going back to the 50s saw a new
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: stage in the evolution of the genre, reflecting changes and
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: shifts in the culture at large, whether it was the
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: prog rock and heavy metal and arena rock of the
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: 70s or the new wave and hair metal of the
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: 80s or the alt rock and grunge of the 90s
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: and so on. You can go back and listen to
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the rock music of a particular decade and come away
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: with a better understanding of the cultural mood of that time. Now,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: our current decade, as we talked about, is arguably the
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: first in 70 years that doesn't have its own unique
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: rock sound, which is not a good thing, I would
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: quite emphatically argue. It's yet another symptom of an exhausted,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: decadent culture with no new ideas and basically nothing left
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: to say. Now, that said, there are some subgenres of
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: rock that, while not often producing huge mainstream hits, although
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: sometimes they do, are still churning out great music nonetheless.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Folk rock is one of those subgenres, one of my favorites.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And I say that really just as a way, since
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: we're talking about music, to wedge in a mention of
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Glenn Hansard, who's one of the great folk rock and
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: singer-songwriter musicians of our time, who just sadly died in
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a motorcycle accident yesterday. He starred in a movie called
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Once back in 2007 that, if you consider it a musical,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: and I do, is one of the only musicals that
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I ever personally enjoyed He was a great artist. And
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with him, you should go look
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: him up as soon as the show is over.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: So that's your homework.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: But in any case, while rock has fallen on hard times,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: along with a number of other once thriving musical genres,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: it's not all bad news. There is another traditional American
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: genre that is somehow thriving right now. And it's worth
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: thinking about how it has managed to succeed in an
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: environment that has all but destroyed so many other forms
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: of music. This is the counterbalancing narrative to the decline
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: of rock. And it is, dare I say, as I
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: would rarely say, a cause for some optimism, which is
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: that as rock has faded, country music is now dominating
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the charts. And this is a resurgence that's not entirely new.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: It's been building for several years now. You can make
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the case that, though, that country music is now the
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: strongest it's ever been, certainly in terms of its.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Popularity relative to other genres. That's for sure.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Ella Langley's Choose in Texas has now spent 15 weeks
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, which
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: is a record for a female solo act, excluding holiday releases.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: The previous record holders were We Belong Together by Mariah
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Carey and I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: although the latter was actually written by Dolly Parton, whose
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: original version is superior, in my opinion. But each spent
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: 14 weeks at the top spot. Ella Langley's now been
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: at 15 weeks and Her surprising triumph has been a
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: cause of consternation for some people on social media who
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: are clearly not thrilled maybe to see a down-home country
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: girl from Alabama take this particular crown. And it's caused
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: some heartburn for some critics who fashion themselves country music
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: purists and have decided that Langley is not authentic enough
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: or something. But in fact, she's actually quite authentic. And
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: the song, whether you happen to enjoy it or not,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: is in many ways a classic old school country song.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: We'll talk more about that particular song in a moment
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: and why it's successful, but suffice to say, it's not
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: an outlier. As Billboard reports, quote, country hits claimed the
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: top four for a second time in the Hot 100's history,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: two weeks after the genre.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: First achieved the feat.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Below Choose in Texas, Taylor Swift's I Knew It, I
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Knew You is number two for a fifth consecutive week,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: if you can call that country, which I think I
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: would not, after it spent its first two weeks on
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the Hot 100 at number one in June. Stella Lefty's
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: first top 10 Boston surges six to three for a
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: new high. And Langley and Morgan Wallen's I Can't Love
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: You Anymore rebounds three spots to its number four best.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Two weeks earlier, Choose in Texas, I Knew It, I
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Knew You, and I Can't Love You Anymore were in
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the same spots, joined by Langley's Be Her at number three.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: In eight other weeks, all in the past.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Three years, country titles took the top three, starting in
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: August 5th, 2023. Dated Hot 100 via Jason Aldean's Try
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: That in a Small Town, Wallin's Last Night, and Luke
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Combs' Fast Car. Of the nine weeks all time with
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: country songs at either numbers one through three or numbers
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: one through four in the Hot 100, this week marks
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: the fifth in a row, dating to the first week
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: in July. So there are other metrics we could talk about, too,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: including the fact that country has been the fastest growing U.S.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: genre in on-demand streaming since 2023. the longest running number
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: one songs in the last three years on streaming services
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: have all been country songs. And meanwhile, as country music
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: is surging, several other genres, not just rock, have been collapsing.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Which again, is not a good thing, to be clear.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: One of the downstream consequences of the implosion of the monoculture,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: a topic we've talked about at length, and for good reason,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: is that perhaps somewhat paradoxically, pop culture has become less eclectic,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: less vibrant, and less varied, even as the culture has fractured.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: You may expect the opposite to happen, but that's not
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: how it's worked out. In the 90s, there were many
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: thriving genres of music that were all producing massive mainstream hits. Grunge, alt-rock, rap, punk, pop-punk, metal,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: adult contemporary, even like ska and techno and Europop had
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: their moments in the sun on occasion. All of these
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: genres and a few others you could name were thriving
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: and occasionally, or frequently, depending on the genre, would dominate the.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Airwaves with huge crossover hits.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Now today, most of those genres have receded into their
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: niche corners of the music scene. Some of them essentially
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: no longer exist. For years now, the only truly mainstream
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: genres left.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Were pop, rap, and increasingly country.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: And now even rap is experiencing a stark and noticeable decline.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: R & B and hip-hop have dropped from 41% of
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Billboard 200 album equivalent consumption units to just 30%. As
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: of this summer, recently, rap music went a period of
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: some weeks without a single song on the Billboard Top
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: 40 list, which is the first time that that's happened
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: since like 1990. Now, the reports of the death of
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: rap music have perhaps been exaggerated. It's not dead, but
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the decline of the genre is very real. There's no
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: question about it. Now, in case you're not familiar with
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: the lingo, by the way, album equivalent consumption units are
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: a metric that's used to measure the popularity of music,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: taking into account the fact that pretty much everybody is
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: using streaming services now.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Nobody's actually buying albums.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So they've come up with a formula that tries to
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: convert streams into album sales. And according to the latest
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: version of this formula, which changes sometimes, if songs from
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: one album are streamed 1,200 times on paid subscription services
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: like Spotify or Apple Music or whatever else, that counts
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: as one album equivalent units. That's treated exactly like one
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: album sale on the Billboard charts. Now, how did they
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: come up with 1200 as the baseline? It may sound
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: like they just sort of chose it arbitrarily and randomly.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And well, that's exactly what they did as far as
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: I know. But that's how things are tabulated now. And
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: by this metric, I must note that also Latin music.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Is on the upswing.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: We have to acknowledge, for reasons you could probably guess,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Latin songs account for roughly 10% of all US music
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: streaming as of the first quarter of this year. We
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: all remember the Super Bowl halftime show, or we don't
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: really remember it because it was boring and forgettable, but nonetheless,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: it was a victory for Latin music. And if you
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: go back to 2015, before the Biden administration allowed tens
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: of millions of foreigners into the country, Latin music accounted
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: for around 4% of the.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Overall music market in this country.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: The vast majority of these new listeners, we can assume,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: are probably not Americans, although of course you won't find
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: any official statistics on that point. Now granted, I'm not
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the guy to judge the quality of Latin music today
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: as compared to the Latin music of the past. I
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: frankly find the whole genre quite tedious and dull. It's
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: just not my bag, which probably doesn't surprise you. But
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I will say that even as Latin music is technically
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: growing in popularity, it still has not reclaimed the cultural
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: heights it reached in 1993 with the Macarena, in my opinion,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: which is a Latin song technically. And also happens to
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: be the only Latin song in history that I could
• 9:20
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• 9:38
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• 9:40
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• 9:43
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• 9:46
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• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what we're talking about today specifically is country music.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: And before we go any further here, I do have
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: to acknowledge that a lot of modern country music is
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: also terrible. I'm not going to pretend that every country
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: music song is worthwhile while all Latin and hip hop
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: and R & B.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Is a waste of time. That wouldn't be true on
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: either score.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: There are plenty of cliche boilerplate country songs that sound
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: like they were made primarily to serve as the soundtrack
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: for an Applebee's commercial because that is why they were made.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: There are plenty of country songs that have infused so
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: many pop and even hip-hop elements that they barely qualify
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: as country songs at all. But even so, many of
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: the popular country songs in recent years have been faithful
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: in tone and theme and sound, basically, to traditional country music.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: We mentioned Elle Langley, Chris Stapleton, Tyler Childers, and others.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: This is not just a story of country music achieving
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: widespread success by stripping itself of every defining feature and
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: becoming a soulless corporate product. indistinguishable basically from AI slop.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, there is some of that happening, certainly. That
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: might be part of the story. That's an element. But
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: we're also witnessing a genuine resurgence of the genre at
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: its core, of the traditional genre. And this is significant
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: in part because historically, country has been dominated by rural Americans,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: especially in the South and the West, where it originated.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: What we're seeing now is a major victory for Southern culture,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: which we'll talk more about in a minute. And that's
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: a culture that, as we all know, has been vilified
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: and beaten down in mainstream discourse for some time now,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: certainly since Obama's presidency, but even before that. Country music
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: in the South grew out of the folk ballads from Scottish, Irish,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: and English immigrants. They were Celtic ballads sometimes that transformed
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: into something distinctly American, which gave voice to the unique
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: American experience. One of the first country songs that could
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: be called a mainstream hit that I think sold like
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: a million copies or something, the first to ever do that,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: was called The Wreck of the Old 97. It was
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: released in 1924. It was about a train derailment in Virginia.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: So this was a genre that was in many respects
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: invented to tell the American story, especially its tragic elements.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: And in the West, country music had its origins in
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: the lifestyle of ranchers and cattle drivers on the frontier.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: The songs had relevance to specific portions of the country
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: in ways that a lot of music executives didn't realize
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: at first. But in the 1990s, when the music industry
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: turned on the sound scan system, they immediately realized how
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: popular country music was in these particular areas of the country.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Rural radio was the stronghold for country music, even though
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: there were several artists with wide crossover appeal, like Shania
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Twain and Garth Brooks. But as of 1997, there were
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: more than 2,400 radio stations devoted solely to country music,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: broadcasting throughout the United States, accounting for more than quarter
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: of all commercial radio.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Stations in the country.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: And around the same time, country music accounted for roughly
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: 20% of all record sales. Meanwhile, in February 1996, as
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: country music was surging in small towns across America, New
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: York City's biggest country music station stopped playing country music full-time.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: They moved over to dance music.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: The biggest radio market in the United States, there was
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: no full-time country music on FM radio. So country was
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: indeed a phenomenon in the South and the West in particular,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: and now it's coming back. So the song Choose in
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Texas in particular is a solid vehicle to spearhead or
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: at least participate in, if not spearhead, this comeback. And
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to pretend that it's some historic, extraordinary
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: achievement in songwriting or anything like that. It's not an
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: artistic masterpiece necessarily, in my opinion. But it's a genuine
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: country song. It's a good little song that is now
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: objectively one of the biggest hits of this century. It's
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: also not some insufferable girl boss anthem. If anything, it's
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: like an anti-girl boss anthem. And it's not a brain-dead
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: pop song pretending to be country, wearing the style of
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: country music like a skin suit, as we've seen in
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: plenty of other cases. In case you've somehow never heard
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: this song, here's a short snippet, which, in my professional
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: legal opinion, will not get me sued into oblivion by
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Columbia Records, but we'll see how that goes.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: Watch.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: So it's about a woman who's pining for a man
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: who's choosing someone else. It's a song that feels less
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: like a lot of modern pop country and more like
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: a spiritual successor to Dolly Parton's Jolene, which given that
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Jolene is one of the greatest songs of all time,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: is not bad company to be in. And a song
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: like Jolene resonates through the generations because it's about feelings
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: and problems and troubles that people connect with. It's about
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: someone who's pleading and desperate and heartbroken.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: That is a human experience.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Now, a lot of modern pop and hip hop music
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: and plenty of the worst and most fraudulent country music,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: by comparison, consists of the artist bragging about themselves. I mean,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: it's It's false and it's fake and it doesn't speak
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: to anything deeper in the human soul, which may be
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons why the public is tiring of
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: those genres. There's only so much of that that you
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: can listen to. There's only so many decades we can
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: hear that kind of thing. One hit song after another
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: where the guy is talking about how great he is
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: that after a while you just get bored of it.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: It's not connecting with anything real inside you. Now, when
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: I praised the Ella Langley song on X, a few
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: people responded that her song is also degenerate nonsense because
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: it's about a woman drinking away her sorrows.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: And yeah, that's part of it.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to make the case that the song
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: is like a Bible for how to live your life,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: which is not really what music is meant to be.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: But first of all, like it or not, drinking away
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: your troubles has been a regular theme of country music
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: for like 70 years. I mean, it's certainly been a
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: topic that's been revisited by country musicians for a very
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: long time. And second, again, pining for something, feeling heartbroken
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: because you can't have it, is human.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: It's real.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: And those are the aspects of the human condition that
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: music is supposed to illuminate and give voice to. So
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: in short, it's a song about yearning. It's a song
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: about longing. Now, this is a topic for a longer monologue,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: but I've been thinking about this for a long time.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: As a culture, there's no question that to some significant degree,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: I think we've lost this sense of yearning. And pretty
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: much every song and every genre for decades, for centuries,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: used to be about someone who wanted something, usually another person,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: that they couldn't have. Or it was about someone who
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: had what they wanted and then they lost it.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: So it's like a tragedy.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Or it's about someone who has something they want, but
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: they're afraid that they might lose it. Or they have
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: something they want and they're grateful that because like their
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: life used to be bad and now it's better because
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: they have this thing and there's some gratitude to it
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: as well. I mean, you might even make the case
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: that music is basically the sound.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Of a longing.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Even wordless music like the great symphonies conjure the feeling
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: of longing, of yearning, of heartbreak, of desire and not
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: base desire, but desire for love, for beauty, for God.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: It's what music is. It's what it's supposed to be.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Music was an art form that existed to express the
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: deepest and often frustrated desires of the human soul. The
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: two previous record holder songs we just mentioned, We Belong
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Together and I Will Always Love You, were about longing.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Go all the way back to the early days of
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: modern music. You know, Can't Help Falling in Love by
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Elvis Presley or Yesterday by the Beatles or Every Breath
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: You Take by the Police. Bit of a creepy example,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: that last one, but it's an example nonetheless.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Longing, yearning.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Even the upbeat, the up-tempo kind of songs, upbeat ones,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: used to generally be about what the artist longs for,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: what they're pursuing, not what they already possess. I Want
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: to Hold Your Hand, Wouldn't It Be Nice, Jessie's Girl.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, you could name a thousand examples across many decades.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Not all of them are towering works of genius. Jessie's
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Girl isn't exactly Beethoven, but you still see the theme
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: of longing and yearning there. But then a distinct shift
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: began sometime in the late 90s into the 2000s until
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: by like the 2010s and 2020s, virtually every popular song
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: was no longer about longing or yearning for what you
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: didn't have or didn't want to lose, but rather about
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: bragging about what you already had. Entire genres of music,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: at least in the mainstream, produced almost nothing but boasts
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: and bravado. So instead of, I want this thing I
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: can't have, which used to be like every song, It became,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: I already have everything, and everybody else wants what I have.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: This is a dramatic, 180-degree artistic shift that happened very
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: noticeably that seems to have gone largely unnoticed, or at
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: least it's not talked about. Now, for millennia since the
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: invention of human art in any form, it would have
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: been extremely unusual for an artist to produce a work
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: of art designed with no other purpose than to boast
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: about himself. Now, sure, like pharaohs and emperors may have
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: commissioned works of art to show off their status and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: their power, but the artists themselves, even if they were
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: sometimes egomaniacs hungry for respect and admiration, as artists contend
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: to be, as humans contend to be, were not generally
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: producing art whose sole and most explicit message was simply
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: that The artist himself is great and rich and cool,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: and everybody wants to be like him. That is a
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: modern phenomenon. Art didn't become that until very, very recently.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: And so you look at the most popular songs in
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: recent years, the last 5, 10, 15 years by Drake
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: or Megan Thee Stallion or Cardi.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: B or whoever else.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: The only message in the music is that the person
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: who made the music thinks that they're awesome and rich
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: and attractive, and they want you to know that.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: They don't long for anything. They have everything.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: You are the one that longs to be like them
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: and have what they have as far as they see it.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: One of Ariana Grande's most popular songs sums up this
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: shift with the chorus, I see it, I like it,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I want it, I got it.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Now, for decades, musicians sang about things that they saw
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and liked and wanted but didn't have or did have
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: but were afraid they might lose or have lost and
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: now they're sad about it or whatever. Now they have
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: everything and they don't want anything and that's what the
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: song's about. even though most of these people are actually
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: desperately sad and dysfunctional and hate themselves. But they won't
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: talk about that in their music a lot of time
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: because they lack the courage or introspection or artistic.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Talent to dig that deeply.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Now, not to get too lost in the weeds, I
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: did say that this discussion mostly belongs in its own monologue,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: but here we are doing it here. But you even
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: see something like this shift reflected in children's entertainment. This
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: is going to seem like kind of an obscure connection,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: but I actually don't think it is. Once upon a time,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: every kid's cartoon used to be centered on characters who
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: were frustrated by the limitations and realities of the physical world,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: often because they wanted something that was always.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Out of their grasp.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: That's like the central plot of most of the classic cartoons.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Roadrunner and the coyote, Charlie Brown and the football, Sylvester
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: the cat and Tweety bird, Pinky and the brain, the
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: silly rabbit who doesn't understand that tricks are for kids,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: et cetera. I mean, that wasn't a show, that was
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: a commercial, but still. That's kind of like what cartoons were. Now,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: every kid show instead is about characters who have no
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: conflict or frustration in their lives and everything is fine
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and they get whatever they want all the time and
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: everything works out and they're never hurt and nothing bad
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: ever happens. There's a point that Matthew Crawford, the author,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: makes in one of his books very convincingly. And he
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: points out that in the early days of Disney, Mickey
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Mouse was like a slapstick character, constantly getting bruised and
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: beaten and defeated by the world around him, right? That's
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: also Looney Tunes, like in the early days of Looney Tunes.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: That's what all it was.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: These characters are getting beat up constantly, and it's hilarious, right?
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: As a kid, you laugh.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Well, today, kids can tune into the show Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and they can watch Mickey traipse around a magical building
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: that can do anything and give Mickey and the other
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: characters whatever they want all the time, and nobody ever
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: really has any problems, and certainly no one's ever hurt
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: or frustrated or left wanting something they can't have. The
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: children today have grown up watching entertainment where the world
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: gives you whatever you want, and you're never left wanting
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: or longing, and they tend to bring those expectations out
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: into the real world. One of the clearest commands in
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: scripture is also one of the simplest, bear one another's burdens.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: It's one that Christians have been living out for centuries.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Sometimes that means bringing a meal to a family that's struggling,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: helping someone move or praying for a friend who's suffering.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: And sometimes it means.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Helping another believer carry the burden of overwhelming medical bills.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what Christian health care ministries is about. CHM
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: is not health insurance. It's a health cost sharing ministry
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: where Christians voluntarily come together. to share one another's eligible
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: medical bills. It's a practical way of putting biblical community
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: into action, and Christian Healthcare Ministries has been doing this
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: since 1981. In the last 45 years, CHM has satisfied
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: 100% of eligible medical bills they've received. Programs start as
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: low as $ 115 per person per month with added protection
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: for catastrophic medical events. If you're looking for an affordable
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: biblical alternative, this is well worth your time. Get started
• 26:06
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• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Everyone's trying to be the person who's on top of
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: their diet, the person who meal preps every Sunday, eats
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: a perfectly balanced breakfast. That person never skips vegetables, gets
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: all their minerals. That person sounds great. Unfortunately, or fortunately,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: depending on how disciplined you are, reality gets in the way.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: You grab what's convenient, you eat on the run, then
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: you see another headline about some produce recall, and suddenly
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: you're looking suspiciously at your salad. The reality is that
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: getting enough fruits and vegetables every day isn't always easy.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Balance of Nature takes care of that, though. Their whole
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• 27:08
  Speaker 1: So all that to say, after that somewhat circuitous detour,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: if the concept of yearning or longing is making a small, limited,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: isolated comeback in part by way of country music, that
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: would be good news. It would suggest that people are
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: becoming more aspirational as opposed to being demanding and insufferable, maybe.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: At the same time, I don't think that that's the
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: only major reason for country music's sudden rise in popularity.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: As with anything else, there are probably many different.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Factors at play.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Another factor is that unlike almost every other genre, modern
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: country is generally wholesome. You can listen to the music
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: with your kids in the car. You don't feel like
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: you need to take a shower after hearing one of
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the songs. Of course, it's not hard to find degenerate
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: country songs, you know, Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Ten Rounds with Jose Cuervo, as well as a certain
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: song by Trey Lewis about a loose woman who's known
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: for making the rounds in various.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Cities, most notably Dallas.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: But even some of those songs, some of them, are
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: wholesome compared to many of the most popular and ubiquitous
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: pop and rap songs of recent vintage. And meanwhile, Ella
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Langley is uploading videos like this one where she tells
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: her fans how she came up with the intro and
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: outro for her latest record, splices home video footage in
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: with her playing the song at her recording studio.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Watch.
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: Froggy went to corn and ate the grass.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: Froggy went to corn and ate the grass.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Apples on the table, peaches.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: On the shelf, oh yeah.
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: Apples on the table, peaches on the shelf, baby. Apples
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: on the table, peaches on the shelf. You want any
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: more than you sing it yourself.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh, baby, uh-huh. Now, see, 30 years ago, degeneracy was transgressive.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: It was shocking. You know, it's like a thing that
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: nobody was expecting. It was countercultural.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Popular artists in various genres would intentionally shock and offend
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: and provoke by flouting social norms and challenging basic rules
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: of etiquette and morality. But the problem is that today,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: degeneracy is the drumbeat of our daily lives.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: We see it often and everywhere. There's no escaping it.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: You go on the internet and you see the most
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: shocking and awful things imaginable, the most gratuitous things imaginable.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: You could just see it pop up in your social
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: media feed. It's all just part of.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: The background now. It's background noise, unfortunately.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: And meanwhile, you can't go for a walk in any
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: major city without running into at least 10 drug-addicted homeless psychopaths,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: any one of whom could stab you in the throat
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: and get away with it. So there really are no
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: rules of etiquette to flout anymore. Morality is largely and
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: falsely considered a matter of subjectivity. Well, if morality is subjective,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: then there is no moral law to obey, which is
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: the whole point.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: That's why people claim that it's subjective.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: But then there's also no moral law to transgress either.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: which is a problem for artists whose whole shtick is
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: to be nothing but transgressive and have nothing else to say.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: And in a situation like that, then indeed, wholesomeness becomes
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: the only truly transgressive thing. It's actually shocking. Or at
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: least it's an escape from the norm. Anything that's encouraging
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: or edifying in tone, anything that gets at the longing
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: and hope and desire in the human soul is a
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: novelty to modern audiences. And for the record, when I
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: say all this, I don't intend to do the typical
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: conservative commentator thing of like latching on to some famous
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: person who we believe to be vaguely aligned with us
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: and lift this person up as a champion for the
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: right wing cause. I have no idea what Ella Langley's
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: politics are. I wouldn't be surprised if she were liberal,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: probably is. I'm not looking to any country music star
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: or any other celebrity to be my political champion. None
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: of them will surprise me when they endorse Gavin Newsom
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: or whoever in 2028. My point is simply that country
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: music generally and historically is is more traditionally patriotic and wholesome,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: especially compared to other popular genres. And that might help
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: explain its rising popularity. Now, for a long time, much
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: of mainstream art across various mediums has either been a
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: showcase for degenerate bravado, as we've already discussed, or else
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: what you also find on the other end of that
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: pendulum swing, something rather grim, for a sort of grim
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: forum for brooding and despair. Perhaps one of the reasons
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: that horror has become one of the most popular and
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: bankable film genres is that audiences are looking for a
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: respite from the false, thin braggadocio of mainstream entertainment. There's
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: nothing wrong with horror films, in my view. In fact,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: you could argue that given their focus on the supernatural
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: and how seriously those films take the spiritual realm, that
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: horror is a religious genre, even sometimes a Christian one
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: in some ways. But There is another option outside of
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: that dichotomy, and maybe the success of country music reflects that.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: It certainly reflects something else from a geographical perspective, as
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: I alluded to earlier, that the success of country music
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: is another cultural triumph for the South. If a guy
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: who's commuting in Chicago is listening to Langley or Stapleton,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: then that's a major victory, unlike anything we've seen in
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: this country in a long time.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: And I mean that unironically.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: As conservatives, we're so used to sort of wallowing in
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: defeat that we rarely remember to mark the victories.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: And this is one of them.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Country music is playing in New York City again, all
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: those years after they banished it from the airwaves. You
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: can go to inland Maine and half the radio stations
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: are playing country music. And it's probably not an accident
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: that this comes at precisely the same time that the
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: South is achieving economic and political domination as well. The
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: South is becoming significantly more populated at the moment as
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: people living on the coast and other urban centers like
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Chicago flee the disastrous consequences of leftist rule. The data
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: on this point is striking. In the last five years,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: the South has grown in population by double the rate
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: of the rest of the nation. For 2020, 2025, according
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: to the census, more than 80% of population growth in
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: the United States came from the South, 80%. And meanwhile,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: in terms of net migration, people going in versus people
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: going out, States like California are underwater by more than 225,000
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: residents in.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Just the past year.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: New York has negative net migration of 135,000 people. Illinois,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: New Jersey, Massachusetts all lost at least 30,000 more people
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: than they gained from incoming migration from other states. Now,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that those states experienced an overall population decline.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: They didn't because foreigners imported by the Biden administration largely
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: picked up the slack. But If you're one of the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: few remaining Americans in any of these states, that's not
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: much consolation. In all these states, quality of life is
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: plummeting because people can't speak English, can't afford to pay taxes.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: All of these Democrat-run states are running massive budget deficits.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: New York has lost something like $ 100 billion in gross
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: income because of migration out of the state. California has
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: lost about the same amount. Meanwhile, Florida has gained nearly
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: $ 200 billion. Texas has gained more than $ 50 billion. In fact,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: the GDP of the Southeast just eclipsed the GDP of
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the Northeast for the first time in American history just
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. Specifically, Georgia, Texas, Florida, North Carolina,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: South Carolina, and Tennessee just surpassed the Northeast in terms
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: of their share of the national GDP. Now, we know
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: why this is happening. People want to live in a
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: part of the country that has a viable future. Living
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: around death and decay and incompetence is extremely demoralizing. And
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: it contradicts a natural human impulse which is to strive
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: for something better than you currently have. Call it yearning
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: or longing or desire or whatever you want. But there's
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: an unmistakable drive in most people to improve their circumstances
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: for themselves and future generations. If you live in a
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: state like California or Illinois, they're in all likelihood, you
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: don't see how things can get any better because every
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: year they're getting worse.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: So people who are optimistic and forward.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Thinking, on the other hand, many of them are getting
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: out of town and unsurprisingly in other aspects of their life,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: They're seeking out content that isn't intended to demoralize them
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: or glorify depravity or this ridiculous boastfulness. And that explains
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: why the most conservative and most traditionally American regions of
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: the country are dominating the rest in many respects. That
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: explains why there's a newfound demand for wholesome, original content
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: rather than the degenerate.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: Drivel we've been subjected to for decades.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Is it the most important victory that conservatives could possibly win?
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: No.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Are there many other things we need to fight for
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: instead of conducting hearings where nothing is ever accomplished?
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: But all the same, it's an important aspect of all this,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: and it's a very welcome sign. And for once, as
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: tempting as it may be to indulge in gloom and doomerism,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: that's something we can celebrate. That'll do it for the
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: show today and this week. Have a great weekend. I'll
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: talk to you on Monday, Godspeed.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Once upon a time, there was a country. Not just
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: a country, but a big one, an empire.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: And in that empire, there was an upper middle class
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: family where two boys were raised by their mother, loved books,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Uncle Tom's cabin, and the Bible. Their father admired the
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: country's leaders, were patriotic and happy. Both sons went to
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: universities where they were radicalized. One of the brothers read
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: a book and convinced him to try to shoot the
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: country's leader.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: He was hanged. The other brother read the same books,
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: but decided to lead a movement. First they came from
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: the universities, and no one seemed to care.
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: Then they took over the unions, and again, no one
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: seemed to care. Then they created their own media organizations
• 37:17
  Speaker 5: and took over the cities. And again, most people just
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: ignored it. Change, after all, was something they could believe in.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Until it was too late. Sound familiar? This is the
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: real history of communism, the Russian Revolution.