Steve Sailer on Country Music

He begins by noting "how much a country radio station these days sounds like a mainstream FM rock station in the 1970s," which is why I can't stomach the new stuff — Songs of Our Soil. About the uniformity of style, he says, "The typical country fan has a life, and thus has a less pressing need to assert a unique individual identity through musical tastes." More:

While more than a few rock and hip-hop subgenres are intended to be physically painful to anybody other than males under 25, country is a sociable, big tent genre aiming to please both sexes and a wide range of ages above teen-age. Like NASCAR, country music tends to serve as an ethnic pride rally for the one ethnic group in America not allowed to hold ethnic-pride rallies.

He further notes that the music's "emphasis on clever lyrics means that singers are, despite their good old boy accents, expected to have fine diction," which "can be unsettling for old rock fans used to listening to incomprehensible British rockers with National Health Service-quality dental care."

Noting "the large number of songs devoted to making married men feel good about being work-a-daddies bringing home the bacon," he suggests that the "pro-family propaganda in country songs actually improves the conduct of white working-class American men."