It’s sad that we as Progressives have allowed the populist, working-class terrain of country music become the soundtrack of conservatives. While artists like Zach Bryan are teasing songs like “the fading of the red, white and blue” that jab at immigration enforcement and decry the American dream as being battered. Progressives remain absent from this cultural space.
Country music is hardly apolitical. Its roots lie in the rural working class, in economic despair, labor protests, in voices that howl against injustice. Yet today the genre has been corralled into a chorus of right-leaning tropes: patriotism, guns, small-town nostalgia. An article in The New Yorker notes a new cohort of “outlaw songwriters” challenging Nashville’s conservative lock-in—but too many left-leaning voices remain mute.
I feel that if Progressives don’t move into this space, they hand the cultural microphone to the conservatives and allow them to shape the narrative. The Trump administration leveraged culture wars at every turn; why should the soundtrack of rural America be ceded entirely to them? By embracing country music, progressives can reclaim narratives of working-class economic pain, immigrant angst, broken institutions and hope for renewal.
Bryan’s snippet features the line “ICE is gonna come bust down your door,” a visceral picture of state power smashing in while children are scared and alone. Rather than dismiss such songs as “not our style,” the left needs to lean in: collaborate with artists, fund radio play in rural regions, stage concerts where protest become anthem of firebrand progressivism.
This isn’t about staging performative protest songs. It’s about recognizing that the culture war is real, the music matters, and the terrain has been abandoned. Progressive must embrace the culture war not just defensively, but offensively as a platform of resistance.
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