[narrator] On December 2nd, 2018,
an unknown musician tweeted
"Country music is evolving."
With a goofy video,
it was a tease for a new song
that he dropped on SoundCloud the next day.
And people loved it.
-["Old Town Road" playing] -Whoo!
♪ Hat is matte black Got the boots that's black to match ♪
[narrator] Really loved it.
♪ You can whip your Porsche ♪
SoundCloud featured it in their "Top 50 Country" playlist,
and then a TikTok user posted a video of himself dancing to it,
transforming into more of a cowboy getup when the beat dropped,
inspiring millions of copycats.
Soon after, the song debuted on Billboard's "Hot Country Songs" chart,
but then Billboard removed it.
Why would the industry be so quick to pull it from the charts
when it was such a clear moneymaker?
[narrator] Here's a clue.
When country artist Cody Johnson started playing the song at a show,
this happened.
♪ Gonna take my horse Down to the old town road ♪
[crowd booing]
[narrator] In a statement to Rolling Stone,
Billboard explained that "Old Town Road"
simply didn't embrace enough elements of today's country music,
sparking some confusion about what today's country music is.
Confusion that predates "Old Town Road."
You used to be able to turn on the radio,
and you knew instantly it was a country station just by listening.
Now you've got to leave it there for a second to figure it out.
Country music is gone.
[laughs] I don't know who's making it, but there might be like four people.
[narrator] In fact, insiders have been declaring country music dead for decades.
And yet country music seems to be stronger than ever.
In the US, it has the biggest radio audience of any music genre.
And the fastest-growing streaming audience too.
So why are so many people up in arms
about what constitutes country music?
Who gets to be a country star?
[crowd cheering]
[man 1] It's easier to understand a nation by listening to its music.
[man 2] The country music of our pioneer ancestors.
It is the music of the heart of America,
and the base of American musical tradition.
It talks about family. It talks about religion.
Country music is popular internationally.
Japan, for instance, has artists
who will even appear in a cowboy uniform.
[man 3] The people in the larger cities are being invaded today by country music.
[Britton] Country music today can be a lot of things,
but experts agree…
Country singers are storytellers.
Country music is really about storytelling.
I'd have to say that mostly I'm drawn to the stories.
[Britton] For decades,
a show filmed at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry…
[announcer] The Grand Ole Opry. Live, just as it happens.
[Britton] …beamed these stories into America's living rooms.
[inaudible]
Stories about pride and where you're from.
♪ I'm proud to be a ♪
♪ Coal miner's daughter ♪
[Britton] And the importance of family.
♪ My coat of many colors ♪
♪ Momma made for me ♪
[Britton] And hard times.
♪ He stopped loving her today ♪
That's what I love about country music. It's down in the ditch,
you know, of human emotion.
There's a strong sense of history running through country music.
Of paying attention to what has come before.
[Britton] And that tradition goes way back,
to the European immigrants who settled in the foothills of Appalachia
and brought ballads with them.
♪ Are you and I? ♪
[Britton] Religious ballads.
[all singing]
[Britton] Murder ballads.
♪ For mercy she did cry ♪
[Britton] And they also brought the fiddle.
[playing "Oh! Susanna"]
Country music was shaped by the folk music of a lot of other countries too.
German immigrants brought the waltz.
["The Blue Danube" playing]
And the French, cotillion.
[upbeat music playing]
Which became square dancing.
Mexican vaqueros, the original cowboys,
introduced their American counterparts to mariachi.
Alpine singing groups spread the art of the yodel.
And Black musicians brought the blues.
[man singing]
[Britton] Back in the early days, musicians twanged on fiddles and banjos,
and carried this blend of sounds around the South in traveling minstrel shows.
[man] White performers would put on blackface makeup
and adopt an incredibly caricatured presentation,
in which they were mimicking and trying to approximate
some version of what Blackness was supposed to be.
[Britton] You can hear that
in Emmett Miller's rendition of "Lovesick Blues."
He starts by parodying Black speech.
[Miller] ♪ I got the blues That's what's the matter with me ♪
[Britton] And mixes his take on the blues…
♪ I got a feeling called the blue-hoos ♪
[Britton] …with a kind of Alpine yodel.
These different sounds had been melding for a long time
when the commercial music industry took off in the 1920s,
and music needed to be branded to sell it.
[Hughes] Two kinds of music emerge.
Country music, or what was then known as hillbilly music.
[Britton] Hillbilly, as in from those Appalachian foothills,
which was later broadened to country and western.
[Hughes] And race music or race records.
[Britton] As in anything by a Black musician,
which was later rebranded as rhythm & blues.
[Hughes] These were designed to be marketed
towards racially-specific audiences.
[Britton] And over time, the sounds became more distinct too.
Black musicians started experimenting with more drums
and rocking beats.
And country split into its own subgenres.
Bluegrass, which took its name from Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys,
sounded a lot like those old string bands.
♪ Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining ♪
[Britton] Then came honky-tonk, which had a stronger rhythm.
You might recognize this cover.
♪ I got a feeling called the blues ♪
♪ Lord, I don't know what I'll do ♪
[Britton] Hank Williams was called "The Hillbilly Shakespeare."
He brought a more modern style to the Grand Ole Opry,
singing lyrics with a sexy edge.
♪ Hey, good lookin' ♪
♪ What you got cookin'? ♪
[Britton] But you couldn't push the boundaries too far.
The image the Opry projected of country in the '50s
was wholesome.
Nostalgic.
[man] It is the music of the heart of America.
[Britton] Drums were even banned.
But then,
country started to rock.
♪ I said, blue moon of Kentucky ♪
♪ Keep on shining ♪
♪ Shine on the one that's gone ♪
♪ And left me blue ♪
[Britton] Elvis sang country songs,
but with a beat borrowed from rhythm & blues.
The style was later dubbed rockabilly,
as in rock meets hillbilly,
and with influences from lots of other artists,
this eventually became rock and roll.
The country industry tried to resist,
forming the Country Music Association
to save the imperiled genre.
And creating the more modern Nashville sound,
with artists like Patsy Cline,
whose voice helped define a new kind of country singing.
♪ I ♪
♪ Fall to ♪
♪ Pieces ♪
[Britton] But then, a musician in Memphis paid a visit to Elvis's producer.
♪ I shot a man in Reno ♪
♪ Just to watch him die ♪
[Britton] Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues"
hearkened back to old murder ballads,
but with the rhythm of a freight train.
Johnny Cash was a folk hero,
and country music was the music of the folks, of the people.
And Johnny Cash was a man of the people,
with a poetic vision and with a trillion-dollar voice.
[Britton] And he paved the way for other musicians
who wanted to make country their own way.
And some of them recorded an album together.
And then somebody stumbled onto, "Let's call them The Outlaws."
You know, ladies love outlaws.
And, you know, bam!
The first platinum country record ever made.
[Britton] But you could say the marriage of rock and country
was consummated by Garth Brooks.
He summed up his stadium rock style in one word
in a TV interview.
It's sex.
[Britton] But the ways country had evolved over the decades,
becoming more rock and also more pop,
came with a backlash.
Like when Shania Twain made country pop for the MTV age,
combining twang and sex appeal.
[Britton] Traditionalists hated it,
but it brought new fans to the genre.
And in the '90s, and the '80s, and the '70s,
and even before that,
people would complain about too much pop in country music.
It's not a bug. It's a feature.
[Britton] Some traditionalists also bristled
when pop star Olivia Newton-John
took home country's top award.
And the following year, the presenter literally set fire
to the name of the winner, John Denver,
who was more of a folk musician.
Folk, rock, and R&B were the soundtrack of the protests
against the Vietnam War and for civil rights,
while country was making more anti-protest music.
Our willingness to not only wear the flag, but to stand up for the flag.
And country music does that.
[applause]
[Britton] Like "Okie from Muskogee" by country artist Merle Haggard.
♪ We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee ♪
[Britton] So John Denver didn't exactly align with country's politics.
But on his fifth studio album, side two, track one,
came something more expected from a country singer.
♪ Country roads ♪
♪ Take me home ♪
♪ To the place ♪
♪ I belong ♪
In the '70s, it was a real struggle
for some people in Nashville to accept John Denver.
But, boy, the audience loved those songs.
[Britton] But when a new subgenre sprung up in the '80s,
a blend of country and R&B
with music videos of artists in cowboy getups
and rapping country themes…
♪ Wild, wild West ♪
[Britton] …the country industry drew a line.
But still the genre continued to thrive.
♪ I figure that's enough time for me To get the whole rundown ♪
♪ Awnaw! Hell naw, man Y'all done up and done it ♪
♪ You never hear my lyrics Over a bass guitar ♪
♪ My horse is a car ♪
[Britton] And in 2005, the artist Cowboy Troy
released a video featuring screaming cowboy hat-wearing fans,
and addressed the industry's resistance to outsiders head on.
♪ Too radical ♪
♪ But I already been on the CMAs ♪
♪ Hell, Tim McGraw Said he liked the change ♪
[Britton] But a lot of country stations didn't.
As one program director put it,
"We don't think it fits our format. We don't consider it country."
When we talk about country music,
I think it's important to make certain distinctions.
There's country music, the genre,
and then there's also country music, the format on radio.
To get on the radio,
it's a pretty narrow pipeline.
And that's almost always going to involve getting signed
to a large record label, almost always in Nashville.
[Britton] Probably after playing bars in town,
or songwriting for other artists.
And once you finally cut an album of your own,
you need the label to promote it to country radio stations.
There are more than 2,000 of them around the US.
[man 1] Country 102.5.
[man 2] Echo Country 105.
♪ Coffee, Country, and Cody ♪
[Britton] If these DJs are into your record,
it'll rise on Billboard's "Country Airplay" chart.
And thanks to the promotion,
your album might sell enough to rise to the Billboard album chart too.
If you wanna have a superstar career,
if you want to have a long-lasting career,
you go through radio at least a little bit.
[Britton] And that's put female artists at a major disadvantage.
In 2000, they got just 33% of radio airplay.
And then that number actually started going down.
In 2015, a radio consultant, Keith Hill,
told a trade publication,
"If you want to make ratings in country radio, take females out."
"They're just not the lettuce in our salad."
"The tomatoes of our salad are the females."
Which, of course, proved incredibly offensive
to many female artists.
[Britton] It sparked an uproar in the industry,
dubbed "tomatogate."
But the numbers since then haven't really budged.
In 2019, a group of female musicians formed a country supergroup,
"The Highwomen," in the hopes of trying to break the logjam.
And the next year, they won top group,
top album,
and "Crowded Table," a call for togetherness,
also won top song.
♪ I want a house ♪
♪ With a crowded table ♪
[Britton] Not at the Country Music Awards, though.
At the Americana Awards.
Americana is a newish genre.
Billboard added it to their charts in 2016,
featuring more acoustic singer-songwriters,
who you're more likely to hear on alt-country radio.
Even though, in many ways, they sound closer to country's roots
than what you hear today on mainstream country stations.
Because in the last decade,
the sound on country radio has changed again.
In 2011, Jason Aldean
put out a video for his song "Dirt Road Anthem."
It looks and sounds pretty classic country.
Dirt road, pickup truck.
But then he leans against that truck and basically starts rapping.
♪ You better mind your business, man Watch your mouth ♪
♪ Before I have to knock That loud mouth out ♪
[Britton] And it topped the country radio charts.
And the videos for other country hits since then
look a lot like R&B and hip-hop videos from the '90s.
Low-angle camera shots,
cruising in cars,
girls in not much clothing.
And some of the sounds are similar too.
808 kick drum beats and snap tracks.
♪ Lay on back and relax ♪
♪ Kick your pretty feet up on my dash ♪
[Britton] The streaming service Pandora
did an analysis of how much other genres
were influencing the top country songs,
and found the influence of rock on country
had gone down from 2010 to 2018,
while the influence of hip-hop had gone way up.
Over the course of its history, country music has been very, very good
at incorporating Black music,
but has not been very good at all
at incorporating Black people.
[Britton] In the commercial country industry,
artists of color make up less than 4% of songs played on radio,
and of artists signed to major labels.
That was the world Lil Nas X landed in.
"Old Town Road" starts with a twangy banjo.
[banjo strumming]
And his lyrics hit on country themes.
♪ Hat is matte black Got the boots that's black to match ♪
♪ Ridin' on a horse ♪
[Britton] But it has a trap beat, 808s for the bass,
and hi-hat flourishes.
♪ Can't nobody tell me nothing ♪
[Britton] Which was pretty new for country, but not that new.
So Billboard's decision to remove the song started a conversation
about race and discrimination in country music.
Some called it a reckoning.
"Old Town Road" was a perfect example
of the way that policing the borders of country music
is a stand-in
for policing the borders around a certain kind of American identity.
[Britton] But on top of being a queer Black musician,
Lil Nas X also didn't play the game.
In some ways, it sounded very much like a country record,
but it neither came from nor really courted
the historic, traditional country music audience.
And I think the mainstream country music community
recognized that pretty quickly.
[Britton] But Lil Nas X didn't even need the country chart.
Thanks to Twitter, and TikTok, and streaming,
"Old Town Road" was the number one song in America
for a record-breaking 19 weeks.
Streaming is a new way for any artist to break into music, period.
You just pick up your phone and voilà.
Here's what's great. Here's what's trending.
The world makes that decision.
[Britton] Blanco Brown has a similar story to Lil Nas X.
They both grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.
I have several musical influences,
from Aretha Franklin to George Strait,
Outkast.
The list goes on.
[Britton] Fusing them into a sound that he gave his own name.
"TrailerTrap." It's trailer park music meets trap music.
I just bridged the gap and I called it "TrailerTrap."
It's country music with 808s, a little flair.
Prah!
[Britton] Like his song "The Git Up," which was a line dance.
In May 2019,
two half brothers posted a video on TikTok
of themselves doing a dance of pure joy to that song.
And it spread. By summer, it had gone viral,
just like "Old Town Road" had a few months before.
I mean, from two to 92, everybody and their grandma did the dance.
I've seen people go viral, but I never felt it.
[Britton] In his video, he wore Nikes decked out with spurs,
played a drum machine, but also a lap steel guitar,
and lead a diverse group in a line dance,
with cameos from the TikTokers who'd helped make his song a hit.
♪ Go on and do the two-step Then cowboy boogie ♪
♪ Grab your sweetheart And spin out with 'em ♪
Blanco was very much interested
in being part of the country music community,
in a way that I'm not sure Lil Nas X ever wanted to be.
[Britton] And in the end, the song got enough radio play
to crack the "Country Airplay" chart,
although not that much.
But the following year in 2020,
this song hit number one on that chart.
It starts with an old sample, which is common for hip-hop songs,
although this was an old honky-tonk classic.
And then it starts to warp.
And the beat drops.
♪ There stands the glass ♪
[Britton] 808s.
♪ That will ease all my pain ♪
[Britton] Sam Hunt has been called "The Drake of country,"
and the guy who brought hip-hop to the industry.
Country and hip-hop, they too close.
Like, it's telling stories.
Some may be true, some may be false. But it's getting the message across.
That's the bigger take on it for me.
[Britton] Rap and country do share a lot of the same themes.
Like pride in where you come from.
-♪ Where you from ♪ -♪ Straight outta Compton ♪
♪ We on the grind in Georgia All the time ♪
♪ Tell by my attitude That I'm most definitely from ♪
♪ New York ♪
[Britton] Family values.
♪ For my brothers with daughters ♪
♪ Ain't a woman alive That can take my mama's place ♪
♪ What I wouldn't give for One more hug from Grandma ♪
[Britton] And hard times.
♪ I'm tired of being poor And even worse, I'm Black ♪
♪ Was on my grind 'cause times was harder Than the cellar floor ♪
♪ The only thing on my mind ♪
♪ I'm trying to keep on the lights ♪
Country and R&B
are really closely related, right?
They're very closely related musically.
[Britton] Rap was born out of the poverty of northern cities…
-[rapping] -[beatboxing]
[Britton] …building on decades of their ancestors' rhythm and blues,
which was first plucked on banjos,
an instrument that had come to America on slave ships from West Africa.
And before emancipation,
sung as spirituals and work songs
on plantations across the American South.
Those rural laments evolved into the blues.
And these sounds mixed with the ballads of those Appalachian fiddlers,
forming the roots of what would later be segmented and sold
as hillbilly music and race records.
And they become these sort of symbolic opposites.
[Britton] Springing off and tangling together
to form almost all American popular music.
So rap and country aren't opposites at all.
They're really long-lost cousins.
One artist who refused to stay inside the lines was Ray Charles.
Back in 1962,
he released Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Volumes 1 and 2,
with an entirely new bluesier take
on popular country songs, like "You Are My Sunshine."
♪ Girl you make me happy sometimes ♪
♪ When my skies are gray ♪
Once Ray Charles gets ahold of it, and he makes it start to swing,
it makes it kind of bluesy, soulful.
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
was kind of the "Old Town Road" of its day.
[Britton] The country industry
didn't accept Ray Charles as a country musician.
But those records may have changed country music
as much as any album.
Ray Charles was a great country singer.
One of the best of all time.
[Britton] And you can hear his echoes today,
like when Chris Stapleton performed for the first time
at the Country Music Awards and brought the blues.
♪ Used to spend my nights out In a barroom ♪
[crowd cheering]
♪ Liquor was the only love I've known ♪
[Britton] Or when Mickey Guyton performed at the Grammys in 2021
and told a story.
♪ If you think we live ♪
♪ In the land of the free ♪
♪ You should try to be ♪
♪ Black like me ♪
"Black Like Me" is such an incredible song to me
because she's singing her truth.
Like anything in this world, we all must evolve.
So, if we're evolving, then the music will evolve eventually.
I'm hoping that young artists will grow up
and tell the truth like it's never been told.
Bring it home in a way where you go, "Whoa!"
"There it is."
Country music, it feels like an open road with no dead end,
and I feel like that's what music is supposed to do.
Speak to your heart.
[closing theme music playing]