Why Country Music is Topping Charts and Filling Arenas Country has exploded in popularity as new artists-and fans-flood in.By
Alexander Gelfand
December 10, 2024
Illustration by Calef Brown
Country music is having a moment.
Country artists regularly top the Billboard Top 100 chart, which tracks the most popular songs in the US. The genre is the fastest growing in America, and 2023 was its best year ever, according to entertainment data firm Luminate. Pop stars like Post Malone and Lana Del Ray have been rushing to put out country albums. And global interest in country has been surging, with listenership rocketing in Germany and the UK, and festivals from Sydney to Stockholm attracting both homegrown and American talent.
I have been mind-blown by the European country fans. That, to me, is where I can say, Dang, that is crazy,' singer-songwriter Catie Offerman BM '13-who has played the Highways Festival at London's Royal Albert Hall and the C2C Festival, Europe's largest country event-says of the genre's rising popularity.
Catie Offerman BM '13
Image by David McClister
It's become cool, says Bob Stanton, a guitarist and associate professor at Berklee. In recent years, Stanton has seen growing numbers of students enroll in his country music class, through which generations of players-including guitarist Clay Cook '98 of the Zac Brown Band and Americana luminaries Gillian Welch PDM '92 and David Rawlings BM '92-have already passed.
The changing demographics of country musicians and fans, as well as the broadening of the genre, is driving this surge.
Much of the current demand is coming from Millennial and Gen Z listeners; and there are signs that the country music industry, which has historically sidelined women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community, is becoming more inclusive. This year's AmericanaFest in Nashville featured a celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, along with OUTLaw Queer Country, a showcase for queer country performers.
Associate Professor Bob Stanton
Image by Lisa Stanton
I don't know how long it's going to take for there to be true acceptance. But I know it's getting better, says singer-songwriter Andrei Garthoff BM '13, whose experience as an Asian American country artist has veered from having hostile encounters with the KKK to playing AmericanaFest and the first Asian and Pacific Islanders Night at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena. (Though he sees definite signs of improvement, Garthoff continues to encounter industry professionals who don't quite know what to make of an Asian American country artist; and he is now considering leveraging country's growing international appeal to build a following in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and mainland China to help garner industry support back in the US.)
At the same time, country's sonic palette is expanding, with more artists fusing traditional country elements with the sounds of contemporary rock, pop, and R&B-and breaking records in the process.
This year, Beyonc became the first Black female artist to top Billboard's country album chart with the wildly eclectic Cowboy Carter, which threw everything from Patsy Cline to Chicano rock into the mix. And the Nigerian American artist Shaboozey made history by simultaneously dominating all the major radio-airplay charts-including country, pop, and rhythmic, which tracks hip-hop and dance music-with the country-meets-hip-hop track A Bar Song (Tipsy), based on the 2001 song Tipsy by rapper J-Kwon.
Country has experienced spikes in popularity before, with artists such as Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, and Taylor Swift achieving mainstream success by appealing to broad popular tastes. Today, however, the entire genre seems poised to achieve newfound cultural prominence as it reinvents itself along multiple axes.
So what exactly is behind the rise of country music? And what does it mean for the future of the genre?
Andrei Garthoff BM '13
Image by Michael J. Patton
No BordersMembers of the Berklee community play many roles in the contemporary country scene, from performers and songwriters to producers and coaches.
Many say that the current ascendance of country music has as much to do with musical and technological trends as it does with country's traditional strengths. And as several point out, some of what appears to be new-namely, country's recent embrace of Black artists and contemporary R&B-has deep roots.
The people who invented country music were Black, says Stanton, referring to the many pioneering Black artists who helped develop the genre's musical repertoire and techniques in the 1920s and 1930s.
Indeed, what we now call country (and what record executives in the 1920s called hillbilly music ) emerged from a stew of African American and European American music that included English ballads, Appalachian string band tunes, spirituals, and the blues. Even the banjo, that quintessential early-country instrument, can be traced to West Africa.
Over time, country continued to draw on a range of sounds, from big-band swing to Mexican ranchera music, orchestral pop to arena rock, all while retaining an emphasis on narrative storytelling and relatable themes like heartbreak and loss.
Country music is storytelling, says Amanda Williams BM '99, a second-generation Nashville tunesmith (her late father, Kim Williams, is in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame) who provides coaching and career counseling to aspiring country songwriters through her Songpreneurs program.
According to Associate Professor Joel Schwindt, a musicologist at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee who is writing a book about authenticity in country music, there has long been a tension between the country community's desire to maintain a distinct musical identity apart from ma
