Why We Love Country Music

Maybe it isn’t the music we recognize. Maybe it is ourselves.

I didn’t grow up on a ranch. I don’t own a pickup truck. Yet. I have never lived in a tiny American town where everybody knows everybody and where the nearest neighbour is somehow also the person who knows your entire family history. And yet, give me a good country song and suddenly I understand heartbreak in Tennessee. I understand the man who misses home. I understand the woman who stayed too long. I understand the person sitting alone at a bar remembering somebody they should probably have forgotten. I understand the child who grew up and realized that their parents were people with dreams too. Sometimes I can almost taste the whiskey too. And I have always wondered why.

Why does country music feel so familiar to me? Why does a song about a life I have never lived somehow tell the truth about mine? Maybe it is because country music has never really been about cowboys. It has always been about people.

There is something wonderfully unpretentious about country music. It doesn’t always try to impress you. Sometimes it just tells you what happened. Someone left. Someone stayed. Someone drank too much. Someone came home. Someone didn’t. Someone fell in love. Someone broke a heart. Someone remembered their mother. Someone missed their father. Someone drove away because staying had become…