Why Country Music is Topping Charts and Filling Arenas

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.

“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.

“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, Beyoncé 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?

No Borders

Members 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 mainstream popular music, and the country music industry’s need to stay relevant and achieve broad commercial success.

“Part of country’s identity of realness and authenticity is being separate—‘we don’t sound like the rest of pop music,’” Schwindt says. “That said, country music is also a business, and the producers know that if you are just doing the same old things over and over and over again, you’re going to become obscure.”

“We live in a time when the lines of genres are more blurred than ever before."

— Sierra Hull ’11

That tension was heightened by the establishment in the 1950s of Nashville’s Music Row, which remains the commercial center of country music. One of the first things to come out of Music Row was the so-called Nashville Sound, a skillful amalgam of country and pop that was designed to achieve crossover success. Ever since, country music has swung like a pendulum between whatever artists and fans consider to be traditional—e.g., Southern accents, rural imagery, pedal steel guitar (derived from the Hawaiian steel guitar, which found its way into country in the 1920s)—and whatever happens to be trending in contemporary music culture.

“Country is always so cyclical in how it sounds, because it borrows elements from pop and then it goes back to classic country,” Garthoff says.

The bright, modern pop sensibility that Taylor Swift brought to country in the early 2000s, for instance, drew a whole new audience of young listeners. “They went from liking the Frozen soundtrack to being Taylor Swift fans,” Williams says.

Some of those fans wound up delving much deeper into country. Garthoff, who was born in Hong Kong and came to the U.S. at age 9, discovered the genre through a CD mixtape that his high school girlfriend gave him. At the time, Garthoff was a budding guitarist; and one of the tracks was Swift’s “Love Story,” a hit on both the country and pop charts that opened with a banjo riff and some plaintive steel guitar.

“I was like, ‘Wow, this is so cool. What is this?’” Garthoff recalls asking his girlfriend. “And she was like, ‘It’s country music.’”

Garthoff Googled “country guitar players,” discovered the neo-traditionalist Brad Paisley, and ultimately developed a sound that skews traditional while incorporating a touch of contemporary rock and pop.

Today’s crossover artists perform the same kind of hybridizing, gateway-drug function. Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” for example, draws on trap, folk rock, and the sounds of the Florida and Texas dance hall scenes, where DJs have been mashing up country and hip-hop for years. Taking authentic influences from wherever they might be found, says Williams, “is what country music has always been known for.”

You can hear that same catholic taste in Williams’ own catalog, which includes Appalachian-style tunes alongside countrified interpretations of Bruce Springsteen and ’50s-era pop.

It’s also evident in the increasingly eclectic body of work produced by mandolinist Sierra Hull ’11, who cut her teeth on bluegrass—an acoustic, improv-centric cousin of country that favors old-time tunes and instrumental virtuosity—but has in recent years put her own distinctive spin on material by everyone from Percy Mayfield and Tears for Fears to progressive rockers Polyphia.

“We live in a time when the lines of genres are more blurred than ever before,” Hull says. “You’d almost have to have earplugs in not to be influenced by a lot of different things.”

Going Digital

Streaming and social media are among the biggest factors driving all that genre-blurring. They are also responsible for much of the current buzz surrounding country, and for opening the door to a new generation of country artists and audiences.

Country music fans came late to the digital game, only migrating from physical media to streaming and social media during the pandemic, Schwindt says. When they finally made the shift to the online world, however, they did so in droves: Demand for country on Spotify has more than doubled over the last five years, and data from Luminate show that country audio streams exceeded 20 billion in 2023, representing a nearly 24 percent increase over the prior year—almost twice the increase seen for the music industry overall.

The impact on country musicians has been profound.

Today’s artists are no longer obliged to pursue what had been for decades the sole path to country stardom: moving to Nashville, signing with a record label, and securing a spot on the tightly guarded playlists of country radio. Instead, they can self-release on Spotify or YouTube while chasing virality on TikTok and Instagram.

The weakening of country’s traditional gatekeepers has had a democratizing effect on the industry, allowing a broader range of talent to evade the various barriers (stylistic, racial, gender-based) that have historically made it harder for some to achieve success than others. “Anything goes now,” Offerman says. “You can do you and have a space.”

Less gatekeeping has also given artists of all stripes an alternate path to record deals and radio airplay, which continue to offer financial rewards along with valuable perks like marketing, promotion, and tour support. 

“Now the business model is DIY,” says bassist and producer Luis Espaillat BM ’94, who once played a session with an unsigned singer-songwriter whose 2 million+ TikTok followers eventually landed him a lucrative deal with a major label. “If you start to blow up, then the labels will be like, ‘Okay, well, let’s help you push on a little more.’”

The recommendation algorithms employed by streaming and social media platforms also encourage cross-genre listening, which helps introduce country music to people who would not tune in to country radio or browse the country bin in a brick-and-mortar store. And as more and more artists blend country with other sounds, those same algorithms become more likely to serve a helping of something more traditional to a Beyoncé or Shaboozey fan.

“You happen to hear something, and then boom—the algorithm is going to recommend something you would never have thought of, and it becomes your new favorite artist,” Espaillat says.

In a way, this isn’t so different from the path that led Garthoff from Taylor Swift to Brad Paisley. But rather than being paved by friends bearing mixtapes, the new road to country runs through ai-enhanced algorithms with access to billions of users worldwide.

Of course, streaming and social media have their limits—and their downsides.

Streams and likes don’t necessarily translate into concert tickets. And now that record labels and country radio programmers use streaming and social media numbers to gauge popular appeal, country artists are under increasing pressure to produce a steady stream of online content—even if, like Offerman, they already have a record deal. “I can’t take it for granted that I have a label,” she says. “I kind of have to pretend they’re not there, and just keep posting stuff.”

Streaming platforms also pay a pittance compared to the physical media they have supplanted. Williams calculates that while sales of 5 million physical units would earn her $455,000 in songwriting royalties, the same number of streams would yield a paltry $98 on Spotify. And that’s before subtracting administrative costs.

Recommendation algorithms can be a double-edged sword, too. Artists who don’t post enough Instagram reels can find that the material they most want circulated won’t be recommended, while acts that don’t enjoy enough streams can find themselves shut out of Spotify’s coveted New Boots playlist for up-and-coming country artists. “There are still gatekeepers,” Hull says.

Yet no one disputes that the changes roiling the country landscape have on balance been positive: More people around the world are making and listening to country music than ever before, and the expansion of the genre—musically, socially, and commercially—shows little sign of abating.

“There’s room for everybody in country music,” Williams says.