How the West’s music won over Gen-Z

Your friend from New York City is at a Zach Bryan concert, and a girl from New Jersey now goes to the bar in cowboy boots. Country music is back.

Against all odds, Shaboozy’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is once again atop the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the longest-running chart-topper of the decade.

Pop artists like Post Malone, Sabrina Carpenter, Zayn Malik, Chappell Roan, Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey have either released — or in Lana Del Rey’s case — alluded to releasing country music. 

But this is just a surface symptom of a much deeper revival. 

The national spike in  the popularity of country music can be attributed to numerous factors — America’s recent political shift to the right, the reclamation of American aesthetics by those that were excluded from them in the past, and the most obvious, streaming platforms and the internet giving resources to alternative country artists that could not get them through traditional means, like a Nashville record label. 

Country music has always been a genre resistant to change, as it’s the only genre still driven by radio. 

Since it’s the most listened to music on the radio, I think large conglomerates that own these stations are quick to bar any artists from experimenting with the genre. 

It’s also a genre dominated by men. In 2022, only 11% of songs played on country stations were made by women.

When I was a kid, and my dad put on the country radio, there was this overarching “bro country” trend in the genre that became inescapable after 9/11. 

In the two decades following, country music became more about reactionary politics and the idealized image of the American blue-collar worker than the “Two Chords and the Truth” traditionalist era of Hank Williams. 

“Bro country” refers to country songs about beer, women and trucks. These songs are sung by men in tank tops, baseball caps and thousand-dollar cowboy boots — attributes that prompt my dad to say, “Their truck’s never seen any mud.” 

Even as overall American culture has grown out of “bro country,” country music radio hasn’t.

“Texas Hold ‘Em,” a single off of Beyonce’s country project, Cowboy Carter, reached the number one spot on the Billboard Country Charts. Experts think that its lack of airway play is why it — or anything else from Cowboy Carter — didn’t receive any nominations at the Country Music Association Awards. 

However, at the 2025 Grammys, “Texas Hold ‘Em” received nominations for Best Country Music Song, Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Despite being panned by the Country Music Association, Cowboy Carter became the second most Grammy nominated album of all time, losing only to Micheal Jackson’s Thriller. 

Streaming gave Cowboy Carter its popularity, which is how other country artists who don’t fit radio country have the ability to find their niche. 

Artists like Tyler Childers, Sierra Ferrell and Kasey Musgraves have recently released widely acclaimed country music. However, because of the political undertones and the vintage country sound produced in their music and the lack of the “bro-country” still sought out by radio stations, they often don’t have their music played on the radio. 

Zach Bryan, a country star who also gained popularity on streaming platforms, was in disbelief that it took 10 years for Childers to get his first radio hit with “In Your Love.” Meanwhile, songs like Walter Hayes’ “Fancy Like” gained Hayes stardom and an Applebee’s commercial, because of a repetitive shoutout to the chain in “Fancy Like’s” lyrics. 

In a now-deleted tweet, Bryan wrote, “Imagine being radio (whoever the hell that is), hearing (Childers’) ‘Shake the Frost’ and being like, ‘No, no, let’s go with the Applebees song.”

According to Luminate, 38% of Gen-Z listened to Country Music in 2024 — a 10% increase compared to 28% of listeners in 2022. This increase can be attributed to the reclamation of American aesthetics in popular culture. 

Western aesthetics are becoming prevalent in every area. 

Western fashion can be seen in Pharrell Williams’ men’s fall-winter 2024 show for Louis Vuitton, which featured utilitarian denim, embroidered suede, fringe and bolo ties aplenty. The Paris show was transformed into a scene emblematic of the American West by a backdrop of desert plateaus and parched plains.  

In the past four years, movies and TV shows like The Devil All the Time, Twisters, The Power of the Dog, Yellowstone and Outer Range show an increasing appetite for Western media. 

I think part of this rise in popularity for Western and American aesthetics is a yearning for a “simpler” past — one I don’t believe ever existed. 

I think this is why “trad-wife” influencers like Ballerina Farm, Gwen Swinarton and Jasmine Dinis earn millions of views per video sharing their lives as  traditional American housewives and homemakers, and why Trump — with his promise to “Make America Great Again”—  won the 2024 election with the popular vote and is the first Republican to do so since 2004. 

However, I hope a driving force for this return of Western America to the mainstream involves people of color and LGBTQ people, who have notoriously been excluded from mainstream country music and culture. 

Country artists new and old are working to reclaim the queer and non-white histories of country music and cowboy culture.

 In 2019, Orville Peck, a gay artist releasing traditionalist outlaw country, brought out Lavender Country to perform a surprise opening set at his Seattle. Lavender Country released the first country album to openly address queer identity in 1973. Similarly, Peck worked with Willie Nelson on “Cowboys are Secretly Frequently Fond of Each Other,” which is a cover of Ned Sublette’s 1981 song. Nelson also released a cover of this song in 2006, as a response to the homophobic backlash to Brokeback Mountain. 

Along with this, Beyonce’s most recent album, Cowboy Carter, uplifted other Black female country artists. After the release of her first two country singles, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” other Black female country artists received an uptick in streams. 

Tanner Ardell received a 188% increase in the week following. Linda Martell — the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry — had a 275% streaming increase in the week following Beyonce’s  release, according to Billboard. 

The history of country music is as diverse as America itself, from banjos originating from West Africa, to akonting, to the fiddle coming over from Ireland. I hope that as the genre expands, it reflects the history that birthed it and that “y’all” really does mean “all.”