Rose Flowers of of Valley Flower writes and plays music in the honky tonks and cool bars of Austin, Texas with her string heavy band. They play a bluegrass-adjacent style with a honky tonk rhythm section heavily influenced by hippy festival vibes. Folks dance the two-step to their music as the band jams out without shoes on the stage.

Is that country music?

“Everyone’s concerned with definitions, but the artists don’t want to be defined,” she told me back in January.

And critics want to define everything. We want to know what something is and how it fits into a clear framework of mutually agreed-upon concepts we develop over time. But somewhere along the way, some start to advocate for a static framework.

The argument of these conservationists is sound: A square might also be a rectangle, and almost anyone can see similarities between the two shapes, but they aren't the same. To say otherwise is silly. But when you try to pass off a circle as a square, we have a problem with the framing.

In these circle-as-square moments, frameworks become unpenetrable walls, guarded by people who protect their preferred understanding of that art.

Country music is no different.

How and who defines these frameworks and when they can no longer evolve are critical nuances. However, at its core, being able to understand and categorize this music becomes important as it evolves.

Or at least those of us who write about it think so.

When I published my piece about Zach Top and saving country music, I went too far to create a click-bait title while editing out too much context in the section about there being no real country music. This was a mistake.

In speaking with Andrew Rasta, musician and host of the Country Country Music podcast, he challenged me to think deeply about this issue and called into question the fact that there is no real country music.

He wrote:

He then quoted United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. It was funny that a Canadian would do this, especially because I cut Stewart’s famous lines about pornography from my article. In the section that leans on Tyler Mahan Coe’s quote about country music’s evolution and simultaneous dedication to remaining true to its original name, I could have done more to explain myself and my understanding of country music’s definition.

While I could go on about this, there is something to the idea that you know country music when you hear it. And you likely know what isn’t country music, even if it’s called country music, when forced to endure it.

My exchange with Rasta lasted several days and included thousand-word emails banged out in the middle of the night. At its core, we argued about the criticism of country music’s evolution. Real nerdy stuff.

In my last piece, I tried to convey that trends are critiqued similarly in every generation. That Neo-Neo-Traditional country music is being presented as the genre’s savior from BroCountry is suspect because Neo-Traditional country music was critiqued in the same way as BroCountry is critiqued.

And then, if Neo-Traditional was worthy of significant scorn from the forefathers of modern country, how could a revival of that version of country be good or save the day from the horrors of BroCountry?

It’s not a question of taste but of semantics.

Semantics and definitions.

If we are to define country music commercially, we need to look back to its creation in the 1920s. As I outlined in February:

This perspective helped me scale the authenticity wall. As an outsider to the world of country music—growing up in suburban and urban environments, surrounded by a culture that does not align with what was marketed as real country—dismissing authenticity as marketing permitted me to claim the music as my own. If it’s all made up, why does it matter where I’m from?

“For someone who grew up in the city, a lot of country lyrics may appear shallow with cliche tropes, but to people from the country, they are just honest and real,” Rasta explained in his first email.

While this line could have come directly from a country song, I want to take it at face value and understand it as an honest and real critique of my position. There must be some lived experience within the manufactured reality.

Country song writing, Rasta explains, “becomes about finding new ways to sing about the same simple but sub-culturally-universal themes on the beer we drink, the trucks we drive, love, heartbreak, dogs, horses, sunsets,” and other said honest and real things.

Perhaps most pointedly, he said one cannot legitimately critique country music “through the lens of expectations of other genres or life experience.” When anyone does this, that person “somewhat misses the point of country music.”

So what are we talking about when we talk about country music?

We are talking about the twangy sounds of “genre-specific instrumentation” and storytelling about hard work, family and everyday life. Those themes and sounds are flexible enough to create wonderful and diverse music.

But this also means we need to be honest and real about what isn’t country music.

Fans’ obsession with authenticity has pushed Music Row to present anything they produce as “country music,” even if other terms might be better suited for the music. This is at the core of Coe’s argument — this genre has changed significantly and therefore should likely be called something else.

However, it isn’t, so we are left with armchair academics like me trying to develop a framework to understand the genre—one that is flexible enough to include Zach Top, Valley Flower, and so many of the other artists I’ve highlighted in this newsletter but strong enough to say who doesn’t belong.

There is a clear difference between tasteful nudes and pornography, and Justice Stewart knew the difference when he saw it. But he never had the internet.

Studies over the past 10 years suggest that pop music has become more homogenized due to ready access to music streaming services, social media’s proclivity toward viral content, and the industry creating only what sells.

These trends also weigh heavily on the country music industry. A&R departments have been replaced with social listening teams. This approach gave us songs like the viral hit1 “Oil Money” by BroCountry star Graham Barhum, whom I once described as soggy, week-old arugula (a description I stand by completely).

Fundamentally, I’m not a conservative thinker, and limiting what is new and evolutionary within this genre is difficult for me intellectually. However, if we are to define country music as something we know when we hear it, we must be willing to say that some music presented as country is not.

And “Oil Money” is not country music. The same can be said of some of the poppiest hits of the late Nashville Sound era, the Disco-infused 1980s, and almost all BroCountry.

This isn’t to say these examples aren’t good music — but they aren’t country music.

Importantly, we can’t get into valuation when trying to create these frameworks, and that often happens, especially when confusing reviews that include stars or points on a scale or even open windows on a drive when talking about genre.

Developing a broad-based objective framework to describe a subjective art form is difficult and can slip into judgments about the quality of music.

Reviews provide the first cut of art and music history. But they are also the opinion of (sometimes) well-informed individuals, not objective definitions of genre. And opinions can and often do change over time.

However, as I discussed in the piece last month, collective memory and collective frameworks evolve due in part to these changing opinions and perspectives of the past and today. What was once considered an affront to country music could now be sacred.

How all that fits into defining this music is complicated, and goes beyond knowing it when you hear it.

Ramona Martinez, frontwoman of Ramona and the Holy Smokes, is often asked how she defines country music. While that question likely contains elements of sexism and racism, she relies on Hank Williams and answers that country music is all about sincerity.

Not authenticity.

While authenticity has become commoditized, sincerity is much harder to package and sell, she said.

You can hear that sincerity in great country music. It’s what separates the commercialized, mechanically reproduced slop featuring genre-specific sounds and themes from the honest and real music crafted by true country artists.

This is subjective and impossible to quantify. But I know it when I hear it — and so do you.

Grand statements like “there is no real country music” or someone “saving country” music don’t belong within the pantheon of serious criticism. I diminished my point by doing so in my last article.

However, the inherent subjective nature of defining this evolving genre makes it next to impossible to find agreement about what is and isn’t country music.

But I think we can all agree “Oil Money” isn’t it.