Anything but country..
When I talk to people about music, which I do too often, the two things I hear most often are "everything but country" or "everything but rap". These are usually followed by qualifiers for classic country or hiphop, respectively. Johnny Cash, Dolly, Willie.. Tribe, Wu-Tang, De La.. Then something about the content & subject matter, which is funny because these same folks are almost always good with one and not the other even though they share so many of those same themes in different language.
I will say this; modern radio "new" country is awful. Just a bunch of xenophobic, jingoistic insecure white fragility trash. "Small Town" is the famous example but the dogwhistle bullshit runs through it all & it's twice as trashy knowing this stuff was probably written by an AI in some major label studio. It's the worst sort of pandering.
Anyway if you're reading this I probably don't need to convince you of all that. We can agree radio country is legit poison and move on.
Instead, here are some modern country artists I enjoy:
May have heard of this guy but "Long Violent History" lost him a lot of fans & made him a lot more. This isn't as deep as that one, just a good song but equally authentic and not likely to make it on your local country station.
Sarah Shook is a nonbinary singer/guitarist from NC . Feel like too much of the old "outlaw" country really meant shitbird bigots you'd never want to meet, this is like a fork in that road.
Speaking of Cash, the comparison to Colter Wall's voice is obvious but this is cowboy music from Canada. If that seems odd have a look at a map between Vancouver and Montreal/Toronto.
Tami Neilson is another Canadian but with a much different style, this is that traditional, slow dancing ballad sort of country. She's since relocated to NZ where they must appreciate such things.
Lastly we've got Sturgill, who kind of paved the way for some of these folks (Tyler Childers in particular). Just to put a point on how far from the radio bullshit we're traveling, here's his cover of When in Rome's "The Promise". It's a whole different beast when removed from the original synth pop setting.
There's lots more out there worth hearing, never mind that pop country bullshit.
