Not the same good old boy

The Boston Globe isn’t the very first place I turn to for thoughts on the implications of current trends in country music, but: This editorial argues that “rumblings of discontent within the world of country music” regarding the Iraq war, reflect “how much the nation’s mood has shifted since March 2003.”

It’s telling when country luminary Merle Haggard has an entry on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of top protest songs. Country musicians and their fans tend to hail from conservative states with high enlistment rates.

Then again, the toll of the war on the sons and daughters of these states has been acute.

… the jingoistic swagger of Toby Keith’s [“Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”] has given way to more somber songs seeking proper respect for returning service members. Trace Adkins’s “Arlington” describes a soldier who is buried in the famous national cemetery. Even Worley shows a flash of disillusionment: “If I’m not exactly the same good old boy that you ran around with before,” he sings, “I just came back from a war.”

Via The WSJ’s Informed Reader.