Redneck Chic

Abstract

This article analyzes the Nashville-based country music industry's marketing practices and targeted audience between 1969 and 1978, an exciting period of racial and political diversification among country listeners and artists. During this era, growing numbers of non-white fans appeared at country concerts (drawn in large part by a previously unprecedented number of non-white artists who had earned commercial success during this period), and musicians such as Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings—the “Outlaws”—attracted listeners who identified with the counterculture. These new fans differed from the white and conservative listeners that the country music industry had branded as the quintessential country music fan by the early 1970s. But despite the potential to target increasing numbers of non-white fans, by 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan, the industry remained more committed than ever before to defining the music as a product for an affluent, white, and predominantly conservative audience only. The industry's efforts to target a large white and affluent audience came at the expense of not only non-white listeners, but also actual Southerners and low-income whites, who were harmed by the stereotypes and widespread appropriations perpetuated by the trend of “redneck chic.”

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