Origin Story

Country music brought together the stories of the working class, the agriculture belt, even some of the dying class through the sounds of roots music. Nashville is the intersection of Delta blues, Memphis’ rhythm & blues, rock & roll and rockabilly, Kentucky’s bluegrass, Muscle Shoals’ soul, Texas and Oklahoma’s Western swing, and the city brings forth the sound of Black gospel, folk, Christian and, of course, the songs of the hillbillies and old-time mountain music. This place where the hills collide in the creation of song, and artists who continue to speak their truth in real time is – to borrow a phrase from Marty Stuart – “If this land were written about in the Bible, it would be the Old Testament.”

Real people of all ages telling – and listening to – real life stories. It’s why the Grand Ole Opry, the longest running radio show is celebrating 100 years of working-class culture, musicianship and the throughline that is the history of this genre.

When things get hot, people rush in. New York and Los Angeles believe they know better. Successful executives and superstars see how special this genre is; and suddenly, this is new ground to plunder. After years of pop stars doing a country album, swearing they love it so much, then returning to their own genre, the decision-makers have decided they know better.

Pop labels chase what’s popular, then move on when it cools. For country music, which has existed beyond that premise, it means when the current boom cools, country will be a dead language. That’s when the lives of Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline and Charley Pride get reduced to an oversimplified meme that loses the heart of why they hit people where they live. Nashville’s been reduced to a string of celebrity-named bars on Lower Broadway that have little connection to the music, just lip service to what they think they know.

Days after I turned 52, realizing how little any of the incoming dealmakers understood about the history or cared about the music, I left my job as the head of Universal Music Group Nashville. The music meant too much to me to participate in separating the music from its roots, its generational fans and the lives it’s always reflected.

I got on a plane to my hometown with my children for my Uncle Jeff’s funeral. Between every story of Jeff’s life, an Alan Jackson song was played. Those songs weren’t just stories, they embodied his life, told the congregation who he was. I wept, not just for the loss of an uncle I’d grown up with, but for the demise of country music.

My uncle loved Alan Jackson so much, that music was intertwined in his life and mine.

That was the gift Jeff left me in a critical moment: he reminded me of the power of country music, who I was as a person and how I became an advocate for artists, the music and what matters. Sitting there, I realized: country music is worth fighting for.

A full circle moment, all the way back to your childhood, contains clarity beyond measure. Country music was worth defending, fighting for and creating a future that contains everything that connects this music to so many. Like the young girl I was, now having a deep revelation at this somber event made celebratory through Alan Jackson’s music, I wanted something to reflect the purity of the mission, the passion that rises against all odds and forces. Joan Of Arc, the young French farm girl who led her nation in battle, who was guided by wisdom and strategic visions from God the Creator, represented everything that I not only felt, but believed.

And like that French girl on horseback, we are stripping away anything that doesn’t matter and focusing on the impact country artists, music and truth have had for more than a century. This is music for people, made by people who care, who’ve lived it, who understand and want to create honest work that reflects who they are.