No music genre is as beholden to corporate radio as country music, and no form of music media is as conservative, aesthetically and politically, as corporate radio. Put two and two together, and it makes sense that no genre is more conservative than country music made for the radio an assembly-line product stuffed with references to patriotism and pickups, built by a massive industry centered in Nashville. That conventional wisdom accounts for the wide swaths of people whose response to seeing video of rising country star Morgan Wallen using the n-word last month was: “Is anyone surprised?”
The country industry’s answer to that question was both yes and no. As stars like Mickey Guyton and Maren Morris quickly pointed out, there’s at least a century’s worth of evidence that the genre was built by overt racism and discrimination to paraphrase them, Wallen’s racism
The 27-year-old rising country star has been banned from most radio stations across the county after using the N-word, but an unscientific online poll led a Knoxville station to put him back on the air.
Morgan Wallen Back on One Country Station, as Hometown Outlet Sides With Fans Over Industry Censorship
Chris Willman, provided by
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In what could be a sign of a break in country radio’s unified front, the currently forbidden superstar Morgan Wallen is back on the airwaves on at least one station that had put him on hold, WMYL-FM in Knoxville. The station may have more reason than most to return him to its playlist Knoxville is Wallen’s hometown but it does raise the question of how long the country radio industry will continue to speak with one voice in keeping music’s most successful recording artist of the moment off the air.