Popular Country Artist Goes Fully Woke with New 'Queer Love' Song
When NPR is covering country music and it doesn’t have something to do with Jason Aldean being racist or the rest of the genre representing white privilege, you’re probably dealing with an artist who’s 1) really old and/or 2) really woke.
In this case, Tyler Childers is only 32, so we can rule the first one out.
If you really needed an answer, you need look no further than the lede of the article: “Tyler Childers has thought a lot about what it means to be an ally.” Hoo boy.
In this case, “allyship” involves a new single called “In Your Love,” with a video released Thursday that is about two gay coal miners back in the 1950s. Because there’s nothing the left loves more than the “Brokeback Mountain” motif.
The NPR subhead said Childers teamed up with his friend to “tell a queer love story.”
“Even if you have the privilege of walking through this world unfazed, it’s more important than ever to stand with and for and up for things, to be vocal,” the singer told the outlet.
What does “being vocal” entail?
Try to get through this paragraph of 150-proof NPR blather from Ann Powers with a straight face, dear reader:
“Childers was sequestered with his wife Senora and new son at home in Kentucky when the Black Lives Matter movement and the pandemic inspired a nationwide outpouring of protest. A period of self-assessment led the songwriter, known for his richly detailed portraits of contemporary rural life, to become more explicit about his beliefs. First came Long Violent History, a bluegrass album framed by a stirring anthem decrying racial injustice. Then a triple album with his band The Food Stamps, Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven?, confronted religious intolerance while holding on to the joy of worship. Now, Childers has enlisted his good friend, the noted author and Kentucky poet laureate Silas House, to write a video for his new song, ‘In Your Love,’ that tells a sweeping story of love between two men.”
So basically he watched the summer of “fiery but mostly peaceful” protests on CNN, then got himself done woked and tried to court minor controversies. Whoop de doo.
You wouldn’t know the subject of “In Your Love” from the lyrics, however, which are vapid enough to make Bush (the 1990s band, not the presidents or Kate) seem deep.
Here’s the chorus:
We were never made to run forever
We were just meant to go long enough
To find what we were chasing after
I believe I found it here
In your love.
The video, on the other hand, makes it clear that the otherwise anodyne love song is supposed to be about gay miners, because how else is a country troubadour going to bait NPR into caring about it?
In the clip, an old farmer finds a four-leaf clover as his horse is plowing a field and goes into flashback mode, because this is how we’re supposed to know these were the Old Days of Intolerant People™.
Soon, two dudes are pick-axing away in the coal mines and then lounging in a forest clearing. One of them finds a four-leaf clover and they share a look. One moves his hand closer to the other’s.
We get another coal-mine shot. Then, another miner spots the two guys making out. Then there’s a fight down in the mine, complete with shaky-cam. One of the lovers is sucker-punched, because that’s just how bigots roll.
Soon, the two gay lovebirds get a house together, work the farm, and then they’re at a Tyler Childers concert with the Food Stamps.
Then one of them gets sick with an unnamed condition and we get the inevitable montage of chest-clutching, oxygen-inhaling, and finally the healthy partner nursing the sick partner in what we assume to be his final days.
Then we flash-forward to the other partner as an old man considering the four-leaf clover he found.
Deep, man.
WARNING: The following video contains scenes that some viewers will find offensive.
Boy, that’s some allyship, all right.
Needless to say, traditional country fans and conservatives on social media were less impressed with this than the legacy media was:
Just what we were all waiting for a song about 2 gay coal miners 🤦♂️ I miss the purgatory days.
— Josh Hunt (@jdhunt08) July 27, 2023
So disappointed… used to be my 2nd favorite artist. Why… just why Tyler.
— Kyle Andrews (@KAnd613) July 27, 2023
Tyler Childers is woke. I will never listen to his music.
— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) July 27, 2023
Damn another woke fool. I really loved his music. Bye Tyler Childers. Good luck with the 3% you’re pandering to. My teens showed me the video in disgust bc they loved him too. https://t.co/3VKxjseQ0V
— Samatha (@Samatha0609) July 28, 2023
But, of course, the video for “In Your Love” is for the kinds of people who never really care about country music — particularly in the media.
It’s not just NPR, either; Rolling Stone called the video “the antithesis” of “a week where a music video permeated by fearmongering and aggression dominated the conversation,” in an article with the uproarious title “Tyler Childers’ ‘In Your Love’ Is the Music Video of Compassion and Caring We Need Right Now.”
Just in case you needed an anvil dropped on your head as to why the people at Rolling Stone care about country music for five minutes, there you go: To them, it’s an LGBT-tastic antidote to “Try That in a Small Town.”
“Just under five minutes in length, the video has the ability to emotionally wreck you as it watches the men fall in love, grapple with the violent reactions of their co-workers, and ultimately launch a new life together on a country farm,” Rolling Stone’s Joseph Hudak wrote.
“Credit that to the storytelling of Silas House, the Poet Laureate of Kentucky, who wrote the treatment from an idea he had with his husband, Jason Kyle Howard,” Hudak said. “A statement from House about the video, directed by Bryan Schlam and starring Colton Haynes and James Scully, echoes the desire for representation in country music that many still find themselves denied.”
Again, this is what’s hilarious about outlets like NPR and Rolling Stone paying attention to Childers’ video for no other reason than it features a gay love story: While both outlets are covering this because it’s country mixed with LGBT themes, neither expresses much interest in mainstream country music unless it’s covering the controversies.
In terms of representation, blue-collar Americans — particularly those who like country music — are especially underrepresented by both unless they’re being chastised or there’s some sort of woke quasi-subversion going on. Otherwise, nobody at either media node could care less about what they see as idiot rednecks.
Unfortunately, those folks still stream songs and watch videos, and they tend to choose artists that give the people at NPR and Rolling Stone fits.
Three of the top five positions on the Billboard 100 singles chart for the week of July 29 are filled with country ditties the media loves to hate: “Try That in a Small Town” at No. 2, “Last Night” by the uncancelable Morgan Wallen at No. 3 and “Fast Car” by Luke Combs — who’s been vilified by the media for covering a song by a black LGBT artist while he’s a white, “cis” country singer — at No. 4.
I could be wrong, but my assumption is that no amount of allyship and pandering will bestow the same degree of success upon Tyler Childers. Instead, this’ll go over every bit as well as a warm, skunked tall-boy of Bud Light at a honky-tonk.
Alas, naturally, the NPRs of the world will just use that as further evidence of country fans’ bigotry — as opposed to acknowledging the fact it was a bland song made vaguely controversial by throwing in a woke music video.
Wash, rinse, repeat. And they wonder why Middle America doesn’t trust the media.
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