Country Music's Mythologies

Guest Editor: Amanda Martínez (UNC–Chapel Hill)

Southern Cultures, the award-winning, peer-reviewed quarterly from UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South, encourages submissions from scholars, writers, and artists for a special issue, Country Music's Mythology, to be published Winter 2025. We will accept submissions for this issue through February 3, 2025.

The question of what defines country music is as old as the genre itself. Is it a lyric? A sound? A twang? Who listens to country music? Who can call themselves a country artist? Such questions have animated fans, musicians, and scholars alike over the past century.

One feature has always surrounded country music: mythology. Scholar Richard A. Peterson observes that country music is defined by “fabricating authenticity.” As Bill C. Malone, a founder of country music studies, puts it, “Country music is full of songs about little old log cabins that people have never lived in; the old country church that people have never attended.” The genre is as mythologized as the region with which it’s most closely associated, and it remains one of the South’s biggest cultural signifiers. 

It is an especially apt moment to reflect on country music’s significance. In tangible ways the genre has never been more popular. Last summer, country songs claimed the top three spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time. Pop stars, from Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey to Post Malone, have gone country. Nashville, the home of the country music business and a vacation destination where fans live out the genre’s myths as weekend cowboys, welcomed a record-breaking 16.8 million visitors in 2023. The current country music craze comes as the country music business celebrates a century of steady growth and the adoration of fans worldwide. One of the music’s biggest mythmakers, the Grand Ole Opry—the radio program that continues to sell itself as the “show that made country music famous”—will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2025. 

We call for submissions that reckon with and shed light on how country music’s mythologies have been constructed. The music industry has played perhaps the largest role in crafting country music’s myth. First called hillbilly and old-time music, the genre was invented by record executives in the 1920s as a marketing category associated with rural white southerners. This process of commodification did not reflect a full picture of how people enjoyed music in practice, regardless of race, class, ethnicity, or region, both in and outside of the South. A century-long process of whitewashing in the genre has since obscured a more diverse set of country music innovators and fans who have continually pushed the music forward. A century later, however, country music continues to be superficially tied to a white, rural, and southern identity. How has this myth been upheld?

We welcome critical perspectives that offer new insights into the workings of country music’s myths of the past, present, and possible futures.

Submissions can explore any topic or theme, and we welcome investigations of the region in the forms Southern Culturespublishes: scholarly articles, creative nonfiction, memoir (first-person or collective), interviews, surveys, photo and art essays, and shorter feature essays. 

Possible topics and questions to examine might include (but are not limited to):

• The role of industry, for example the Country Music Association, the Grand Ole Opry, advertising and brand endorsements, tourism, etc.
• The impact of these mythologies, especially as it relates to race, class, sexuality, and gender
• How marginalized voices crafted their own narratives. Are there alternate country imaginaries? Ones that are not white or rural; ones that are queer?
• How country music’s mythologies have interacted with other cultural symbols tied to the South, for example college football, NASCAR, food, religion, and fashion
• How country music’s popularity outside of the US South has challenged or reaffirmed mythologized ties to the region
• The role of writers and media in defining what country music is and how it is mythologized; who are the gatekeepers?

As Southern Cultures publishes digital content, we encourage creativity in coordinating print and digital materials in submissions and ask that authors submit any potential video, audio, and interactive visual content along with their essay or artist’s statement. We encourage authors to gain familiarity with the tone, scope, and style of our journal before submitting. For full submissions guidelines, please click here.