This week is pure country.
Drive safe.
Get the full 2024 playlist here.
“Roulette On The Heart” by Conner Smith [feat. Hailey Whitters]
This lovely song — packed with gun metaphors — rides the line between radio-friendly Nashville country and the folksy alt-country that gets credibility outside the Tennessee bubble.
Nice feature by Midwestern corn princess Hailey Whitters whose 2022 album Raised — largely about growing up on a farm in rural Iowa — was a real standout.
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube
“Less Is More” by MacKenzie Porter
MacKenzie Porter’s new album Nobody’s Born With A Broken Heart is uneven but the highs are lift-kit high. It was hard to pick just one track off an album that’s packed with truck songs.
I’m partial to “Chasing Tornadoes,” which calls to mind the classic ’90s movie Twister, AKA the best Dodge Ram ad ever1.
But the ebullient “Less Is More” is clever, matching the globe’s cultural wonders to familiar rural features: the Eiffel Tower pales next to a water tower, etc. Lyrics like “And if the sky’s lit up like Houston, well, it’s just the Milky Way” are way more poetic than a country song needs to be. A country-coded hallelujah for the simple pleasures of small-town Americana.
Bonus: “Couple little sips from a pickle jar glass that’ll get you sideways?” IYKYK.
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube
“Pure Country” by Jade Eagleson
A perfect use case of the emerging ’90s country sound filtering through contemporary country music. The revving guitar intro and Jade Eagleson’s deep-voiced diphthong. I’m surprised this isn’t a George Strait cover.
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube
I wrote about the line dance revival happening on TikTok for Texas Monthly. I talked to up-and-coming pop-country star Dasha, whose latest single, “Austin,” charted after her line dance went viral on the app.
You can read the article here.
Meanwhile, Tesla issued a voluntary recall for all Cybertrucks due to an accelerator pedal issue. More than that, some owners have reported software failure after washing their vehicles — particularly confusing since I thought the Cybertruck was supposed to be amphibious?
This alternate universe space truck continues to be a gift that keeps on giving. I need a country song about it ASAP.
Just not a song that involves rain or any serious backroads. Or getting too far out beyond any charging stations.
The movie features a 1995 Dodge Ram 2500 with a V10 8.0L engine equipped with a Laramie SLT package and a 4x4 transfer case, in case you were wondering.
Very jaunty blue sweater! Thelma and Louise: Thelma line dancing with the bad guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCozVVsFVnQ.