Each week’s newsletter will feature a few new truck songs, along with a link to this year’s ongoing “truck songs” playlist.

What is a truck song?

A truck song is what you want to hear when you’ve got the windows down and summer is coming up. You’ve got a crush or you just lost one. Your emotions are big, you’re feeling fifteen again, and even if you grew up in the city, you’re starting to think that maybe you grew up out there, in a collective American place that is everywhere. It doesn’t quite exist and never quite did, but maybe you did kiss a girl in cutoffs, and maybe you did learn to drive in a pick-up truck, and maybe you did get lost on a backroad with your best friends.

A truck song isn’t outlaw country, it’s dream country. It’s a commodification of nostalgia. Memories of something that never quite happened.

The most wretched people in the world are those who tell you they like every kind of music “except country.” People that say that are boorish and pretentious at the same time.

— Chuck Klosterman, “Toby over Moby”

I thought you were this super mysterious chick but now I realize you just really like radio country.

— Bayless