Category: country music

© Provided by Collider

It’s pretty much a given that most movies will feature music in some capacity. Honestly, background music – whether it’s a score written for a movie or a collection of pre-existing songs – probably goes unnoticed a great deal of the time. Plenty of movies have some sort of music in almost every scene, as it’s a way to heighten emotions and add to what’s playing out visually, in front of the viewer.

RELATED: From ‘Nosferatu’ to ‘Häxan’: The Greatest Horror Movies of The Silent Era

Then there are movies that stand out for featuring no music, or no music outside their credit sequences. It can be quite jarring to come across a movie without a traditional score, seeing as even silent movies tend to have music playing in the background. However, the following 10 examples show that it’s possible, and can even make a film more powerful.

‘No Country For Old Men’ (2007)

The movie that earned The Coen Brothers a Best Picture Oscar, No Country For Old Men, is a dark and brutally realistic crime-thriller about two men getting into a game of cat and mouse over a suitcase full of money. What adds to the sense of grit and realism is the lack of music, with its suspenseful scenes playing out without a traditional score.

It stands in contrast to many other well-known movies made by the Coens, as their films tend to have great soundtracks, with Inside Llewyn Davis, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and The Big Lebowski standing out in particular. Here, the film’s silence adds to the experience immensely, with viewers having to wait until the end credits to hear music from the Coens’ regular composer, Carter Burwell.

‘Caché’ (2005)

Michael Haneke is an iconic director on the international scene whose movies are often characterized by their deliberate pacing, grim subject matter, and sparse use of music. Caché is a film of his that takes not using music up to 11, with this dark thriller about a French couple who are stalked and regularly given strange videotapes being remarkably quiet and free of a traditional score.

Naturally, this makes things extra eerie, allowing an already tense and nerve-wracking movie to become even more stomach-churning. It’s not an easy film to watch, like most of what Haneke makes, but the decision to keep things quiet adds to the suspense, strengthening Caché’s power in the process.

‘Alice’ (1988)

Even if Alice had the sort of background music you’d expect in a fantasy movie, it would still be deeply unsettling. This take on the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland mixes live-action with stop-motion animation in an extremely eerie way. While other takes on Alice in Wonderland might have some nightmarish scenes, this film adaptation feels like a feature-length fever dream.

RELATED: ‘Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio’ & Other Dark Fairytales Not Aimed At Kids

And the fact that the title character’s trip into the well-known dream world doesn’t feature music just adds to the strange, otherworldly feeling of it all. This is definitely not a movie young viewers should watch, owing to how scary it can be, but older viewers who want a dark and disquietingly quiet take on the story of Alice in Wonderland might get something out of it.

‘Dog Star Man’ (1964)

Split into five parts (one of which is included in the ‘1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die’ list), Dog Star Man is a strange film that’s as simple or as complex as the viewer wants it to be. At its core, it’s about a man climbing a mountain with his dog, with plenty of strange visuals and inexplicable sequences that can be interpreted in any number of ways.

It’s also technically a silent film in the most extreme sense, containing no dialogue, sound effects, or music. It’s therefore all about the visuals, with the strange trip it takes viewers on likely to enthrall some whilst boring others, as many experimental films tend to do.

‘Sully’ (2016)

A somewhat overlooked directorial effort by Clint Eastwood, Sully tells the true story of Captain Chesley Sullenberger, a pilot who, in 2009, made an emergency landing while in control of a plane that had over 150 people onboard. All onboard survived, with the fact the landing happened on the Hudson River making it all the more dramatic.

Much of the movie covers the aftermath of the emergency landing and the post-crash investigation that put pressure on Sullenberger for his heroic actions. It may take some liberties with the truth – as historical movies tend to do – but the lack of a standard music score does help lend an air of realism to the film, particularly in its harrowing scenes that depict the emergency landing.

‘The Tribe’ (2014)

The Tribe is a Ukrainian film about a school for the deaf with a dark underbelly. It’s shown to have a criminal hierarchy of sorts within its walls, with the plot following the protagonist getting mixed up in a gang of organized criminals who effectively run the school, terrorizing those who don’t fall in line.

All the major characters are deaf, and to reflect this, The Tribe is a remarkably quiet movie. There are sound effects, meaning it’s not a silent movie, but the film lacks background music and dialogue, with conversations instead done with sign language… that’s also not translated via subtitles, meaning viewers who aren’t knowledgeable when it comes to signing will have to try to keep up with actions, body language, and the film’s visual language.

‘Dog Day Afternoon’ (1975)

A tense and nerve-wracking movie about a seemingly simple bank robbery that goes disastrously wrong, Dog Day Afternoon is one of the most iconic films from the 1970s, and also features Al Pacino at the height of his powers as an actor.

RELATED: The Greatest Bank Heist Scenes in Film History

Technically, Dog Day Afternoon does feature a song in its opening credits sequence, that helps set the mood and setting of the film. After that, though, it’s two hours of soundtrack-free cinema, helping the viewer feel as though they’re really in the bank as the attempted robbery is playing out, given that in the real-life story the film was based on, there obviously wouldn’t have been any background music.

‘Frankenstein’ (1931)

1931’s Frankenstein is a horror classic, and helped define how Frankenstein’s Monster looked in pop culture going forward. The story is of course a familiar one: there’s a scientist who wants to create life, and so with the help of his assistant, he steals body parts from a nearby cemetery and assembles them into a grotesque-looking human creature, who does indeed come to life, with disastrous results.

Music is kept to a surprising minimum throughout this early horror movie, as besides the opening and end credits, there’s almost none of it. It stands in contrast to many movies of the period, which often have sweeping, even bombastic music that’s hard to ignore or not notice.

‘The Panic in Needle Park’ (1971)

The Panic in Needle Park is a harshly realistic movie about two young people who fall in love, with one of them being a heroin addict, who drags the other into a lifestyle of drug dependency. It’s notable for being one of Al Pacino’s first leading performances, who impressed in this role one year before the first Godfather truly made him a star.

Naturally, no movie that deals with drug addiction is going to be an easy watch, but the pervasive silence in The Panic in Needle Park makes it extra haunting and real-feeling. It opts out of using music, meaning the focus is always on the characters and their struggles, with the quiet (and even boring) moments in the lives of those dealing with addiction hitting just as hard as the more outwardly dramatic moments.

‘The Birds’ (1963)

Few Alfred Hitchcock movies are as well-known as The Birds. This 1963 horror movie sees its characters dealing with a mysterious series of attacks by swarms of deadly birds, with an entire town’s existence becoming threatened by the unexplained phenomenon.

While many Hitchcock movies feature iconic music scores, The Birds was a film that notably didn’t feature a traditional score. It makes for a more immersive horror movie than expected, with the lack of music in the film’s deathly quiet final sequence ensuring that The Birds ends on an extra haunting and memorable note.

NEXT: The Best Silent Films Worth Watching If You’ve Never Seen a Silent Film Before

© (Tasneem Alsultan / For The Times)
Singers perform at a Soundstorm music festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Tasneem Alsultan / For The Times)

Standing in a maelstrom of swirling smoke and spotlights, Nouf Sufyani, the 29-year-old Saudi DJ better known as Cosmicat, sang along to Fatboy Slim’s “Right Here, Right Now.” She looped a snippet of the melody, letting the tension build before grabbing the mic and shouting to the cheering, dancing crowd: “Right here, right now — we’re Jeddah!”

It was the second night of Balad Beast, a two-day rave held earlier this month in Saudi Arabia’s second-largest city. The event was part of Soundstorm, a series of state-backed music festivals that began in 2019 and has since brought dozens of international artists to the country, including Bruno Mars and top-flight DJ Solomun.

Fawaz Utaibi, a 26-year-old English-language teacher, was excited to cut loose in Jeddah’s Balad, or Old Town, where an animated image of a giant cat’s head was projected onto the coral-stone buildings, nodding to the beat. Five years ago, “there was nothing to do here — the only reason you’d come was to buy traditional goods. Now you can celebrate,” he said.

© (Tasneem Alsultan / For The Times)
Concertgoers at the Soundstorm music festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Dec. 9. (Tasneem Alsultan / For The Times)

“Look around you. It sounds crazy: We’re partying in Saudi.”

Balad Beast is of a piece with Vision 2030, the all-out transformation of Saudi Arabia that the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, launched soon after he became heir to the throne in 2017. Its aims include diversifying Saudi Arabia’s oil-dependent economy and revamping its long-held image from a puritanically religious kingdom inaccessible to outsiders into a regional entertainment mecca.

The campaign’s main target is the two-thirds of the Saudi populace who are under the age of 35. The crown prince — himself only 37 — wants his peers to live, work and play at home rather than leave for jobs abroad or spend billions of dollars every year seeking out fun in places such as Dubai or Manama, the capital of Bahrain.

© (Kay Nietfeld / DPA)
Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, wants to diversify his country’s economy, including by turning it into an entertainment hub. (Kay Nietfeld / DPA)

The swiftness of the changes in Saudi Arabia has residents long used to its sleepy social life blinking in shock, like Dorothy stepping out of her sepia-toned Kansas house into Technicolor Oz. December’s calendar alone featured Balad Beast, the Red Sea International Film Festival, the Dakar Rally, the Riyadh Season — a monster lineup of concerts and sporting events — and the Boulevard Riyadh, a sort of world fair in the Saudi capital with pavilions showcasing foreign countries, including the U.S., which was represented by a chunk of interstate highway asphalt, a Magnolia Bakery and a police cruiser.

Supporters of the crown prince, who was recently named prime minister, praise him as the only leader with the chutzpah and authority to push through such a profound makeover of Saudi society. Here at Jeddah’s Balad Beast, in a scene unthinkable only a few years ago, Utaibi stood sipping a mocktail alongside a female friend who wore no hijab; other revelers sported jeans, shorts, crop tops, even mesh shirts. Electronic music blasted from billboard-sized speakers as a female performer belted out tunes onstage. Men and women danced together.

“Unless you grew up here, you wouldn’t understand the magnitude of what we’re doing,” said Ahmad Ammary, 44, the DJ and music producer who developed Soundstorm.

© (Tasneem Alsultan / For The Times)
Men dance with glow sticks at an outdoor rave in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Tasneem Alsultan / For The Times)

But critics say the strides in social liberalization have been accompanied by the cementing of a politically illiberal climate with a single person in charge: the crown prince. They liken his rule to the more centralized Arab dictatorships in Egypt and Syria, in a break with the more consultative system the kingdom used to employ.

They also accuse the crown prince of using extreme measures to neutralize anyone opposed to or even insufficiently enthusiastic about his policies, such as Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed by a Saudi hit team at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. The U.S. has concluded that the crown prince ordered the brutal slaying, which he denies.

Last summer, two Saudi women were sentenced to 34 and 45 years in prison essentially for expressing dissent on social media, according to human rights organizations, which noted that the sentences were the longest ever handed to activists. Saudi officials said the cases go beyond social media activity but did not elaborate.

The political atmosphere is such that, in interviews, people willing to criticize government policies — saying that tourism revenue could never supplant oil proceeds, or that spending on flashy entertainment projects ignores more pressing infrastructure problems — refused to do so on the record. On Twitter, the social network of choice in Saudi Arabia, previously critical accounts have been suspended or deleted or now stick to safe topics.

Also cowed is the once-mighty clerical class whose support undergirded the ruling Saud family’s power. Imams who have spoken out against the liberalization have been put in jail. Even the mutaween, the infamous religious police who ran patrols to ensure people behaved according to a strict moral code — smashing music equipment and castigating women for wearing makeup — now parrot the government line that they had overstepped their mandate and are content with encouraging rather than imposing their version of virtuous living.

That a political crackdown has accompanied a social opening up may seem contradictory, but analysts say the crown prince sees it as a necessary complement.

“The Saudi leadership thinks they have no choice because they can’t develop a post-hydrocarbon economy without these liberalizations and turning Saudis from dependent subjects to wealth-producing citizens,” said Hussein Ibish, a resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “But they also see it as dangerous to the regime” — as potentially setting in motion forces they cannot control.

Although the crown prince’s harsh authoritarian streak is troubling, most of the changes he’s effected are “incredibly important,” Ibish said. “He’s truly transforming the country, mostly for the far better.”

It’s clear that many Saudis see the crown prince’s policies as a long-overdue coming-out party for young people.

“From the outside, this is what people think of Saudi Arabia: Mecca, Medina, hajj, umrah, religion. It’s part of our fabric,” said Ammary, the Soundstorm organizer, referring to Islam’s two holiest sites and the pilgrimages that Muslims undertake. Those associations, he said, brought an expectation of how Saudis behaved in public.

© (Tasneem Alsultan / For The Times)
A light show illuminates the stage during the Soundstorm music festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Dec. 9. (Tasneem Alsultan / For The Times)

“Growing up, we were encouraged to not stand out. Whenever I would come home for a visit, I’d switch to the Saudi version of myself: Be calm, straightforward, proper. Don’t smile too much,” said Ammary, who spent time living in the U.S.

Though he’s been a DJ since 1997, it wasn’t something he was “built to be proud of.” He played at private parties for a small community of friends. The first edition of the Soundstorm festival was “a social experiment,” he said, during which he was surprised to find so many underground groups.

“This community went from paranoid tiny pockets to people that can do this with pride, with joy, with no fear. I’m proud of the Band-Aid we’re ripping off our culture,” he said, adding: “It’s not a change. It was always there, but we were hiding.”

Other signs of that unveiling, both literal and figurative, are inescapable. At Balad Beast, three 21-year-old women without hijabs, law students Leen, Jood and Lujain, remarked how their childhood had been about keeping a segregated existence from males, who nonetheless controlled their lives — how they dressed, where they worked or went out, whether they stayed married. The last few years saw the ban on women driving lifted and the more onerous aspects of the male guardianship system dismantled, such as being forced to seek permission from a male relative to get a passport or travel.

“We’re the transitional generation,” said Lujain, adding that she was more confident about having a relationship (“divorce is easier now”) and was excited about her career options. All three friends, who declined to give their last names for reasons of privacy, were concerned about sexual harassment — “men see an event like this as an excuse to go nuts,” Jood said — but thought police would now help rather than shame them for their dress.

Before the crown prince’s ascension, “this wouldn’t have happened. The men would have got away with it,” Jood said.

Signs at the Balad Beast admonished people to “Look, don’t stare” and to “Be friendly, but don’t overdo it.” Supervising the proceedings were stern-faced male and female guards with the hawk-eyed looks of chaperones at a high school dance. They were helped by the absence of alcohol, which remains banned in the kingdom but is expected to be legalized under certain conditions in the coming year.

For women, the changes have opened up new opportunities. Sufyani, the DJ known as Cosmicat, was a dentist before she saw spinning tunes as a possibility. The percentage of women joining the Saudi workforce exceeds 35%, more than double the rate from five years ago, official statistics say.

The feared backlash from religious conservatives hasn’t materialized in force, though whether their quiescence stems from fear or indifference, or both, is unclear. At the Boulevard Riyadh, the quasi-world fair, women in black niqabs joined more colorfully attired attendees in enjoying music acts that would have been deemed impossibly risque a few years ago.

© (Tasneem Alsultan / For The Times)
A woman dances at the rave in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Tasneem Alsultan / For The Times)

“Yes, it’s great the kids have more options now,” Mohammad Bukhari, a 43-year-old employee with the Saudi oil giant Aramco, said as he struggled with a giant inflatable banana while checking out the Japanese pavilion, his three children in tow. “But of course we have to be careful our children don’t get negative influences.”

International condemnation of the crown prince, which reached its apex after the Khashoggi killing, has also abated somewhat, despite the political suppression at home and state actions such as the biggest mass execution — 81 people on a single day in March — in the kingdom’s history. The Red Sea Film Festival this month attracted stars including Sharon Stone, Guy Ritchie, Shah Rukh Khan and Michelle Rodriguez. Saudi sovereign funds have poured investment into Amazon, Walt Disney and Nintendo, among others.

Last year’s Soundstorm had Human Rights Watch calling on performers and promoters to speak out against Saudi rights abuses “or refuse to participate in yet another one of Saudi’s reputation laundering schemes.”

Organizer Ammary dismisses that characterization of his event, which is just one of 3,800 that the Saudi General Entertainment Authority, a vast government department that the crown prince created in 2016 and that occupies multiple floors of the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh, has spent billions of dollars organizing.

“This makes me roll my eyes. As if our only objective is to impress the world,” Ammary said. “We have 30-million plus people we have to make happy. This is investing in that.”

Mashari Sultan, an unemployed 19-year-old, would certainly agree. Dressed in white pants, a leather jacket, sunglasses and mismatched finger-less gloves, he smiled as he sashayed down the cobblestone path of the Balad in Jeddah.

“This is the first time I’ve ever gone out the way I want to dress. I felt courageous enough to dye streaks in my hair,” he said, giggling as he added that his parents didn’t know he was at Balad Beast.

“It’s everyone in their own way. My parents wouldn’t understand. We’re a different generation.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

From its very infancy, one of the attractions of country music has been its respect for the past.

Many of the genre’s early pioneers, including Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family, made their mark by leaning on so-called “old-fashioned songs,” nostalgic material drawn from a simpler time, before the mass migration to the city, before the Model T destroyed the horse and buggy, and before racy, decadent jazz had reached its peak.

Of course, music is an art, and artists tend to experiment, so the ongoing major battle in country music is the push and pull between expanding boundaries and hanging on to tradition.

Appropriately in 2022 — which happened to mark the 100th anniversary of the first country recording session — that tug of war between progress and tradition was very much evident.

Musically, the sounds of the past were trendy as the current generation of hit-makers celebrates ’90s country. The genre was full of examples, including three of the top 10 songs on the year-end Country Airplay chart: the Garth Brooks-like drama of Cody Johnson’s “ ’Til You Can’t,” the heartbreak storyline filtered through a Texas troubadour in Scotty McCreery’s “Damn Strait” and the Cole Swindell megahit “She Had Me at Heads Carolina,” which returned the melody of Jo Dee Messina’s debut to regular rotation over two decades after its original chart run.

The rise of ronky tonk — a raw, stripped-down form of country (maybe it should be spelled “rawnky tonk”?) — pushed back against the genre’s 10-year party mode while sounding a little more like country has historically presented itself. It brought a new round of young artists to the forefront, including Bailey Zimmerman, Zach Bryan, Jackson Dean and Nate Smith. And it took place as the Paramount+ series Yellowstone soared, resurrecting the once popular western format and adding to the luster of Lainey Wilson, a new artist whose country authenticity fits with her role in the show.

Yet even as country recycled its past, the format is clearly moving forward at the same time. The ubiquitous presence of Jimmie Allen, the multiple collaborations of BRELAND, Kane Brown’sexperiment with stadium headlining and the introduction of new talents — including Madeline Edwards, Tiera Kennedy, Brittany Spencer, The War and Treaty and Chapel Hart — underscores a very real interest in expanding the genre’s diversity, with Black and biracial women making greater inroads alongside the recent uptick in the format’s Black males.

Not that the progressive edge of country rosters and playlists is a one-issue concern. Frank Ray and Kat + Alex are bringing a long-absent Latino influence to the genre’s mainstream, while other acts continue widening the sound of country, including Americana-leaning Boy Named Banjo, hip-hop-tinged Kidd G, adventurous Sam Williams and piano-based Ingrid Andress.

It’s not just the artistic part of country that moved forward in 2022. Podcasts and streaming continued growing, opening more avenues for songs and artists to emerge. BBR Music Group even assigned dedicated employees to focus on single, sprawling media companies: YouTube manager Aaron Wilder and vp of promotion and marketing/SiriusXM Radio Scotty O’Brien.

Country radio, historically the dominant platform for exposing new music, recognized its diminished role more openly. Several panels at February’s Country Radio Seminar addressed broadcasters’ sluggish approach to music rotations, and Country’s Radio Coach owner John Shomby spearheaded a committee that united multiple industry factions in an attempt to reverse the trend.

CRS was held in person after the pandemic forced a remote version of the seminar in 2021. It wasn’t the only annual event that returned to a physical location: CMA Fest took over Nashville’s downtown again after a two-year absence, though a number of industry members caught COVID-19 during the celebration. 

Nearly every artist was back on the road, too, creating its own set of issues. With some longtime support crew retiring or changing career paths during the pandemic, artists — particularly at the club and theater level — were challenged when trying to book full road teams and transportation. 

The Academy of Country Music became the first major organization to shift its awards show from network TV to a streaming platform, and Viacom shifted the CMT Music Awards for the first time from cable to the CBS broadcast network, revising the schedule in the process as the CMTs moved from the week of CMA Fest to the spring. 

By summer, the new routine left much of the industry’s personnel worn out as they returned to a hyper-active calendar after two years of mostly working at home.

Reigning over it all was Morgan Wallen, whose Dangerous: The Double Album dynamited the previous chart record by extending his No. 1 status on Country Albums to 86 weeks. Despite not fully cleaning up his public image after uttering a racial slur in February 2020, he topped nine different country lists among Billboard’s year-end charts, snared a CMA nomination for entertainer of the year, had the RIAA certify 43 different titles during the calendar year and set a 2023 concert schedule that includes 17 stadiums.

The subject of race is part of the push and pull that the industry will continue to address in the future. Back when those old-fashioned songs first took hold in the 1920s, record executives specifically marketed hillbilly records and race music — as the categories were called at the time — to separate audiences. In short order, the artists were segregated as well. The industry is taking steps to better reach Black audiences and expand the ranks of African American executives. Progress is essential to keep every valuable enterprise alive. 

Subscribe to Billboard Country Update, the industry’s must-have source for news, charts, analysis and features. Sign up for free delivery every Monday.

© Provided by CNET
All you need is a library card to gain access to some library’s music streaming services. Getty Images

A library is a magical place. You can scour through scholarly databases, connect to free Wi-Fi, read articles from magazines or newspapers you don’t subscribe to or spend the day in a cozy, well-worn reading chair at your local library. But at some local libraries, you can do all that and stream your favorite albums or songs by local artists you may be unfamiliar with.

For those skeptical of big streaming companies mining our music data or for those looking to cut their subscription costs, now is the time to try out your library’s music streaming service. For more, here are other ways you can save on streaming services and the best services for cord-cutters. 

How do library music streaming services work?

As an alternative to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and subscription services, a handful of libraries across the US are spinning up free music services for library patrons.

To listen, most libraries use streaming services like Freegal or Hoopla. With Freegal, you have access to over 10 million songs you can stream 24/7, and you can download five songs per week. Hoopla offers new albums — such as Taylor Swift’s Midnights — along with classics and holiday tunes. You may also have access to other things too. Hoopla, for example, has ebooks, audiobooks, comics and movies.

All you need is a library card to get access to the music. 

Some libraries across the US and Canada are using their streaming service to provide access to local musicians’ albums and raise awareness for artists in the area, Vice reported in November. Fourteen US libraries across the country, from Iowa to North Carolina use Musicat, open-source software that lets libraries curate music from musicians who have lived or played in the area.

What music can you stream at your library? 

What you can listen to differs from library to library.

The New Orleans Public Library, for example, selected albums from the past five years by musicians who either lived within the city limits or performed near the area. All this music selected and curated by the library became Crescent City Sounds, a collection of 30 albums by New Orleans-based musicians. 

While some libraries focus on the depth with a handful of artists, others, such as the New York Public Library, show off the breadth of their music collection. With over 2 million tracks of classical, jazz, world, folk and Chinese music, the New York library provides an expansive catalog of music with album notes, cover artwork, tracklist, instrumentation and publisher information and even a pronunciation guide for composer and artist names.

Why artists are embracing library streaming 

Artists who put their music on streaming services like Spotify may earn as little as $0.003 to $0.005 from one stream, Business Insider reported. That means an artist would need around 250 streams to make $1. 

Library streaming offers the chance to make more. Joshua Smith with the New Orleans public library told Vice that each artist who is selected by the library’s curators received a $250 honorarium to license their music to the library for five years. For comparison, If an artist on Spotify needs 250 streams to make a dollar, then they need 62,500 streams to make $250. 

The largest public libraries in the country and their music-streaming services

Want to listen? Here are the five largest public libraries, according to the American Library Association, and their respective music-streaming services. Check with your local library to see what streaming services they offer. 

• Maricopa County Library District: Use MCLD’s Freegal to stream over 10 million songs. 
• Los Angeles Public Library: The LAPD also uses Freegal to stream music. 
• New York Public Library: Stream recordings of primarily classic music through Naxos. 
• Los Angeles County Library: LACL uses Freegal and Hoopla for music streaming. 
• Chicago Public Library: Stream music on Hoopla. 

For more, read how to create your own dream festival in Spotify and what to know about this year’s Spotify Wrapped.

Adeem Bingham just couldn’t abide the Aaron Lewis song “Am I the Only One.” The embittered tune, released in 2021, infamously name-checked Bruce Springsteen for being a disappointment to “real” Americans and moaned about the tearing down of Confederate monuments. Bingham, who performs as Adeem the Artist, wasn’t having it.

“It’s a terrible fuckin’ song,” Adeem, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, says. “I listened to it one time and it made me so angry.”

The Knoxville-based artist performed a parody version as a shit-stirring experiment, playing on the old-man-yells-at-cloud energy of the original. Fans urged them to record and release it on their next album, but Adeem had a better idea.

“I thought, what if I treated the guy that Aaron Lewis wrote that song for with respect and care and consideration and tried to imagine his actual perspective and tried to use my intuition to be sensitive to his view of things, and how he feels, and the reality of it?” they said.

The result was “My America,” an acoustic tune that appears on Adeem’s new album White Trash Revelry (one of Rolling Stone‘s best country albums of 2022) and imagines the difficulty of someone navigating a rapidly changing world. “Do the places I’ve found meaning still mean anything at all/Do the values I’ve upheld hold any value now?” they sing. It’s a powerful example of empathy for someone who may not hold the same beliefs as Adeem, a high-wire act of writing that closes out a landmark recording by one of Americana and country music’s most gifted songwriters.

It’s a mild November weeknight and we’re sitting in the coffee shop Frothy Monkey in East Nashville, trying to talk above a jarringly loud playlist of Johnny Cash, Elliott Smith, and Loretta Lynn. Adeem is wearing a denim jacket and scarf over a t-shirt with Dale Earnhardt’s image and the phrase “Today is a great day to kill god.” They’re attempting, with some degree of difficulty, to eat a slice of flourless chocolate cake while being interviewed.

“This wasn’t a great idea,” they say, “but it’s a very good cake.”

Adeem spent the early portion of their life in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area before their family relocated to central New York. They returned to the South as an adult, landing in East Tennessee. Their 2020 album Cast Iron Pansexual brought wider attention, wrestling artfully with parts of Adeem’s identity — “I Never Came Out” cheekily references dalliances with men — and taking on Toby Keith’s jingoistic, working-class cosplay in “I Wish You Would’ve Been a Cowboy.”

It was the latter song that caught the attention of B.J. Barham, leader of American Aquarium, while he was on a long drive with his wife. Barham immediately offered Adeem slots opening for his band, where they were tasked with winning over an audience that may or may not have had a super firm grasp on the nuances of gender identity. Barham felt like the empathy of Adeem’s writing was enough to sway them.

“When you make [songs] human, when you make them not just, ‘I’m right, you’re wrong, fuck yourself,’ but when you talk about it from a very real human standpoint, that’s where you can cross those party lines,” Barham says. “When you address topics that you’re strong willed about, when you talk about them in a very human way, you can transcend them. [Jason] Isbell does that. Adeem eats, sleeps, and breathes that.”

Adeem disclosed their nonbinary identity in 2021, and later that year they created a GoFundMe campaign for a new album, taking the novel approach of asking for $1 in hopes that thousands would say, sure, why not. To Adeem’s surprise, it worked out and exceeded expectations. It even attracted the attention of celebrities like Vincent D’Onofrio, who helped spread the word.

“We just had so many people show up. It was awesome,” they said. “It was like a little lightning bolt. People were bored on the internet and I had an idea.”

Adeem enlisted Kyle Crownover, whose day job is serving as Tyler Childers’ tour manager, to produce the album and then brought in a murderers’ row of guest musicians including Mya Byrne, Joy Clark, Jake Blount, Lizzie No, Jett Holden, and Zach Russell. As with Cast Iron Pansexual, the songs on White Trash Revelry tackle big topics of identity, faith, and the complex politics of the rural South, but they burrow even deeper than before, speaking with authority and vulnerability about the reality of those experiences.

“I felt kind of misunderstood as a kind of counterculturally presenting person in the South,” they say. “And living in the North and being perceived as a redneck. There was always that desire to understand the other.”

One of the most stunning examples of this is on the White Trash Revelry song “Middle of a Heart,” in which Adeem tracks the life of a young hunter who turns into a young soldier and ships off to war. He returns home haunted and falls deep into despair, choosing to take his life in one absolute gut-punch of a verse. It’s been compared, with good reason, to John Prine’s “Sam Stone” for highlighting the interior battles of veterans with PTSD.

“I sent them a text message: Just finished ‘Middle of a Heart.’ Fuck you,” Barham recalls of hearing the song for the first time.

Adeem nimbly shifts between writing from the perspectives of others and incorporating their own biography. “Painkillers & Magic” recalls a childhood of playing in the dirt at an aunt’s trailer, surrounded by assorted varieties of addiction, and praying in church for miracles that never come. “I watch with the eyes of a child as it happens/through the lens of these memories of white trash revelry,” they sing.

There’s a prevailing sense of solidarity with folks in the rural South (and the working class in general), and of how much more complicated the politics are than media outlets on the coasts make them out to be. “Books and Records” pictures people selling their most treasured possessions to make rent as prices and demands surge around them. The funky “Redneck, Unread Hicks” describes a place where pockets of progressive thought and queer fellowship are getting organized, all while “singing ‘Black Lives Matter’ to a Jimmie Rodgers melody.”

“These mutual aid groups [in Knoxville], it’s all fuckin’ hillbillies,” Adeem says. “It’s trailer park kids who’ve seen too many of their friends die of fentanyl overdoses, and they know no help is coming. With that song I really wanted to showcase how the social media meme of what it means to be a leftist activist and the reality of it is very different. Red-dirt shithead rednecks try to act like we’re carpetbaggers if we try to say things need to be handled differently in the South, but people on the coast do the same thing to us.”

Adeem also looks with clear eyes at the way white supremacy has been woven into the American experience from the outset in the revved-up country-rock tune “Heritage of Arrogance” and how that requires some unlearning of handed-down information. Using the lens of Adeem’s memories of Confederate flag-lined streets and all-white churches, on down to both-sides equivocation around the killings of Rodney King and Trayvon Martin, it’s a rousing call to break the cycle. Unlike other songs that have taken on the topic, “Heritage of Arrogance” doesn’t slot Adeem as being virtuous or above the problem. Instead, they’re figuring it out like the rest of us. “I’ve been learning our true history and I hate it,” they sing. “Wasn’t taught the world was so goddamn unjust/but it’s on us to make it right.”

“It’s so much harder to be like, ‘Listen, we as white people have been socialized to be racist,’” Adeem says. “That’s the reality of the situation in America. I’m dealing with it. You’re dealing with it. Everybody’s dealing with it. To me, removing the power from the word ‘racism’ gives us a lot more opportunity to address it and work through it.”

It’s not an easy process to go through, separating the truth from one’s generational beliefs. Mistakes are inevitable. Many people never even get started, though discomfort doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

“I do have a lot of sympathy for folks on that side, because finding somebody who loves you enough to sit around through the tumultuous experience of coming out of that and shedding it and letting it go, it’s a lot. It’s a lot to navigate. It’s a lot to accept,” they say. “It’s like heaven and hell. Some people die old believing in heaven against all odds because they can’t accept that their grandpa is not there, or their wife. Do you want to take that from people? I don’t know.”

But, as Adeem so capably demonstrates again and again on White Trash Revelry, that’s where the empathy part matters the most.