Although I do not have any inherent cultural ties to the genre, I have always felt a strong connection with Country music. I was born and primarily raised in Long Beach, CA, but some of my earliest musical memories involve my mother playing Leann Rimes and Shania Twain around the house in the mid-late 1990s. So, it is definitely part of my musical DNA. As I grew older, my ears veered more towards Pop, Hard Rock, and R&B, but high school led me back to Country in a surprisingly intimate way. I had no social or academic success within the Long Beach Unified School District, and so said district eventually permitted me to consider schools outside of my zip code. In the Fall of 2005, I would start 8th grade, and I would start it in a woefully secluded boarding school within a tiny rural town in San Diego County. I was used to the constant concrete, clogged highways, trains, and buses of Los Angeles County. Now, all that surrounded me were open fields, mountains, farms, tractors, and trucks. I was officially a semi-Country girl.
Naturally, many town residents worked at the boarding school and would bring their music and mannerisms into the dorms. Me and my peers were imported from the big cities and preferred straightforward Pop, R&B, and Hip-Hop, but MTV and VH1 didn’t necessarily play videos that the staff found age-appropriate. One channel that was perennially allowed, though, was CMT or Country Music Television. We resisted a bit at first, but not too long after, two new female Country stars would debut, and everything would change. And quickly. Their names were Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. In elementary and middle school, I was well aware and fond of Southern dynamos like Trisha Yearwood, Faith Hill, and The (Dixie) Chicks, and both my mom and I were humongous fans of the WB’s Reba (McEntire). But despite me casually enjoying their music, I couldn’t yet relate to them. I was under 13 then, and they were well into their 20s, 30s, and 40s. But in 2006, I was 14, Carrie was 23, and Taylor was 17. They sang, spoke, and wrote about the kinds of things my friends and I would have sung, spoke, and wrote about if given the chance. Needless to say, we were all smitten. Any time their videos played, we would all gather around to watch. And if a boy had broken my heart, I would immediately turn to Taylor to help mend it.
My first true musical love was most certainly the Teen Pop that dominated the airwaves during the late 1990s, but Country still holds an exceedingly special place in my heart. And if I were an actual Southern gal, I am sure I would be in Nashville somewhere right now, (poorly) singing a Faith, Shania, or Carrie cover in a little dive bar, trying my best to get a record deal. If only.
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