Actress Reese Witherspoon is on a mission to change country music. She is launching a new project with country music star Kacey Musgraves aimed at making the country music industry “more inclusive and representative.”
According to Breitbart, the show will primarily feature contestants of different ethnicities and at least one non-binary. Witherspoon had a busy day on Friday when she announced this new project. On the same day, she announced that she would be divorcing her husband of eleven years. MSN shared the following Tweet that Witherspoon made about the upcoming Apple+ show:
“My Kind of Country was born out of conversations with Kacey Musgraces about how country music needs to be more inclusive & representative.”
The show, which has become a hot topic among country fans, is described by Apple+ as the following:
‘“My Kind of Country” is a fresh take on a competition series, breaking down barriers in country music by providing an extraordinary opportunity to diverse and innovative artists from around the world. Scouts Allen, Guyton and Peck each hand-pick a roster of exceptional up-and-coming artists and invite them to the home of country music in Nashville, Tennessee, to showcase their unique sound. The competition winner will receive a life-changing prize from Apple Music, receiving unprecedented support and exposure on the platform.’
For Musgrave, this project was one that she felt strongly about. She says that country music often tends to “underestimate” its listeners and avoid talking about the topics that she finds necessary. Musgraves said:
“Country music isn’t just about songs about trucks… I think taking creative risk on people who has something different to say, sound different or look different that is how we are going to find the icons of our next generation.”
This comes after Morgan Wallen’s booming success in his most recent album release. While most country fans seem to love his music, given that he has the top album in the genre as of right now, other fans cannot get past the incident from a few years ago where Wallen drunkenly uttered the n-word while with his friends. Fox News shared one example of a Slate journalist who clearly was not ready to accept Wallen’s apology. Fox News wrote:
Country music star Morgan Wallen’s number one hit “Last Night” has the liberal media up in arms about the singer’s past, pointing to attempts to cancel him in 2021 after video surfaced of him drunkenly using the N-word shortly after nationwide Black Lives Matter protests dominated headlines.
“Numerically speaking, this new song is not topping the charts by uniting disparate audiences. It’s not (yet, maybe ever) a song for everybody,” Slate Magazine’s Chris Molanphy wrote of the hit last Friday.
“And whatever its musical merits, you get the sinking feeling it’s being boosted by an audience that’s trying to prove a point, and maybe even … own the libs?” he wrote.
It will be an interesting test to see whether this new inclusive country music show can put up anywhere near the numbers that Wallen has this year. And, of course, if it doesn’t, it will be fun to see people blame racism for this failure.
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