Brett James and the Quiet Implosion of the American Song-Export Economy By Our Correspondent Who Has Spent Too Many Nights in Airport Lounges Listening to Country Mixes NASHVILLE—While the rest of the planet argues over whose naval drone gets to block whose grain freighter this week, Brett James is hunched over a Steinway in a…
NASHVILLE — Somewhere between the neon baptism of Lower Broadway and the algorithmic altar of Spotify, Lee Brice has become America’s most exportable baritone. To the uninitiated, he is merely another baseball-capped balladeer singing about tailgates and heartbreak; to the global listener, he is a soft-power Trojan horse wheeled into every airport lounge from Dubai…
Nashville’s Soft-Power Envoy: How Brad Paisley Became the Accidental Soundtrack of a Fracturing Planet By the time the first chorus of “American Saturday Night” reaches a dive bar in Lagos, the beer is warm, the generator is coughing diesel, and nobody in the room has ever seen a Chevy—yet they still mouth the words “French…
Lainey Wilson and the Great American Brand Export: How a Bell-Bottomed Arkansan Became a Global Stress Ball PARIS — On any given Tuesday, the Café de Flore smells of Gauloises, existential dread, and—since last spring—bourbon. Not because the French have finally noticed Kentucky exists, but because the house playlist has surrendered to a woman in…
