I’m aware that this title seems like an oxymoron. The American songbook flows through the South, and the traditions passed down for decades (or centuries, in some instances) are arguably what keep country music alive.
Some of the greatest achievements of the genre are reimaginings, from Chris Stapleton’s take on the Dean Dillon classic “Tennessee Whiskey” to Morgan Wallen’s now-infamous rendition of Isbell’s “Cover Me Up” and even Colter Wall’s modernized “Cowpoke” on the other end of the sonic spectrum.
You’d go blue trying to rattle them all off and still have room for more once you’d passed out. Borrowing and bending old songs into new shapes is an intrinsic part of the country music cultural backbone. It should remain that way.
Now that the necessity of that preservation has been established, I’m comfortable saying that a good number of today’s cover tracks just don’t come with the juice you need to revamp a familiar favorite.
Ty Myers has just released his Two Braid & The Truth LP, a Willie Nelson tribute record that’s about as heavy-eyed as a one-note symphony. It’s not sleepy in the way you’d expect it to be either. It is a little removed from Nelson’s familiar smoky-haze allure, but not quite in time with the bama-blues motif Myers loves to lean on. It’s not a disservice to Nelson, or disrespectful to his catalog; it’s just plain boring. I think that might be worse.
Back in 2025, Gavin Adcock recruited a dozen of country’s up-and-comers for his own Country Never Dies project, with the express goal of pushing some of the genre’s favorites forward for a new generation. Fair enough, I suppose. It suffered a similar fate to Myers’s newest in some instances, like Hudson Westbrook’s bad karaoke stab at “Slow Hand” or a “Southern Nights” cover that felt unsure where that southern standard should go in the 21st century.
ERNEST had a similar situation when he let his label padawans take the reins on “Cadillac Sessions,” a record chock-full of jukebox favorites that these newcomers clearly weren’t ready to fit in the britches of. The records themselves, again, aren’t total duds. Intentions seemed pure enough, and I’m not questioning the ball knowledge behind the mic; they don’t get past pure novelty.
But the problem is song selection more than the practice itself being tired. As the borders between genres have begun to dissipate, maybe the most fun part of being a music fan has been seeing artists reach over the barricade and draw on influences you wouldn’t normally expect.
The perennial example of this sort of thing is Johnny Cash’s “Hurt,” a wry, calloused western take on the Nine Inch Nails tune, but some of the biggest highlights of modern acts are the moments where they get to show how eclectic their taste is.
49 Winchester’s version of Black Sabbath’s “Changes” was a perfect way for the band to flex their biggest muscles and eccentricities. For Muscadine Bloodline, who wears their pop-punk influence on their sleeve, covering “Clairvoyant” by The Story So Far was an incredible marriage of their southern sensibilities and penchant for the sentimental.
The shining example of this phenomenon might be Luke Combs’s “Fast Car,” which not only let Combs break character but brought country to the forefront of a much larger cultural conversation in the process. What all these instances have in common, though, is that they’re clearly invigorating for the artists. It makes you wonder if sticking to the standard songbook is really worth it.
Preservation looks a lot different in a genre-less world. The rules have clearly been broken and, by extension, artists don’t feel as bound by their direct influences. That may not necessarily be a bad thing. In fact, it might be mutually beneficial for country music and any other subsect of American music that closely borders it. Not only is it exciting to break out of the conventions of country music, but it’s also actively recruiting a new audience who might not otherwise seek it out. There’s room for everybody at the table, and it’s time the modern country cover canon reflected that.
