Country music has always provided an honest reflection of the virtues and vices of the common man. In this sense, Tyler Childers seems to be your quintessential country music artist. Whereas Hank Williams woefully reflects on the perils of “the lost highway,” Childers chillingly recounts the difficulty in keeping “your nose on the grindstone and out of the pills.” Love, heartbreak, vice, redemption — if the Appalachian Mountains could croon, they’d belt out in the voice of Childers.
For the many of us disillusioned with the unceasing slew of “snap-track country,” Childers’ raw and unfiltered style seems like a welcome return to country music’s roots. In turn, the red-headed Kentuckian has become one of the most popular country music artists, despite having little to do with the Nashville establishment.
As revealed by his most recent single, however, Childers is anything but your traditional country music artist. The song itself, titled “In Your Love,” sounds like your run-of-the-mill country love song. The controversy surrounds the single’s music video, which features the romance between two gay coal miners and the prejudice they must overcome. Childers has defended his chosen theme, claiming that “these are human stories, not political stories.” However, that’s hard to believe, both because of the current social climate in which feigning neutrality is hardly believable, as well as his history of political messaging.
During the summer of George Floyd, the full force of the woke regime’s propaganda machine deployed to shame white men into feeling complicit in Floyd’s
