The Most Conservative Country Music Songs of All Time

Ever since the world first heard one of the most unforgettable opening lines ever — “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee” — both sides of the aisle have fought over the ever-shifting and infamously cryptic intent behind Merle Haggard’s biggest hit: Bob Dylan insisted it was satire; Richard Nixon adapted the song as a straightforward silent-majority anthem; Merle himself could disown his signature song in one line onstage, and defend it in the next. But what’s clear is the cultural impact this Number One country hit has had in the 50-plus years since it was released: “A single, ideologically loaded shotgun blast of what, from here in the 21st century, we recognize as an early rehearsal of identity politics,” as Rolling Stone contributor David Cantwell wrote in his book on the singer, “one early return of fire in what we now term the culture war.” Whatever Haggard was thinking when he wrote it, it’s still a fantastic song, and all the more enjoyable if you’re aware just how much weed its author went on to smoke. —J.B.

In this musical equivalent of Death Wish, Hank Jr. lends a bluesy growl to a revenge fantasy about evening the score with the man who killed his wife and son. After a “big-name lawyer” gets the defendant off on a technicality — a scenario that obsessed many on the right in the Seventies, inspiring a wave of vigilante fiction — the narrator buys a Smith & Wesson Magnum .44 and tracks down his prey. Along the way, he speaks directly to the sentiment that the justice system had bent too far in the direction of criminals: “I’ve got rights too,” he sings. In the final verse, he offers a graphic depiction of the criminal’s last moments: “Guess he thought I was talkin’ just to pass away time/but he kinda looks different now on his knees, beggin’ for his life.” Even Charles Bronson couldn’t be so cold. —J.H.

It’s barely a song at all, just a cornpone spoken-word monologue over a mellow instrumental, all from the perspective of a welfare recipient who’s somehow conned the system to the point where he can afford a “brand-new Cadillac.” Richard Nixon loved it. —B.H.

“I ain’t nothin’ but a simple man/they call me a redneck/I reckon that I am,” the Southern-rock great sings in this defiant, if overly simplistic, statement on what’s wrong with the world (“People done gone and put their Bibles away”) and how he’d fix it. Crooked politicians, rapists, murderers, drug dealers, and soft-on-crime judges are all on the receiving end of Daniels’ wrath — he suggests tying some of them to a stump in a swamp and letting “the rattlers and the bugs and the alligators do the rest.” It’s a far cry from the Lebowski-like Daniels of 1974’s “Long-Haired Country Boy,” a guy who just wanted to be left alone and “take another toke.” —J.H.

In a standout track from his exquisitely titled To the Silent Majority, With Love, legendary songwriter Howard offers a wildly prescient, proto-Libs-of-TikTok plea to an educator: please don’t indoctrinate my kid into the wicked ways of big-city liberalism.  “On the subject of God,” he sings, “if you have any doubts, don’t discuss ’em/ For a teacher should teach and a preacher should preach… We sent you a good Christian boy and he knows right from wrong… Don’t send us a stranger back home.” —B.H.

Why did anyone bother writing any conservative country songs after this one? Over a deceptively cheerful shuffle, Haggard purrs a hippie-smacking message that sums up decades worth of ideological broadsides to come — it’s his country, right or wrong, and anyone “harpin’ on the wars we fight, an’ gripin’ ’bout the way things oughta be” is in danger of a sock in the jaw. And as always for Haggard, it’s infectious enough that even his target — that “squirrely guy who claims he just don’t believe in fightin’” — might find himself singing along. —B.H.

Before there was “living off the grid,” there was “A Country Boy Can Survive,” the ultimate country power ballad about taking care of your own, far removed from the dangers of the city. “I got a shotgun, a rifle and a four-wheel drive,” Williams sings, proud of how “the woman and the kids and the dogs and me” thrive in solitude on their land. He envisions the big city as a site of constant danger, offering a threat of country justice to the man who stabbed his friend on a New York street over a measly 43 dollars: “I’d love to spit some Beech-Nut in that dude’s eyes/And shoot him with my old .45,” he warns. Try that, in other words, in a small town. —J.H.

The horrors of 9/11, understandably enough, unleashed a tidal wave of war fever and jingoism, and its most cartoonish expression came via Keith’s arena-shaker of an anthem, which envisions the Statue of Liberty herself ready to step into the ring and kick some ass. “We’ll put a boot in your ass/It’s the American way,” he sings, and who could disagree? —B.H.

What’s creepiest about this (admittedly catchy) ill-considered fantasia is both its light-heartedness and the way it completely elides the subjects of race and slavery — it’s not unlike writing a song about Nazi Germany winning World War II and only focusing on how much delicious schnitzel and lager the world would get to consume. “When Patsy Cline passed away/That would be our national holiday,” Williams yelps. Sure, and….? —B.H.

Always on the bleeding edge of news headlines, Williams leaped right into the fray as the first Iraq War loomed with this jaunty threat against the man he calls “Say-duhm Hussein.” Along the way, he demonstrates a degree of concern for the territorial integrity of Kuwait that might well puzzle latter-day, America-first conservatives. He also says/sings the quiet part out loud, revealing a not-quite-hidden sentiment in a nation looking to redeem its post-‘Nam self-image: “No the desert ain’t Vietnam/ and there ain’t nowhere to run.” —B.H.

The latter-day, fully MAGA-ed up John Rich might well retitle this one “Requiem for a RINO,” but back in ’08, he was all in for Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Donald Trump would later paint McCain’s horrific stint as a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war as somehow unheroic, but here, Rich lauds his courage: “He stayed strong, stayed extra long.” —B.H.

At the beginning of the song, Black channels Haggard, taking a classic rhetorical stance: “You can wave your signs in protest,” he sings, “against America takin’ stands/The stands America’s takin’/Are the reason that you can.” Like Worley, he links the invasion of Iraq to an amorphous terroristic threat, but he ramps up his rhetoric as the song progresses, in what could be construed as an absurdly over-the-top threat against anti-war protesters: “Now it might be a smart-bomb/They find stupid people too/If you stand with the likes of Saddam/One just might find you.” —B.H.

As President George W. Bush led the post-9/11 charge to invade Iraq, his administration was eager to draw links between Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, and the terrorist attacks — never mind that Hussein and Iraq had nothing to do with them. Darryl Worley eagerly did propaganda work for the president here, making a maudlin, line-blurring case for an impending invasion entirely based on 9/11 — he even refers repeatedly to Osama Bin Laden, without ever mentioning Hussein’s name. “Some say this country’s just out looking for a fight,” he sings, giving the game away. “After 9/11, man, I’d have to say that’s right.” —B.H.

When Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players protested racism and police brutality by refusing to stand for the playing of the national anthem, a backlash emerged from some on the right. Neal McCoy, who hit his commercial high point in the Nineties with “Wink” and “No Doubt About It,” spoke for that side with a highly literal diatribe against the silent protest: “When I see somebody on TV/Take their stand on bended knee/Whether it’s on astroturf or grass/I think of those whose freedom was not free/And I say, ‘Take a knee, my ass!’” Utterly poetic. —J.H.

By 2012, some additional paranoia has crept into Williams’ worldview, as he shoves back against a never-directly-named Barack Obama with this fierce stomper, which also takes a comically specific shot at a Fox and Friends interview gone wrong. As he saw it, the then-presidential-candidate aimed to take away not only his guns, but also his friends, his religion, the pictures on his wall, the capitalist system, and even my “Christian name.” —B.H.

Abetted by a weeping fiddle, John Rich stands athwart history, yelling, “stop, y’all.” In his vision of America, practicing Catholic Joe Biden wants us to “let go of Jesus and let government save,” “building back better” is a sinister slogan, not a goofy one, and Democrats want to shut down Main Streets. The solution, Rich suggests, is to “stick your progress where the sun don’t shine.” —B.H.

“Rich Men North of Richmond” is a helluva journey. In the first half of the song, Oliver Anthony, the overnight voice of (at least some of) the people, rails against low pay and greedy politicians up in D.C. His passionate rage over “what the world’s gotten to” is all but irresistible. But then the song takes a sharp turn, seemingly slamming not the fat cats but some of the poor folks (the obese ones on welfare, specifically) that the song champions elsewhere. Even as Republican politicians and right-wing influencers embraced his song, Anthony said he doesn’t consider himself to be on the left or the right, and insisted in a YouTube video that the lines about welfare — “Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds/Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds” — were an attack on the government’s fostering of dependency, and a protest on behalf of people “who are only left with the option of living on junk food.” One of the most likely antecedents to Anthony’s hit is Hank Williams Jr.’s 1979 track “Tired of Being Johnny B. Good,” in which Hank Jr. bitches about high prices and low wages and suggests that those in power are “putting this over on me.” He knows better though, just like Anthony. “Lord knows they all just wanna have total control,” Anthony sings in “Richmond.” “And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do.” No surprise that the viral Virginia singer has cited Williams as his biggest influence. —J.H.

Aldean’s turgid mid-tempo rocker made little to no impact when it was first released. That’s because it sounded much like any number of the infinite country songs that blurred the border between rural pride and big city resentment, even if its visions of consequence-free carjackings and robberies, paired with fantasies of small-town-vigilantism, were especially lurid. It wasn’t until Aldean released a provocative video, with its footage of big city protestors and rioters interspersed with racially coded images of small town innocence, that the song jumped to the very top of the Hot 100 in a white-hot moment of culture war lightning: Everyone from Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis to Nikki Haley and Donald Trump rushed to defend the song, and conservative fans downloaded it on iTunes. Meanwhile, scholars, historians, activists and Nashville songwriters all pointed out the loaded racial history that Aldean’s music video and lyrics were invoking. Anytime an artist releases a statement that begins with the words “In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song,” something has gone terribly wrong. —J.B.

In this truly dire broadside, complete with cheesy handclaps and clunky harmonies, the Gatlins take aim at the Clintons with mostly vague complaints about lying. Their only direct attack is the suggestion that the family’s wealth is somehow ill-gotten: “I got sick and tired of you stealin’ my money/to pay for jet airplanes and limousines… You and Bubba livin’ above my means/At Chappaqua, livin’ like kings and queens.” —B.H.

The guy from Staind had failed to land any bona fide hits in the decade or so since he’d shifted to his country music career when he released this Fox News-headlining grabbing conservative lament in 2021, during the height of the pandemic vaccination culture wars (Lewis would later go on to repeat common right-wing talking points about Anthony Fauci.) In the song, Lewis questioned whether he was alone in his love for Confederate Statues and his hatred for mega-lib Bruce Springsteen; the result was plenty of Fox News support, his first Country Number One, and full-throated support from his label head Scott Borchetta, who defended the song as “speaking to millions.” —J.B.

Faith is great, but not the blind variety. In an anthem that unintentionally captures some of the irrational tenor of George W. Bush’s America, the otherwise consistently awesome Underwood paints a kitschy portrait of a young mom about to die in a car accident — only to actually let go of her steering wheel in hopes that the Lord will literally become her co-pilot, which He does. Even in age of purportedly self-driving cars, t’s hard not to see this song as just pure bad advice. —B.H.

Rich’s upbeat new attack on “wokeness” is mostly good-natured (the video even has a cameo by the My Pillow guy), with a half-hearted swipe at mask-wearers, and a weirdly outdated blast at Tesla drivers. Come on, J.R.: Hank Jr. would never lose sight of Elon Musk’s current views. —B.H.