| Tennessee’s government has turned hard red, but a new set of outlaw songwriters is challenging Music City’s conservative ways—and ruling bro-country sound.  Photographs by Ashley Gilbertson / VII for The New Yorker The city of Nashville had “long taken pride in its reputation for racial comity, for being a place where people with disagreements could coexist,” Emily Nussbaum writes, in a deeply reported new story from what has become a shrinking Democratic island in a sea of increasingly activist conservative politics. But just how welcoming of difference was the country-music company town in the old days? And who fits in today, as the city welcomes an influx of new residents and visitors, including a cadre of MAGA media influencers who’ve settled in the suburbs and scores of bachelorette parties that hit a strip known as NashVegas each weekend? With open eyes and ears, Nussbaum explores whether there is room in the new Nashville—and on country radio—for a Black traditionalist inspired by Merle Haggard or a nonbinary singer with a critically acclaimed album called “White Trash Revelry” or iconoclastic women who, as one reactionary industry figure puts it, dare to open “their big mouths.” For more on the artists featured in the piece, listen to Nussbaum’s “Country Music Culture Wars” playlist. 🎧 | 
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