60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”—Toby Keith

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Rob homes in on the specific and strange political moment in which Toby Keith made "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue." Then, he’s joined by New Yorker music writer Kelefa Sanneh to discuss the song’s themes, cultural reception, and musical merit and the state of how we talk about Keith’s career. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Kelefa Sanneh Producers: Bobby Wagner, Jonathan Kermah, and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Folks, it's Jay Kyle Mann from The Ringer, and as always, basketball is so freaking, freaking good. It's so good, in fact, that the Ringer's NBA draft show is finally back just in time for a ramp up to June. We've got you covered every week as we take an in-depth look at who's got next for the NBA's future. We'll talk the rising and falling stocks of the best and the brightest prospects in the 2025 NBA draft class. From Cooper Flag to Dylan Harper, the BJ Edgecom, and more. in with me on the Ringer NBA Draft Show every Wednesday and make sure that you follow, subscribe, and hit us with those five-star ratings. His name, and I didn't know this, his name is Yosep Maria Garcia.

He lives in Spain outside Barcelona. He's in his mid-40s now. He works in marketing. He describes himself as reserved. And his resting facial expression is somewhat disconcertingly stern. He has resting, glowering face. That's about all I got on Yosep, Maria Garcia. I don't know him.

You don't know him either unless perhaps you work in marketing in Spain. And yet I know this man's face. I have seen just the one photograph of this man's resting glowering face many hundreds, if not thousands of times. And if you spend too much time on the internet, then you too know this man's face. and you know him as the worst person you know. In 2018, the satirical website Clickhole launched as an extension of the almighty satirical newspaper, The Onion, and focused on VAPid BuzzFeed-esque viral internet content. In 2018, the satirical website Clickhole publishes a short article with the headline, heartbreaking, colon, the worst person you know just made a great. point. And there's a semi-glowering photo of Yosep Maria Garcia that I have seen, yeah, probably

thousands of times whilst doom-scrolling social media. This article and this picture of this random guy is eternally viral. Some asshole politician on Twitter says, you know what sucks? Daylight savings time. And someone quote tweets it, boop with just a glowering photo of Yosep Maria Garcia because the worst person you know just made a great point, right? Clickall got that entirely random headshot of Yosup Maria Garcia off Getty images where you can buy news photos, stock photos, whatever. Yoseb did not precisely consent to this. So the Guardian tracks this poor guy down in 2022 for an article that begins, quote,

Soon after the pandemic plunged Spain into confinement, Yosep Maria. Garcia received a panicked call from his brother-in-law. He told me not to worry, but that I should Google the phrase, the worst person you know, said Garcia. I put it in, and there I was, everywhere. I scrolled down and it was my face, my face, my face. I thought, what is going on? End quote, yikes.

What happened was Yoseb's brother-in-law is a professional photographer, and they were hanging out together and Barcelona and the brother-in-law's got a photo shoot. And so he takes a quick photo of Yosup just to test the light. And they both like the photo. So they upload it to Getty images where, theoretically, anybody can buy it and use it for pretty much anything. And Shazam, Yosep is a famous meme. He's got a Wikipedia page.

He is the worst person you know. Yosep says, quote, I've read comments that say he has the face of a Nazi supremacist or that there is no empathy in my look. And he laughs and says, I've got a lot of photos with that look. That's my look, end quote. It's just a normal photo of him, making his normal face that has now assigned to him a famous, comically loathsome internet personality. And Yoseb is pretty chill about this. His day-to-day life is fairly anonymous. His coworkers are generally oblivious. It's chill. He doesn't do many interviews. But when he does, there's just a hint of unease, right? In the Guardian article, it says that in the years since, quote, he has steadfastly refused to be photographed, lest it go viral again, he told one newspaper, hinting at the scars that continue to linger, end quote, yikes. See, with the

onion, I always thought the people in the photographs had some idea they might wind up in the Onion, like their co-workers or friends or willing participants. So the guy in the picture next to area man, pretty sure he knows which athletes are gay, or the lady in the picture next to report Fun Ant has to go away for a while. These people had some warning. These people gave at least a slightly more specific form of consent. I thought about this again recently when I saw another lady's photograph next to another Onion article. This lady ain't

worst person you know famous, but the article is famous. And when I saw this lady's picture again, I got a legitimate and honestly pretty unpleasant shock because I remembered her vividly. White lady, brunette, bright smile, sunny disposition, rosy cheeks. She's got resting cheerful face. Random nice lady. This is just a tiny little headshot of this

smiling woman, a postage stamp, really. And her photo appears next to a headline I will remember for the rest of my life. The headline is, not knowing what else to do, woman bakes American flag cake. So after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, for several days at least, there is basically silence comedically, which in 2001 means no late night talk shows, no Saturday night live, no onion, and no idea what comedy even is now. This is like the 500th biggest problem facing the world at this point. But somehow some of us heroically carved out enough time to argue about whether it's the death of irony or whatever. What is comedy now? What is music now? What is culture? What is anything? And then some semblance

of comedic reality returns in three phases. Phase one, David Letterman. Watching all of this, I wasn't sure that I should be doing a television show because for 20 years we've been in the city, making fun of everything, making fun of the city, making fun of my hair, making fun of Paul, well... The late show at David Letterman returns to CBS on the night of Monday, September 17th, 2001, and David Letterman sits at his desk and monologues

for eight minutes straight with virtually no jokes. Dave observing that his band leader, and sidekick Paul Schaefer is bald. That's like half a joke. But the very slight nervous laughter there, this is the first very slight nervous laughter I'd heard, and I'm guessing that a lot of America had heard in the past week. So Dave talks about how sad, how terribly sad, he says with a quaver in his voice,

how terribly sad New York City feels right now. He praises the NYPD and the New York Fire Department and New York City Mayor Rudolph, Giuliani. But yeah, more so than his words, it's the somber tone of his voice here that gets me, the gravity, the devastation, the vulnerability. This Letterman monologue is super famous, but now, in 2025, I think of David Letterman primarily like this. I think of this guy. I think of the wise, old, gentle, sincere, bearded, mild, wise-cracking, softy. But part of the dissonance, part of what immediately made this monologue so famous and devastating is that in 2001, I at least still thought of David Letterman as the hip, swaggering, caustic, jerk-adjacent, share-antagonizing, ironic

troublemaker. And in 2001, I watched this monologue. I don't remember how. I don't think I watched it live, but I watched it somehow on the internet for sure. And I heard this new heartbroken and heartfelt tone in Dave's voice, and I thought, maybe everything really is different now, forever. We're told that they were zealots fueled by religious fervor, religious fervor. And if you live to be a thousand years old, will that make any sense to you?

Will that make any goddamn sense? That's the phrasing that sticks with me that I can replay in my head anytime I want to. If you live to be a thousand years old, Will that make any sense to you? Will that make any goddamn sense? So Letterman's back. But at least to me, he feels like an entirely different person now.

Phase two of comedy coming back after 9-11, SNL. Saturday Night Live returns, as previously scheduled, on September 29, 2001, more than two weeks later, and a cold opens with New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, standing on stage with members of the New York Police Department, the New York Fire Department, and the Port Authority Police Department. They introduced Paul Simon, who sings The Boxer.

And periodically, during the song, we swing back over to the other stage, and the camera just slowly, reverently pans over the faces of these police officers, these firefighters, these leaders, these men and women, these heroes. The song ends, an S&L boss, Lauren Michaels,

joins Mayor Giuliani on stage, and they tee up exactly one tentative joke. Can we be funny? Why start now? Not bad, as tentative jokes go. That was the first remotely enthusiastic comedic type of applause I'd heard, and I'm guessing that a lot of America had heard in those past several weeks. Phase three of comedy coming back was The Onion.

This was the big one to me. The Onion was the coolest, the wildest, the most righteous, the most authoritative, and yeah, also the funniest source of comedy in my 23-year-old opinion in 2001. Also, Midwestern. The Onion newspaper started in Madison, Wisconsin in 1988. I'm in Ohio. Close enough. I'm proud of The Onion. I claim The Onion as a beloved regional institution. The Onion speaks on my behalf. And I do remember specifically sitting at my desk, at my arts writer job, at my alt-weekly newspaper in Columbus, Ohio, farting around on my computer where I'd spend my days trawling local music message boards and reading the sports guy and Hunter S. Thompson on

ESPN.com's page two and tinkering with my Yahoo fantasy baseball team. And now I'm reading the first issue of the onion after 9-11. This issue came out on September 27th, a couple days before SNL returned, but this is the cultural reaction to 9-11 that really immediately blows me away, and that I find myself reading and rereading and rereading in the weeks to come. Okay. The Onion Front page on September 27, 2001. We got a little graphic in the middle of the page that's an outline of the United States with a burning fireball in it and crosshairs over it. surrounded by the words, holy fucking shit, attack on America. The top story is headlined, U.S. vows to defeat whoever it is we're at war with.

Other headlines include hugging up 76,000 percent. Rest of country temporarily feels deep affection for New York. And massive attack on Pentagon, page 14 news. Then there's American Life Turns into Bad Jerry Brookheimer movie. Next to a photo of the burning twin towers with a caption above, an actual scene from real life. There's also Jerry Falwell. Is that guy a dick or what? I forget exactly what Jerry Falwell said after 9-11, and I intend to keep it that way. There's also hijackers surprised to find selves in hell next to two postage stamp photos of actual 9-11 hijackers. And I vividly remember how violent, how gory. And yes, honestly,

how cruelly satisfying the text of that article was. Quote, There was a tumultuous conflagration of burning steel and fuel at our gates, and from it stepped forth these hijackers, the blessed name of the Lord

already turning to molten brass on their accursed lips, said Iblis the thrice damned, the cacodemone charged with conscripting new arrivals into the ranks of the forgotten. Indeed, I do not know with they were expecting, but they certainly didn't seem prepared to be skewered from

eye socket to bunghole and then placed on a spit so that their flesh could be roasted by the searing gale of flattice, which issues forth from the haunches of Asma Day. There is also a reference to the 9-11 hijackers being, quote, hollowed out and used as prophylactics by thorn-cocked Goldbooth the rampant, end quote. Something about that phrase. resonated with me. That phrase was quite funny to me, but with an aftertaste of something darker and meaner, something tentatively cathartic, something I didn't know I wanted, but I wanted it. My crude 23-year-old sense of things was that after 9-11, everyone everywhere was shocked and devastated

and at least temporarily speechless. And we were all, and in this moment I'm especially dangerously susceptible to the royal we, right? We were all seeking some sort of catharsis, some sense of justice, some form of revenge. What kind of revenge enacted against whom, how, and where, and for how long? Those were the variables. It seemed like that was the only argument going forward. That was the argument, and those were the variables that would maybe define my country going forward. But then also there was this onion headline, not knowing what else to do, woman bakes

American flag cake. Next to this beaming, sunny, oblivious, suddenly and permanently heartbreaking woman whose face, I forget for long periods, but when I see her smiling face again, I remember it all. I remember her. I remember how she made me feel.

I read that headline in her face before I read the headline. You know what I mean? And to my mind, more than any article in the 9-11 issue of The Onion, more than any piece of art in any media created in the earth, early aftermath of 9-11, not knowing what else to do, woman bakes American flag cake

captures the sadness and the helplessness of that endless moment. Dateline Topeka, Kansas, quote, Feeling helpless in the wake of the horrible September 11 terrorist attacks that killed thousands, Christine Pearson baked a cake and decorated it like an American flag Monday. I had to do something to force myself away from the TV. said Pearson, 33, carefully laying rows of strawberry slices on the white fudge frosting covered cake. All of those people, those poor people, I don't know what else to do. End quote.

It goes on. The article's not terribly long, but every word counts. Every word hurts. The article says that this woman, Christine, has already donated blood and donated to the Red Cross and sent a letter of thanks to the New York Fire Department. And also she'd been aimlessly wandering from room to room in her apartment. The article clarifies that she is, quote, a Topeka legal secretary who has never visited and knows no one in either New York or Washington, D.C., end quote.

And speaking as an alt-weekly arts writer in Columbus, Ohio at the time, that detail is vital, not living in those places and not knowing very many people who do. The bonus awful personal struggle with how much sadness or anger you can personally rightfully claim versus everyone directly affected versus the active mourning families of all those poor people. The whole deal with The Onion is that the writers are anonymous. Being a writer for The Onion was the coolest job, I could imagine in 2001, by the way. But the Onion's 9-11 issue is such a famous and beloved and canonized event that there's been anniversary coverage. and such, which is why we know that Onion headwriter Carol Colb came up with this headline, this idea. Carol had gone to somebody's house shortly after 9-11, and a woman there had baked an

American flag cake because she didn't know what else to do. And so this Onion article ends with this fictional woman, Christine Pearson, she goes to a friend's house for dinner. She visits her fictional friends Cassie and Patrick Overstreet. Quote, I baked a cake, said Pierce. Shrugging her shoulders and forcing a smile as she unveiled the dessert in the Overstreet household later that evening. I made it into a flag. Pearson in the Overstreet's stared at the cake in silence for nearly a minute until Cassie hugged Pearson. It's beautiful, Cassie said. The cake is beautiful.

End quote. My kids, my sons, my two teenage sons, they inform me that now, on YouTube or whatever, they stumble across a lot of 9-11 references, a lot of memes, unfortunately, a lot of jokes. Young people today got a lot of 9-11 jokes, apparently. And I find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that young people today, young people here to find is anyone below the age of like 25. Young people today do not. They literally cannot possibly remember what it was like on 9-11 and what it was like in the days weeks. And months afterward. I genuinely cannot fathom what it must be like to know 9-11 only as some history book fact as an abstract idea the way as a kid I thought about, I don't know, Pearl Harbor or the 70s. How strange to not vividly remember that awful, helpless, I don't know what to do feeling. When that feeling arguably now defines the world young people are currently living in. How strange that I highly doubt I could ever convey that feeling to anyone who didn't directly feel it.

This awful, helpless feeling that besides David Letterman and The Onion, seemingly nobody could articulate, even in the moment, even while we were all still feeling it. But people tried, of course. People impressively, even heroically tried to articulate that feeling. And so, two months later, on November 7, 2001, live at the CMA Awards, Alan Jackson baked us all an American flag cake. Where were you when the world stopped turning at September day? Alan Jackson is obviously. already a country superstar. He's already an all-timer. When he appears at the Country Music Association Awards, the country Grammys, basically, live on stage at the Grand Ole Opry House in

Nashville in early November 2001. This song, Where Were You When the World Stop Turning, will eventually appear on Alan's 10th major label album, released in 2002 and called Drive. This song will eventually hit number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Alan has, I believe, 26 number one songs on that chart total. No offense, but I don't think any of Allen's 25 other very fine number one songs can make people break down weeping within 15 seconds. Did you stand there and shone at the sight of that black smoke rising against that blue sky? Did you shout out in anger and fear for your neighbor or did you just sit down and cry? The pristine authority and sincerity and depth of Alan's voice with the fiddle above it,

it's a lot. It's beautifully and unbearably evocative of a whole lot. Shock, anger, fear, crying. There is a tangible shell-shocked quality to this song that really strikes me. There is a relatable disbelief. And the repeated direct address here, did you, did you, did you, where were you? There's a great book called Rednecks and Blue Dens. next, The Politics of Country Music, written by the great music journalist and critic Chris Wilman, book came out in 2005. And it talks a lot about this song and how Alan premiered this song for the CMA's brass in a conference room. Award shows generally don't want even superstars to play a brand new song on TV, but Alan wants to play this one. So he plays it for these execs. And Chris

writes, quote, by the time the playback was over, most of the men in the room were crying because it is a tearjerker. End quote. Talking to Chris, Alan Jackson himself, says, quote, after 9-11, I was pretty disturbed, like most people. For a few weeks, I thought about writing something. I'm sure a lot of people who write songs felt the same way, but I didn't want to write a patriotic thing and couldn't think of anything that didn't feel like I'd be taking advantage of it commercially, end quote. But Alan says that the melody, the opening lines, and the chorus to where were you, when the world stopped turning, all came to him one day in a lucid dream.

Which brings us to the chorus. And maybe that line just took you right out of real political man. I watch CNN, but I'm not sure I can tell you the difference and I rock and I rent. And maybe that line just took you right out of it. I watched CNN, but I'm not sure. I can tell you the difference in Iraq and Iran. I remember watching Alan sing this on TV, not the CMAs, I don't think, but maybe the actual Grammys. He did this live at the Grammys in February 2002. And I remember, Alan hit that line and my friend sitting next to me on the couch. She didn't snort and she didn't groan exactly, but she had a pronounced audible reaction. He doesn't know the difference between if you leave the protective halo of open weeping this song creates for you,

this song is perhaps less simple than it appears, or perhaps it is too simple. Those post-9-11 variables, what kind of revenge enacted against whom, how, and where, and for how long, it's not a great sign, perhaps, that as a culture, we're leading with a confession that maybe sometimes we get our Middle Eastern countries confused. in that rednecks and blue necks book tibone burnett the great musician and super producer t bone burnett says

quote with all due respect to mr jackson who is a very good country singer if someone doesn't know the difference between iraq and iran i'm not interested in anything else he has to say on the subject end quote he also suggests that allan go look it up on the internet and t bone says quote to not look at it, to ignore it, by definition, creates ignorance, and ignorance does not further us as a country. Ignorance did not put a man on the moon, end quote. Well, that's true about the moon, but Alan Jackson, I think, would politely retort that this song ain't trying to put a man on the moon. And the confusion, even the ignorance Alan describes, that's important to evoke too. We are all of us Americans going to learn a great deal about the Middle East going forward, however much or however little we knew before. And Alan Jackson says simply, quote,

I'm sure there are people who criticize it. I just wrote what I felt. I didn't premeditate anything. I'm just a singer of simple songs, and that's the truth. And I don't know the difference between Iraq and Iran. End quote. Alan also notes that the explicitly religious aspects of this song probably upset some people too. But, well, quote, I didn't sit down to heal the world or

anything. But I know Jesus and I talk to God and I remember this from when I was young. Fake hope and love are some good things he gave us. And the greatest is love. And indeed, Alan Jackson did not heal the world or anything. But I do think with Where Were You When the World Stop Turning, he was trying to, or at least he was trying to heal himself, or at least trying to soothe himself. And his humility is inherent to his greatness, because I do think this song is legitimately cathartic and maybe even legitimately soothing, if only in part, and if only for the length of the song itself. And anyway, other far less soothing forms of American catharsis would be available real soon. Because not everyone wants to bake a cake. My name is Rob Harvilla.

This is the 18th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s, Cole in the 2000s. And this week we are discussing courtesy of the red, white, and blue, the angry American by Toby Keith. from his 2002 album Unleashed. No Oxford comma. Courtesy of the red, comma, white and blue, parentheses, the angry American,

close parentheses. The line about the Statue of Liberty shaking her fist makes me think of the Onion's goofy political cartoons, right, with the Statue of Liberty shedding a tear in the background

because someone opened a vegan restaurant or teenagers only watch YouTube now or something. And maybe the cartoons also got the famous onion guy looking in the living room window wearing the sickos shirt and going yes ha ha ha yes yes i'm nervous thanks for asking this song makes me nervous we're going to get through this together spiritually i suppose we're still trying to get through this together and the whole ball game here maybe is whether you can separate your own personal sociopolitical feelings about toby keith singing the words and the eagle will fly

it's going to be hell. If you can separate those words from the really tremendous swooping charismatic gusto with which Toby Keith splendidly and perhaps even beautifully sings the words and the eagle will fly.

It's going to be hell. You know how people worry about separating the art from the artist? Well, that's light work compared with trying to separate the art from the art. You feel me?

I'm not like super nervous, but I'm a little nervous. Hey, look over there. All right, whatever product or service was just advertised, you can get 10% off right now with the promo code, nervous. That's not true. That's a joke. Can we be funny? Why start now?

All right. Briefly, we ought to nod even just a couple more early musical attempts to reckon with 9-11. And we ought to clarify that country music did not quite have a monopoly on early musical attempts to reckon with 9-11. Ladies and gentlemen, I cede the rest of my time to the senator from Staten Island.

Fuck not got buildings down. Who the man behind a world trade massacre? Step up now. We don't four planes at a-hound shoe and say bitch. Fly that shit off my hood and get blowing the bitch. Oh, thank God. Here we have Ghostface Killer asking some legitimately good questions

on a song called Rules from the 2001 Wutang Clan album, Iron Flag. Is you insane, bitch? Absolutely qualifies as a good question in this era. Whatever or whoever you are addressing. 2001, this album was released in December 2001. That's an impressive turnaround time for any group of musicians, let alone the Wutang Clan.

Iron Flag is maybe nobody's favorite Wutang record, but compared with virtually anyone else, I would prefer to hear from Ghostface Killa on really any topic, including somehow this topic. No disrespect. That's where I rest my hat. I understand you got to rest yours. True, nigger, my people's dead America. Together we stand divided.

We fought. Mr. Bush, sit down. I'm in charge of the war. I do think the war might have gone better if Ghostface Killa had been in charge. Ghostface Killa knows all the knowns and all the unknowns, if you take my meaning. He knows both the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. America, together we stand divided, we fall.

That's not a new observation, nor is it one of Ghostface Killers' most memorable lines. But in this endless, terrible moment, it did bear repeating. The senator from Staten Island cedes his time to the senator from Canada. Here we have Neil Young, factual Canadian, but spiritual honorary great American, Neil Young, singing a song called Let's Roll from his April 2002 album Are You Passionate? There's that you, you, you again.

Deep breath. Let's roll, of course, is a quote, is a rallying cry, as a two-word monument to bravery and sacrifice, attributed to a man named Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93, which was among the planes hijacked on September 11th. And Todd and other passengers fought back

and overpowered the hijack. and breached the hijacked plane's cockpit, and the plane crashed in Stony Creek Township in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board but preventing the hijackers from flying the plane into whatever their intended target might have been, possibly the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. And what a fucking awful sentence that was to type and then say out loud. Here in the awful Jerry Bruckheimer movie that America had become,

and perhaps remains. Notably, four years later, on a 2006 album called Living with War, Neil Young will sing a song called Let's Impeach the President. Very soon, Neil will be grappling, as we all grappled, with the nuances and complications and contradictions of what and who to support and how and why. But here in 2002, on this song, in this moment, very lyrically explicitly, in this hijacked airplane, Neil Young, who is famous for not mincing words, Neil Young is mincing even fewer words than usual. International icon Neil Young, wailing these unminsed words in this moment, the pristine authority and sincerity and depth of Neil's voice with the roaring guitars on deck.

It's a lot. This song Let's Roll is out in April 2002, and my impulse is to limit our skis here to the first eight months or so post 9-11 and thus limit our scope to the most immediate musical reactions because by 2003, starting with the United States invasion of Iraq in March 2003, by then it's all complications and arguments, right? But nonetheless, finally, believe me, I tried to talk myself out of talking about this song, but no dice. I hear people say, we don't need this war. But I say there's some things

Worth fighting for So this song sung by the country singer Daryl Warley Co-written by Daryl Worley And Win Vrable and released in early 2003 This song is called Have You Forgotten? And here we have a far more confrontational And incendiary and really accusatory approach

To the Alan Jackson direct address, The U, you, you of it all. That's have you forgotten question mark. So look, this song drove some people nuts because here in early 2003, in the line, I hear people saying, we don't need this war. This war could conceivably refer to the war in Afghanistan or the war in Iraq or the broader global war on terror. And supporting one war does not necessarily mean supporting them all. And not supporting one or all of those wars definitely does not mean forgetting. I can only speak for myself. but also, yeah, I can assure you that exactly nobody had forgotten. No. Respectfully, on behalf of everyone, no, no one had forgotten. Darrell Worley, talking to CNN's Lou Dobbs in 2003,

Darrell says, quote, to me, the song is not necessarily pro-war. That's not the reason we wrote the song. The song is pro-America. It's pro-military. But I don't necessarily think it's a pro-war. war song, end quote. Okay, but I will say that the chorus to have you forgotten, question mark, ends with a line that drove some people extra nuts. And yeah, once again, here in early 2003, at the onset of our war with Saddam Hussein, who was in Iraq.

Speaking only for myself, exactly nobody was saying we shouldn't worry about al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the 9-11 attacks, and who was, was not in Iraq. There's a USA Today article about this song from February 2003 that explores how opinions on have you forgotten were divided even within country music. A country radio consultant named Steve Warren says, quote, singing a song about going to war with Saddam because bin Laden hit us is a leap of logic that I don't think any informed people outside the White House can make. I wouldn't play the thing, no matter how many requests I got for the sucker. End quote.

Whereas a San Diego country radio DJ named Tony Randall says, quote, the audience is so wrapped up in the emotion of what it's about, I don't think they're nitpicking at this point. I'm sure we'll get that as we play it more. I think at this point, everybody's viewing all the bad guys in a big bucket. End quote.

It appears there's a real U.S. vows to defeat. whoever it is were at war with vibe to this song. And finally, Darrell Worley himself, after gamely discussing with USA Today, the shall we say not yet settled arguments about a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, Darrell says, quote, we're not trying to be politically correct. We're trying to put out a message that we believe everybody needs to hear whether they agree with it totally or not. End quote. Jeez, Louise, I got to talk about something else for a minute. So here's another you, you, you type question for you. Can you hear this man's mullet? I should have been a cowboy. I should have learned to row my six year riding my pony on a

cat and dry. Because I can totally hear this guy's really quite impressive mullet. And I can also marvel at the delicious sauce this guy just put on the words cattle. drive. Toby Keith Covel was born in Clinton, Oklahoma in 1961. Toby played defensive end for a semi-pro football team called the Oklahoma Drillers, and he also literally worked as an oil driller in Oklahoma. He released his self-titled major label album in 1993, an album that kicked off with his very first number one country hit called Should Have Been a Cowboy. Just a tremendous mullet on Toby Keith on this album cover, a hair metal blonde mullets of distinction. This is no business in the front, party in the back mullet. This mullet is all party all the time. I told you

I wanted to talk about something else. I've always said what I don't know. Couldn't hurt as bad as leaving you. Turns out I knew what I was thinking. It ain't an easy thing to do. That one's called Wish I Didn't Know Now, and I hear a lot of Garth Brooks in early Toby Keith. This song keeps reminding me of a very specific Garthbrook song, actually. She had the need to feel the thunder, that one. There is a distinctly Oklahoman propulsion and bombast to Toby Keith, but there's also such a nimbleness to Toby's phrasing, a light touch amidst the bombast,

an Alan Jackson-esque sweetness and sensitivity with just a touch. a booming Randy Travis bass action. Toby Keith is, from the very beginning, a songwriter. He wrote himself all but two songs on this first record. But what I really need you to know up front is that Toby Keith is a really truly phenomenal singer. There's just this warmth, this entrancing charisma, this bracing honesty, this soul, not overreaching genre blending, quote unquote, soul, but actual soul, whether he's

trying to make you cry or make you laugh or make you pump your fist or make you wince. Bro country is not a thing here in 1993 officially, and yet, of course, bro country is the thing. Country music is forever lousy with bros. But at first contact, Toby Keith is, at the very least, a mesmerizingly multi-dimensional bro. You get swept up. You laugh with him. You cry with him. You pump your fist with him.

And you think, I can fix him. I'm feeding the dog, sack in the trash. It's honey do this, honey do that. I sobered up. And I got to thank. And girl, it ain't much fun since I quit drinking. I think we can agree that Toby Keith sounds phenomenal, even when he's just listing domestic chores, such as feeding the dog and sack in the trash. I think we can agree that,

girl, you ain't much fun since I quit drinking is a phenomenal line. That songs called You Ain't Much Fun from Toby's second album, released in 1994 and called Boomtown. So here's the thing. I've spent like the last two weeks listening to basically nothing but Toby Keith, and I've been having a blast, quite frankly, and I only regret that we do not have more time here today to luxuriate in this man's fantastic back catalog.

Toby Keith put out six fantastic albums before courtesy of the red, white, and blue came out. Six fantastic normal albums and a pretty good Christmas album. I listened to a Christmas album in March. That's how deep into Toby Keith I got. Dig the big old tough guy sweetheart romanticism of this song called Me Too. Oh, I'm just a man. That's the way I was made. I'm not too good at safe.

What you need me to say This is from Toby's 1996 album, Blue Moon. Even if you yourself are not predisposed to tolerate a country song with a chorus that starts with a man singing, oh, I'm just a man, that's the way I was made, I submit to you that the gentleness, the genuine yearning, the sublimated macho passion in Toby Keith's voice makes that line not only tolerable but pleasurable. Me Too is a song directed to his lady friend about how he finds it hard to say, I love you. So his lady friend should just be aware that when she tells him, I love you, he really means it when he says, me too.

It's a great song. Toby Keith is a bro for the broverse. But so here's the thing. Among some Toby Keith fans, there is concern, there is maybe even dismay about how the song, courtesy of the red, white, and blue might possibly distort the wider public perception of Toby Keith. That's entirely independent of how you might feel personally or politically about courtesy of the red, white, and blue. It's just that if someone knows exactly one Toby Keith song, it is likely that one. And given how confrontational and polarizing and arguably political and wartime topical it is, courtesy of the red, white, and blue did not come close to conveying

everything Toby Keith can do. Everything Toby Keith does. Everything Toby Keith does. did. Toby Keith died in 2024 of stomach cancer. He was 62. And the great New York Times pop critic John Caramanica wrote a wonderful tribute with the headline, Toby Keith was more than mere bluster. The subhead read, quote, his choice to become a post-9-11 culture war champion overshadowed the work of a musician who was funnier, subtler, and more politically slippery than his most famous work led on. end quote. John writes, quote, Keith's career was also an object lesson in how one incandescent and hard-to-ignore moment can shine so brightly that it obscures more nuanced truths below. For most of the rest of his career, Keith was a sly humorist, a good-natured blowhard, a chronicler of what really happens below

thick skin. End quote. Can I play you my current favorite Toby Keith song? It's called tired. My name is Jackson. I was named after my father. Followed in his footsteps down here to this factory. I think my whole deal with Toby Keith is that the first line of any Toby Key song just stops you dead in your tracks. You're locked in.

Whatever version of himself Toby is presenting to you, a sad Toby, mushy Toby, rowdy Toby. That current version of Toby is suddenly your favorite version. You love him and you believe him. You believe he is a factory worker named Jackson. Tired appears on his 1997 album Dreamwalkin. I was taking my dorky little notes on all these Toby Keith albums and songs.

I just kept writing variations on, he sings the hell out of this. But he like extra sings the hell out of this. I ain't complaining wouldn't waste my breath to bother This work ain't hard It's only boring as can be And see the longstanding argument

That country music specifically Is a very special and venerable And powerful ability To speak directly to the concerns of everyday people, to express their hopes and fears To articulate what they love and what they hate That argument is immediately terribly complicated by how you define the term everyday people, right? Who gets to be everyday people? But

tired is the best case scenario of that argument for country music's greatness, for its primacy. Very simply, I just stopped in my tracks and locked in and fully immersed myself in Toby Keith's voice here. And I do not often have that reaction even to other voices that I love. Suddenly, I feel as tired as Toby Keith says he feels. And paradoxically, that is an enormously energizing feeling. So yeah, if you know exactly one Toby Keith song, make Tired the second Toby Keith song, you know. That's my advice. If you want to stick with a dream walk-in record, go ahead and make the third Toby Keith song,

you know, his duet with Sting. Yes, that sting. On the sting song, I'm so happy I can't stop crying. Get a load of the sauce Toby puts on the words Legal Separation. Incredible. This man can make the words

Joint custody and legal separation. and legal separation sound like sweet nothings. There's a fine line between luxuriating and Toby Keith's back catalog and stalling, I suppose. Okay, as we move on, the dexterity,

the awesome versatility of Toby Keith is all still there, but his brashier, rowier side is ramping up especially. In 1999, he puts out a splendid album called How Do You Like Me Now, with a question mark and an exclamation point. You know the Drake thing where most of Drake's songs now seem to be Drake complaining about all the women who rejected Drake before Drake got famous and now Drake's lording Drake's fame over them?

The title track to this record, the Toby Key song called How Do You Like Me Now? Question Mark, exclamation point is a good reminder that Drake didn't invent that thing. Not that Toby invented the Drake thing, but you get me. The mullet is long gone by now if you even need me to say that. that. Toby is favoring a snappy white should have been a cowboy hat by this time, but the pleasant audible echo of the Mullet era remains. Great song. Delightful broish bluster, absolutely. But don't let that distract you from the fact that the best song on How Do You Like Me Now, the album is

called New Orleans. It's a love song. Get a load of the sauce Toby puts on the words, Little Jesse. He worked the station. She worked the store. And then they had a baby And then they had one more Little Jesse Outstanding

You learned so much about Little Jesse Just the way Toby Keith sings His or her name In 2001 Toby puts out an album called Pull My Chain Yeah And the song that gets the most attention Meaning it's the biggest

of the album's three number one country songs Is the song where Toby Okay Kind of sort of sort of raps. Superb. So this record, Pull My Chain, comes out on August 28, 2001.

And so Toby Keith's first prominent artistic response to 9-11 is not a song, but a video. It is the video for a tender ballad on this Pull My Chain record called My List, meaning a list of serene and family-oriented activities preferable to, say, working or arguing about politics on the internet. a little prayer, take a deep breath of mountain air, put on my glove, play some cats, it's time and I make

time for that. And the video for my list depicts many of these serene and family-oriented activities, but the video starts with a crying young couple in front of the TV watching disaster footage on the news. I'm not positive if it's actual 9-11 footage, but it's certainly supposed to explicitly evoke

9-11 footage. And then the husband, the father, he rushes out the door to go help because it turns out he is a fireman. But I'd argue that the song, My List, on its own, though it predates this suddenly terrible moment, this song already speaks to how Toby Keith's versatility makes him an ideal singer and songwriter for this suddenly terrible moment. He's got so much artistic and emotional credibility, so much authority. He's got so many love songs, so many family songs, so many terribly, terribly sad songs. The theme of this particular song is

Go Touch Grass to use a current super online term that describes how ideal it is to not be super online. But there's something so heartening about hearing Toby Keith even list possible reactions you could have to catastrophe.

Possible things you could do instead of just despair. In the shore, cast a line, look up an old lost friend of mine, sit on the porch and give my girl a kiss. Start living. That's the next thing on my live. But anger is a gift, or so I've been told.

And anger was a very popular and entirely justifiable reaction amid the shock and devastation of 9-11. And Toby Keith had a great deal of artistic and emotional credibility when it came to anger as well. girls and American guys we'll always stand up and salute we'll always recognize So right off the rip

This song, courtesy of the red, white and blue, parentheses the Angry American, This song doesn't work if it's not a truly, you might even say undeniably great song. If the song sucks, it don't rile up anybody One way or the other. Even if the song turns you off or pisses you, you off, the song only works. The song only provokes a reaction if it's immaculately constructed and

immaculately sung. And it's Toby Keith we're talking about, so check and check. Even that single opening guitar chord, the near acapella bellow of his voice, this song is galvanizing before anything truly galvanizing even happens. Toby, who often described himself as a very conservative Democrat, and at least at the onset, did not perceive this song as a partisan broadside of any sort. Toby says he wrote this song in a 20-minute writing binge shortly, very shortly after 9-11. He says this in a March 2004 article in Time magazine with the headline, America's Ruffian. And the subhead, quote, Toby Keith is either a crazy redneck patriot or country music's greatest actor. And quote.

Toby says, quote, I wrote it so that I had something to play for our fighting men and women. End quote. He says he first performed it at the U.S. Naval Academy where it brought the house down. My daddy served in the Army

we lost his right eye, but he flew a flag out in our yard till the day that he died. And that's all true. Toby's father, Army veteran Hubert Keith Covel lost his right eye while serving in the Korean War, and he died in a car accident in March 2001. In a 2017 article for the boot, Toby says, quote, my father had begged me for years to go on USO tours, and I was so busy. We were doing 130 shows a year that I just didn't have it

in my schedule. Finally, he passed away in March, and then 9-11 happened. I was like, now I have to go honor him. I was sitting out there just a few days after the towers came down. I was working out in the gym, and I heard these talking heads say, well, I guess we could bomb them. That would be so the American way. And I was like, what just happened to us? Are we supposed to just stand by and let this happen? Could we not be mad as hell about this? End quote. Also, Toby says, quote, I wrote it on the back of a fantasy football sheet that was laying there. I just turned it and wrote around the edges and, in about 20 minutes, wrote the lyric out and called it the angry American. When I turned it in, to his label or his publishing company, I presume, they said, well, it really doesn't say angry

American in there. Why don't you call it courtesy of the red, white, and blue? So I did. End quote. the detail that the parchment for this particular song was a fantasy football stat sheet or whatever okay oh wow that detail is especially striking to me once this song uh escalates which it does very quickly

now this nation that I love is falling under attack a mighty sucker punch came flying in from somewhere in the back And this characterization of 9-11 as a mighty sucker punch that came flying in from somewhere in the back, to me, that's the line that pulls the trigger. And now the bullets are flying, starting with the second most incendiary line in the whole song. And it's way too melodramatic to say that the world. to say that the world turns, our country pivots, the arc of history bends on that line,

on man we lit up your world like the 4th of July. So, okay, that line encapsulates the way everything changed. The you and we lit up your world, as written, that is a very clear, a very specific you, a very specific target. But the rapid expansion of that you, the rapid expansion of your world into other countries, These near-future concerns about what kind of revenge enacted against whom, how, and where, and for how long, these concerns obviously lie outside the parameters of the song, but I still hear them anyway. Which brings us to the most incendiary line in the song. In Time magazine, Toby talks about his hesitancy to let courtesy of the red, white, and blue, roam beyond the confines of the U.S. Naval Academy.

He says, quote, once people said I should release it, I knew there was going to be trouble. I'm comfortable being extreme, but saying boot in your ass is so extreme. Of course, if you say foot in your butt, you got no song. End quote. Whatever you think of this next line as policy, he's right. Go ahead and imagine this as foot in your butt. You'll be sorry that you mess with. The U.S. of A.

Because we'll put a boot in your ass. It's the American way. It's the American way is as startling as we'll put a boot in your ass, I'd say. So it's more or less impossible to talk about courtesy of the red, white, and blue, and talk about circa 2003 Toby Keith, without at least mentioning the Dixie Chicks. So Natalie Mains, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, the biggest, the best-selling group in country music. They changed their name to just the chicks in 2020. Talking to the Los Angeles Daily News in 2002, Natalie is asked about this particular Toby

Keith song. And Natalie says, quote, don't get me started. I hate it. It's ignorant and it makes country music sound ignorant. It targets an entire culture and not just the bad people who did bad things. You've got to have some tact. Anybody can write, we'll put a boot in your ass, but a lot of people agree with it. End quote. And Toby first takes offense as a songwriter. In the rednecks and blue necks book, Toby says, quote, if you're against a cause, then you speak your mind against the cause. But when you single me out personally and attack the craftsmanship of the song, end quote. This feud spirals out of control starting in March 2003 on the cusp of the Iraq war after Natalie Mains on stage with the chicks in London. She tells the crowd, quote, just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas. End quote. This results in one of the most rapid and severe public denunciations. of an American musician in American history.

And the chicks are all but banished from country music for years. De facto radio bands, bonfires of chicks, CDs, death threats, etc. Here recently, I have tried to at least better understand the argument behind this ferocious backlash. The argument that Natalie was criticizing our president while on foreign soil, London, but okay, the argument that you shouldn't criticize the president during wartime, the argument that you can't be anti-war without being anti-the-trups fighting the war, etc. But I can't get there.

And I'll always think of the chick's backlash as pretty dismaying and appalling and just a little bit un-American. And meanwhile, regrettably, in the immediate midst of the chick's backlash, at a few of his concerts, Toby Keith flashed, is on screen a doctored image he'd found somewhere of Natalie Mains and Saddam Hussein embracing. The crowd loves it. And Natalie responds to that in May 2003 at the Academy of Country Music Awards, the other country Grammys. Natalie responds by wearing on stage a t-shirt that says F-U-T-K, which, despite what the chicks claim at the time, is not an acronym for freedom understanding truth and knowledge or freedom united in truth and kindness. Notably, at that 2003 ACM award ceremony, Toby Keith wins the prestigious industry prize entertainer of the year, and the chicks do not.

The feud blessedly burns out from there. Talking to contact music in August 2003, Toby says, quote, a best friend of mine, the guy that started the first band I was ever in, he lost a two-year-old daughter to cancer. A few days after I found out she didn't have long to live, I saw a picture on the cover of Country Weekly with a picture of me and Natalie, and it said, Fight to the death or something. It seemed so insignificant. I said, enough is enough.

End quote. He stopped putting up the Sodom photo on stage. In 2005, talking to Playboy, Toby says, quote, I disappointed myself tremendously with that exchange. The whole thing ended up a fiasco. I felt like I lowered. myself." End quote. That is notably not an apology, and nobody wins a feud this ugly and this

tied up and fraught global affairs. But Toby Keith remains an industry-beloved country hitmaker for the rest of his life while the chicks take a far more difficult, more tumultuous, more confrontational, a less comfortable path. Travel and Soldier by the Chicks is my favorite country song of the first half of the 2000s. How about I just say that in move? on. So from 2001 onward, the galvanizing success of courtesy of the red, white, and blue changes Toby's approach musically. And you could say philosophically for a while. His next album, released in 2003, is called Shokin'all. Yeah. And features a stirring song called American Soldier and another less stirring song called Taliban song. Maybe you heard about that one. Maybe you also

remember that in early 2017, Toby Keith performed at a nationally televised concert for the first inauguration of Donald Trump. I wrote about this inauguration concert for the ringer, and I won't pretend I had a good time, but there's no getting around the fact that the sentiment of courtesy of the red, white, and blue parentheses, the angry American has endured. Toby Keith responding to criticism of his decision to play this Trump thing, Toby told Entertainment Weekly, quote, I don't apologize for performing for our country or military. I performed at events for previous presidents, George W. Bush and Obama. And over 200 shows in Iraq and Afghanistan for the U.S.O.

End quote. And that's a vital part of this song's legacy also. After he put out, courtesy of the red, white, and blue, Toby Keith went on to do a ton of overseas U.S.O tours. He went to VA hospitals. He met with tons of soldiers. He honored his father. And indeed, honoring his father was Toby's whole motive in writing this song in the first place.

In that rednecks and bluenecks book, James Stroud, the co-chairman of Toby's label, James says, quote, They bring dog tags. I was with Toby the night before the Super Bowl. There was a whole company of servicemen that gave him dog tags of men that had died. Handfuls. That's a tough gig. end quote. And when I read that,

I did stop for a second and think about Toby Keith, tough and decisive a guy as he might have been, talking to these grateful soldiers with handfuls of their friends' dog tags in his hands. There's something clarifying

about remembering that even the boot in your ass guy was undoubtedly sometimes stunned by grief and sadness. And that awful American feeling of not quite knowing what to do. We are delighted in honor to be joined once again by Kelifassane, staff writer at the New Yorker,

former pop critic for the New York Times, and author of major labels, A History of Popular Music in Seven genres. Kay, thanks so much for coming back. Thanks for having me. I've been waiting patiently for the return invite. I'm sorry it took so long. We should have had you back sooner,

but I figured this was the one. one. This is the one, dude. Very terrifying. To start out, what was the vibe in country music to your mind in early 2001? I'm kind of obsessed with this question about vibe because it's so fake, right? Like we go back through a handful of songs that were popular and sort of like, depending on the discourse, we sort of like make it up. So I'm always a little, I don't totally trust my own view of what the vibe was, but certainly one thing that was happening in the late 90s is that you had this big country pop explosion, right? You have it sort of kicked off a little bit by Garth Brooks and the rise of sound scan and people, which allows people, sound scan is a system that allows record

stores to report via a computer, then a novelty, which records were actually selling. And the whole world discovered, certainly the whole American world, discovered that country music and hip hop were way more popular than anyone thought. And it helps blast Garth Brooks to another level. They're like, oh my God, he's one of the most popular singers in America. He's playing arenas, stadiums. And so he gets this crazy success. And then by the late 90s, you get a bunch of kind of crossover songs and acts, right? You have Shania Twain making these incredible like space age, hair metal pop country records, you know, that just go like supernova. Man, I feel like a woman, I'm going to get you good a little later.

You're still the one. Don't impress me much. You have Faith Hill, who had been a kind of like seemingly kind of traditional country singer, and she has a record called This Kiss, and it goes huge. And then she kind of makes a pop record following that. And then, of course, you have a group that was then known as the Dixie Chachie. who have a string of big country hits in the late 90s. And the records, to a lesser or greater extent,

they cross over some of them a little bit to pop radio, but they're also, the group is just so sort of broadly appealing and mediogenic that they get some crossover attention. And so whereas maybe in the old days, in the 80s, there was this sense that country music, you know, the rest of the music industry sort of looked at it a little bit as a backwater. It seemed a little old-fashioned. You know, you had like Alabama, right?

It's like 17 guys standing around a microphone. A lot of guys in Alabama, yeah. Please fact-checked that number. But so there is this idea that in the 90s, late 90s, you're having this big pop country moment. And what often happens in popular music is when you have these kind of big crossover moments, eventually what happens is the pendulum swings back. And so in this particular narrative of country music in the late 90s and early 2000s, that pendulum is named Toby Keith.

Hmm. Okay. All right. I was going to ask, because I feel like fans of Toby Keith are almost dismayed at how much oxygen courtesy of the red, white, and blue takes up in terms of talking about Toby Keith. So I really wanted to talk about him in the 90s, like the pre-history, like what made him great, what made him important, what made him that pendulum swinging back? Can I just throw, you know, I know that podcasts like little moments of tension and suspense, can I just say that I'm going to disagree with that assessment later in this podcast?

You can disagree with it right now if you want. No, let's say the oxygen disagreement. Remind me. Okay, all right. I'll come back to it. But no, Toby Keith has had a string of hits in the 90s, but he's not really a crossover. star in a way. He doesn't seem particularly cool

in a way that MTV is going to take notice of, but he's a consistent hit maker. He's this guy from Oklahoma. And actually he has a lot of range. His breakthrough hit should have been a cowboy 1993, but he does kind of funny songs, he does bluesy songs, he does sad songs.

He is responsible for the only country hit in the whole career of Sting. He recorded a version of I'm so happy, I can't stop crying with Sting, which went to number two on the country chart. And so he has this reputation within the country world. He has small hits, he has big hits, but he's definitely living within the country universe. I guess how do you like me now crosses over a little bit in

1999. And he's starting to kind of have enough success in country that the mainstream is kind of starting to take notice. But he really is a country star and in that sense a generic star. I mean that, you know, you know me, I'm obsessed with musical genres. So when I say generic, I mean it as high praise. He's a huge deal within the world of country music. He's not making what's, he's not making songs that sound like pop songs. So when courtesy of the red, white, and blue first hit, like, did this song strike you immediately as something that might help him cross over, you know, did it, was it a big deal

in your eyes for Toby and for country music as a whole? Like, how seriously did you take this song immediately? So, um, so I started working as a full-time music critic at the New York Times in 2002. Okay. A couple months before this song was officially released as a single. Yeah. And I can't claim that I was paying very close or sophisticated attention to the country charts from the start of my tenure in this, um, wonderful, ridiculous job that I had.

But this was a song, you know, but obviously I'm living in New York. 9-11 is like everywhere. People are talking about politics. And this song is a song, is the first Toby Keith song that you definitely knew about if you were even a little bit interested in music, even if you weren't a fan of country music. Because this song very quickly comes to be seen as, you know, it's like a statement. It's not just a country song. And it becomes a phenomenon. It becomes a controversy.

It becomes all sorts of things. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of corny and oversimplifying to say that 9-11 changed everything. And like, we've established that vibes are fake. But do you think that this song helps sort of usher in, you know, did country music's vibe and tone, which is fake, like changed dramatically and sort of permanently after 9-11? with songs like this and have you forgotten? And then what happens to the chicks is just country music completely different within a year of 9-11.

I don't know if it's so much that vibes are fake, but vibes are really hard to nail down and to define. But one thing that country music does well that a lot of other forms, especially like rock music, does kind of poorly, is it tells a story, right? Especially after Nirvana, although you could argue maybe after Bob Dylan, Like, rock music embraces impressionistic lyrics where, like, you have no idea what the song is maybe about, right? Sounds good. It gets the people going.

But, like, we don't really know an albino, a mosquito, whatever, right? And so, yeah. And so country music remains, and actually still is today in 2025, a really kind of literal-minded genre. And the expectation among country music fans is not just that the words are going to be intelligible, but that the narrative in the song is going to be intelligible. And often, you know, that means love songs. Sometimes it means songs about culture or what it means to be country.

But in the case of Toby Keith, what it means is that he has an opportunity to write a topical song. And topical songs are very much the exception in country music, not the rule. But when you get one and it really hits, it can be a really big deal. I think part of the reason why a song like Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue, the Angry American is a big deal, is that it feels like counter-programming. It feels a little bit like he's giving you not just a message, but a spirit, a feeling that you're not necessarily getting in other parts of the entertainment industry, right?

There's a lot of questioning. There's a lot of grief. By 2002, by 2002, some of the discussion is already starting to move toward foreign policy and George W. Bush and politics. And so that Toby Keith's song, even when the song starts, it's very, it's very firm. It's very strong. It's very kind of like aggressive. if it's like, let me tell you something.

This isn't going to be kind of beating around the bush. It's not going to be like, oh, yeah, man, I don't really know what's happening. It's going to be American girls and American guys will always stand up and salute, will always recognize, right? He's talking about the flag like he's looking for a fight. Right, right.

I mean, any time I've read about this song, I feel like the word jingoistic comes up. And, like, that's a word I only really ever see applied to country music songs, you know, pejoratively some of the time. Like, is that a word? word you've used often as a critic? Like, what is, is this song jingoistic, in your opinion?

Someone out there might fact check me, but I try to avoid when I'm thinking about music, any word that is always either an insult or a compliment. So I try to avoid describing any song as jingoistic on the one hand or soulful, on the other hand. Like, I don't really know what these terms mean. But it's like, yeah, he's singing about America, and he's singing about this idea that if you attack America, we'll put a boot up your ass. We'll put a boot in your ass.

Excuse me. It's the American way. You'll be sorry that you messed with the US of A. That's right. And it's funny, like, that song, it sometimes gets discussed as, like, controversial. I'm not sure that that sentiment was controversial. in 2002 in America.

Or even that it's controversial now in America. Right. Or that it's controversial in just about any country where people feel like, yeah, if you blow up our buildings and kill thousands of people, we'll put a boot in your ass. I mean, it's a fairly straightforward and very widely appealing sentiment, but it was a sentiment you weren't hearing in other songs

and maybe weren't hearing a lot of places in, in that kind of popular culture. And so in that sense, he kind of had this lane all to himself to express something that maybe a lot of people were feeling, but not a lot of people were singing. Okay, so I think it's probably time for you to just straight up disagree with me. Okay, so I was saying that my concern,

or I sensed a concern that this song takes up a lot of oxygen in the conversation about Toby Keith now, and it causes us to maybe overlook all the different things that he could do well. But like, where do you think this song fits into his catalog and into any discussion, you know, of his legacy? I guess what I would say is my sense is that this song really did transform his career, right? Because it turned him from like a country singer with a bunch of hits to a guy who stands for something. And a guy who could sell tickets summer after summer for years and decades after this song came out.

And the reason why I would disagree with you slightly is my sense is not that the average Toby Keith fan is like, oh, he's so much more than this one song. I mean, I think your average Toby Keith fan loves this song and loves his other songs and doesn't feel like this song is a blemish or a stain upon his discography. They feel like it's one of his big hits. And if you look at his career, he continued to have a wide range of hits, especially in the years after, courtesy of the red, white, and blue, the angry American. He had stays in Mexico. You know, I love this bar. He had as good as I once was, one of my favorite is his singles, which is a kind of like, yeah, it's like a rye, funny single about a guy in a bar getting old. Yeah.

Red Solo Cup. I really dig Red Solo. Solo Cup. He said it. It's like it's the dumbest song he ever sang and he loves it. You know, and I agree with both halves of that completely. Yeah, that's kind of a, it's kind of a novelty song. It's more similar to like, you think about like Trace Adkins, honky tonk,

but don'tcadonk. It was a time when there was a bunch of these kind of like party country novelty songs. But no, and I think, you know, the reaction, I remember seeing him a few years later at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Homel, New Jersey, like a little amphitheater by a highway. And when he played courtesy of the red, white and blue, the angry American, it was incredible. It was incredibly intense. It was moving. People went nuts for it.

And it was a really meaningful moment in that show. So, yes, it didn't feel like, I don't think from the perspective of, like, a Toby Keith fan, that song feels like something he has to sort of get past or live down. It feels like one of his, I think it probably feels like one of his great triumphs. So when you look back at country music, in the early 2000s. When we think about songs like this one or like, where were you when the world stopped turning out? Jackson, you know, have you forgotten?

You know, as you say, like non-country fans are paying more attention to country now, like starting with sound skin, but especially now, given the political environment, these songs are sort of crossing over. You know, do we overinflate the importance of these super topical responses to 9-11 in terms of 2000s country as a whole? Was there a lot more going on than this?

Or is it fair to say that, these songs sort of define that era of country music in retrospect. Look, I don't think we need to, I don't think we ever need to apologize for being interested in something that's interesting. And like, it's interesting that in country music in the early 2000s, you had this handful of topical songs, right? Right. Where were you when the world stopped turning?

Alan Jackson really sort of sad, elegant song uses non-rime in the chorus in an interesting way, which is a way to sort of, it's a way that a singer can kind of tell the audience, like, no, what I'm saying is so important. I didn't even want to rhyme it. That's right. Faith, hope, and love are some good things he gave us, and the greatest is love. Like, he's singing about God, he's not rhyming. And he's evoking pride in America, but also sort of like sadness about what happened. And then, you know, have you forgotten by Darrell Worley is interesting because it's,

Of this trio of songs, it's the one that could most readily be interpreted as an endorsement of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Right. I hear people saying, we don't need this war, is the first line. It's released around the time that the Iraq war is starting. And so that's a really interesting moment, right? Because it definitely falls into the category of what I would call anti-protest songs, which sometimes are more interesting to me as a cat.

category than protest songs. But again, it's an underserved category, right? If you're looking, if you're, you know, if you look at the polling, the Iraq war was, you know, when it was launched, was fairly popular. And if you think about how many explicitly pro-Iraq war songs were on the charts, not that many. And so for Darrell Worley, this definitely turned out to be one of his biggest hits. And, you know, that's kind of why. I guess I would add a fourth song. Well, there's a few more songs you could add to that list, right? You could think about Brooks and Dunn only in America, which is not specifically a 9-11 song, but after 9-11 comes to be treated as a 9-11 song. And then, of course, Lee Greenwood, God bless the USA, sort of gets new life. But, you know,

it's funny. Like, I think there is a perception sometimes that country music, especially in that era was really partisan. And I think that that was added to, by what happened to the Dixie Chicks. Of course. And is that a different podcast? Are we trying to avoid getting too deep into the Dixie Chicks? I don't think we can avoid it, honestly, because, you know, they were feuding, Toby and the Dixie Chicks were feuding previous to this, right?

Like, Natalie sort of speaks out against courtesy of the red, white, and blue specifically, and then she says what she says in London and everything blows up. And then they're inextricable in my mind, even if I don't want them to be. you know, I think you can't talk about one without the other. So I think the chicks are a huge one. Yeah, so Natalie Mainz describes courtesy of the red, white, and blue as being ignorant. Ignorant. And I got to say, like, people have to realize how unusual this is.

Like, country music is not like hip-hop. The idea of, like, one country star saying something insulting. Right. Yeah, about a single by another country star. I can barely think of another example from the last 20 or 30 years, even if you leave politics out of it of just someone saying like,

that song sucks. It really doesn't happen. It's a very kind of like polite industry even now. I mean outwardly, obviously inwardly. It's a cesspool like every industry. Yeah. So yes, they kind of start by insulting him,

or she starts rather than Natalie Mains, And then they have this moment in London of saying that they're ashamed. The president is from Texas. And there's this huge backlash. You know, Toby Keith really goes after them and puts, you know, puts caricatures of them up on the screen behind him when he's performing. Yeah. As Saddam Hussein lovers, they get pulled off of country radio, basically blacklisted from country radio. And in return, they kind of say, well, we don't really want to be part of this country genre anyway.

We don't want to be stuck on people's CD chain. next to Reba McIntyre. We're trying to find a different audience anyway. And so you kind of get a divorce between Dixie Chicks and country music. And so country music, understandably, gets a reputation as a genre where there's no room for someone like the Dixie Chicks. And the Dixie Chicks actually go on to continue to have success, but kind of outside of the country radio world. And this really, at the time, there was a lot of talk about, you know, the conglomerates that own the radio stations, and maybe this was a top-down thing.

Yeah, as far as I could tell it was more bottom-up. As far as I could tell, people in the country world really were angry with the Dixie Chicks. Ironically, ironically, 20 years later, the only other major artist to be pulled from country radio in recent memory like this, it really was top-down. I'm talking about Morgan Wallen,

who gets caught using the N-word. and there's a whole big scandal and he gets pulled off of country radio for a while until eventually country radio listeners are saying, what are you guys doing? We love this guy. Put him back on the radio. The bottom comes back up.

Right, right. Yeah, and so that one really was top down and there wasn't popular support for that ban, as far as I could tell. But with the Dixie Chicks, it really did seem like there was popular support for that ban. I think there's a whole alternate history you could tell where after that controversy

if they'd said, look, this is how we feel about the president, but we love country music. This is our home. We'll never leave country music. We're going to make the country's song you've ever heard. Like, is there a possibility they could have gotten back into the country world? Maybe, but you don't blame them for saying, like, we don't want to be in this world. Forget about it. And certainly that controversy made it so that Toby Keith came to seem in the country world like someone who was standing up for America, but also standing up for the genre, right? In the aftermath of this moment when you'd had all these country pop hits,

Toby Keith is identifying himself as, I'm country country, I'm with you guys culturally, I'm with you guys politically, I'm not apologizing for being country, I'm not trying to jump on MTV. And so that really does change the way people look at him, right? Like now all of a sudden he's a hero of the genre, rather than just someone who's a star within the genre. And so that's another reason why this moment was so helpful. to his career. And again, it really did mark a moment where country music was shifting back

to being a little less crossover oriented and a little more self-consciously country. You get a lot of kind of meta-country songs in the aftermath of this. Country songs where people sing about how country they are. Right. Countryier than now. Yeah, sure, sure. Yes. So there was this moment of cultural or even generic self-assertion in the aftermath of courtesy of the red, white, and blue. I realize we haven't actually talked that much about the song. Whenever I hear this song, I get a little skeptical at the beginning because it's like, it's kind of wordy and sort of in a way that can feel like a little clumsy. And I'm kind of like, it doesn't seduce you, you know, the way a lot of other Toby Keith songs do. And so to me, it's like, but there is so much power both musically and emotionally in the chorus.

that by the time the chorus rolls around, I'm like on board. I'm like, okay, all right, he's kicking ass. We're going. But there is something, there is always, to me, something a little bit clumsy about the verse of that song

that I don't hear in other Toby Keith songs. That said, also, Toby Keith is someone with a really kind of like brawny, muscular voice. And so he's not doing, he doesn't have the light touch of an Alan Jackson. He's doing it in a slightly different way. So that's something I always notice. that every time I listen to the song,

I feel like it's winning me over a little bit. And it takes until it gets to the hook to really hook me. That's interesting because I find myself struck by it immediately, as with a lot of Toby songs. I agree with you that he doesn't have necessarily the sensitivity of Alan Jackson, and it definitely is a wordy song, but just the escalation of the song, right? Just starting with that acoustic guitar chord,

then him, then the little riff, It's a very simple, like, ascension of intensity, but I feel like it works on me structurally, right? Like, you can tell immediately that this is going to be a big song even before it gets big. At least that's the way I'm. Well, it's sturdy, right? It's sturdy. It's well-built. Yeah.

Yes. So just to sort of wrap up, I guess we have established, like, this is, this song is the major turning point of Toby Keith's career. Would you say that and would you say that the music he made, not even, you know, he goes on to make, you know, American soldier, you know, the Taliban song. Like he goes on to include more and more, you know, topical, patriotic, you know, pro-military songs on his albums. But, you know, do you think it overall, this song and the reaction to this song affected, you know, everything he put out, you know, all the albums he made, all the songs that he made? Like, did this really change the course of his career, both the way we look at him and both the way he saw? himself. Yeah, I mean, I think a guy like Toby Keith, think about his image, his voice, his musical style. He was never going to be a TRL person. For younger listeners, TRL was a show on

MTV where all the pop stars would come out and mingled back around the turn of the century. Thanks for doing that. So in that sense, but so within the country world, what this song really gave him was credibility, right? Like, once you, have a hit that big and that resonates with people that much and that means so much to people, not just like country listeners, but I think especially meaningful to veterans, to people with veterans and their families, and then also to people who, especially at that time, were supporters of the president of George W. Bush and felt like the entertainment industry was kind of antagonistic to Bush, and this song was like on your side. So in all those different ways, it gave him a lot of

credibility such that people bought his tickets in huge numbers year after years, a top grossing ticket seller for decades after this. And then also, like, the songs that followed, if anything, it made them a little bigger after the fact. It's funny, I looked on Spotify to see, like, where it ranked, and it's his third biggest hit on Spotify behind should have been a cowboy and as good as I once was. Suffice it to say, there's a lot more essays have been written about courtesy of the red, white, and blue than about as good as I once was. It's think peace material in a way that should have been a cowboy isn't necessarily. But I think also there's like two ironies if we're thinking about courtesy of the red, white,

and blue, the angry American, right? One is that it's this, it's a song that's, it's a song in country music that comes to be seen as defining the politics of country music that's come to be, that comes to be seen as supportive of George W. Bush and maybe implicitly sort of supportive of the war in Iraq, even though he was definitely never explicitly said so. And a couple years later, he said he had some misgivings about it. So here we are in 2025. The next Republican president is in office. And this is a Republican president who wins the nomination in 2016 by campaigning against George W. Bush and his legacy and his brother,

and by campaigning and saying that the Iraq war was stupid and a mistake. And so these two things that used to seem like the epitome of like country politics and Republican politics totally changed in the 15 years after this song is released. The second bigger irony is, I don't want to make too many assumptions, Rob, but I get the sense that among listeners, of this podcast, there are probably some people who are somewhere on the liberal, progressive, lefty spectrum. Again, don't want to generalize.

There might be some listeners that could be described that way. And if that describes you and you're thinking about Toby Keith, then I think it's fair to say that for you, courtesy of the red, white, and blue, is definitely not the most controversial Toby Keith's song. I think at the time, the controversy was huge. In retrospect, beer for my horses, which was a single right afterwards, which is a song if people don't know about lynching. It's a pro-lynching duet with Willie Nelson.

Explicitly. Willie Nelson sings, you know, a man had to answer for the wicked that he'd done, take all the rope in Texas, find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys, hang them high in the street for all the people to see. And it's jolly. It's so, it's such a jovial, little fun sing-along song that is very explicitly about lynching. Now, obviously, there have been different kinds of lynching in the, in the history of the U.S. Vigilante justice is a very old tradition.

In this song, they're singing explicitly kind of about lynching in the West. But certainly, again, for listeners, especially listeners that are on the liberal progressive leftist spectrum, the idea of someone singing a song that's explicitly pro-lynching probably seems a lot more shocking than the idea of someone singing a song that's angry about the 9-11 attack. I should say, beer for my horses was actually made into a film. That's right. I emailed the folks over at the rewatchables about this. I have not heard back.

It's on the list. It's on the long list. Tell Bill, I'm available. I'm available. I will let Bill know. But you're absolutely right. Like you think about the reaction to Jason Aldeens try that in a small town, which I feel like says in a more insinuating way what beer for my horses says like ultra explicitly.

It is a really, you know, I don't know if it comes down to tone. If there's just something about Willie Nelson singing a fun song that makes you turn the part of your brain off that truly processes. what he is literally singing about? I don't know what it is. But I think it's also that when Beer for My Horses came out in about 2002, 2003,

the liberal media was much less interested in and focused on the history of racial terrorism in America. So it didn't resonate in that crazy way that it would if someone made a song like that now.

But I think, you know, I think in different ways, again, main tradition in country music. It's always been sort of like a smaller tributary to the mainstream or in some ways a kind of countercultural tradition within country music is this tradition of anti-protest songs. And I think it's a really, yeah. Yeah, fight inside of me. One of my favorite is Aaron Lewis, the former lead singer of Stain. Stained has a country song called Am I the Only One? Which is a really kind of like, I think really beautiful and

moving evocation of like pandemic era, like, angst and confusion about, like, the woke revolution in America from the perspective of someone who hates it. And it's like, so I think this, I think this tradition is a really interesting tradition. And for anyone who thinks of themselves as liking protest songs, I think it raises a really interesting question, which is like, do you only like songs that you agree with? Is that the idea that we're going to, like, go through songs? Yeah. Yeah, how should we feel about songs that have some political content that you don't agree with, right?

And I think maybe it's a way for especially liberal listeners to understand what it often feels like to be a conservative fan of popular music in America. Sure. Where you kind of have to swallow the fact that a lot of the songs you like and a lot of the singers you like are singing about stuff that maybe you're not so into. And maybe you listen to it anyway, or maybe as Aaron Lewis sings about, in Am I the Only One? He sings about how he stops singing along every time they play a Springsteen song. So in that sense, that song is partly about this idea of like, how do you relate to, how do you think about a singer who feels differently about the world than you do? And I think that's a really interesting question, not just in country music, but in all music.

The Beer for My Horses episode of The Rewatchewals will be the Apex Mountain of the Rewatchables. You will be a guest. I can guarantee that. I'm ready. Should I just wait by the phone? Is that the best move? We'll have Bill jump into this Zoom right now. We'll just run those two together if you have another couple hours.

Thank you so much for talking, Kay. It's been awesome. Thanks, man. This was great. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Kellefacene. Thanks to our producers, Justin Sales, Bobby Wagner, and Jonathan Kerma. Thanks to Olivia Kri for additional production help. And thanks very much to you for listening.

And now let's all go listen To courtesy of the red, white and blue, The Angry American by Toby Keith. We'll see you next week.