Hating on Nashville – whether Music City, Music Row, Lower Broadway, the tourists, the industry, the traffic, or almost anything and everything else – is a trope and tradition essential to country itself. As long as this town has been a roots music mecca it’s been a curse, too. It’s a maker and breaker of dreams that’s all at once exactly what it is and what it looks like, and a figment of your imagination, too.
On the roots songwriter’s map, it might be the capital city. Flanked by Memphis and “Carolina” and Los Angeles and Malibu and the bluegrass of Kentucky and the “concrete jungle where dreams are made of,” all familiar locales to songsters of all genres referencing places and cities. Places are excellent characters in songs, and we return to our favorite destinations over and over as we relish tracks like “Dublin Blues,” “Eight More Miles to Louisville,” “Big Ball in Brooklyn,” “Take Me Home Country Roads,” and so many more.
But isn’t there just something special about songs that hate Nashville? As a motif, it stands out among songs about places or among places as a trope, in country and outside of it. Songs that hate Nashville can ooze pain or vengeance. They can be aspirational or giving up all hope. But perhaps their real unifier, besides Music City itself, is that each and every song that offers a variation on this theme is really, at its core, declaring a deep love for the town.
In March, country artist, singer, and songwriter Ashley Monroe surprise released an eight-track original album, Dear Nashville. Not quite a concept album – perhaps rather having a concept at its core, instead of as its entirety – it’s an incisive and vulnerable demonstration of Monroe’s love… and hatred of Music City. “I Hate Nashville” opens the album with gauzy pads and a forward-leaning train beat as Monroe sings words that clearly haunt her, and so many like her. Lyrics often uttered by the gatekeepers of the world, the holders of the keys to this city. “They can’t make you a star,” “somethin’ ain’t stickin’,” “pay your dues.”
The rest of the song, though, is something different. It’s exasperated and exhausted, yes. Defeated, almost. But it’s not a hate letter Monroe is writing to her hometown of decades. She sings on the chorus:
Country music
Is the reason I’m alive
Paul Franklin playin’ steel
God knows I love Vince Gill
But I hate Nashville
And wouldn’t you know it, that mournful, heart-wrenching pedal steel singing along with Monroe’s beautiful, East Tennessee voice is played by Paul Franklin himself. Because that’s what Nashville is capable of. That’s what it does best. It makes dreams reality, it makes friends of idols. It can be everything you pictured, but wouldn’t let yourself believe is possible.
Wrote a lot of songs
Made a lot of friends
And if I’m being honest
I’d do it all again
I remember the first time
I saw the skyline shining
Sometimes the road to the top’s
A lot of downhill climbin’
Verse two captures the duality of songs that hate Nashville perfectly. Monroe is displeased with the industry, with the machinations of a community designed to reap profits and profits and profits, and that isn’t so concerned with art or country anymore. But her dreams have come true. She has paid her dues – and then some – and she’s made records and sung songs with Franklin, Vince Gill, Miranda Lambert, and so many more name-droppable peers, heroes, legends, and virtuosos. And, if she’s being honest, she’d “do it all again.” Who wouldn’t?
In each of these 35 songs, you’ll find artists just like Monroe, from across generations and from a variety of backgrounds and origin points inside and outside Music City. Each grapples with these same essential questions of this place. Of Nashville, Tennessee. Struggling with the industry, or Music Row, or the politics of each. Some demonstrate internal battles, others are so external they itch. There are songs that decry capitalism and that long for acceptance by it. There are songs of love lost and romantic haunts turned sour. You may hear someone writing on the outside looking in, or the inside looking out. It’s all compelling, the same but different.
Whatever you hear across these songs that hate Nashville, you’ll hear excellent music and a country tradition so essential to the format it belongs right next to losing your love, your truck, your dog, your house, your job, your… dream of making it in Nashville. Three chords, the truth, and hating Nashville. It’s as country as it gets.
“Heartbreak Town” – The Chicks
“Square people in a world that’s round.” That’s an indictment, for sure, written as only Darrell Scott could. Scott is well-practiced in songs that hate Nashville whether this magnificent track made even more delicious by the Chicks or “Long Time Gone,” also cut by the Chicks and included on this playlist, or even “Hopkinsville,” a Scott original inspired by longing to be done working on the Shelby Street bridge downtown. The Chicks sold the true heartbreak of Nashville on this number even before the city’s central machine turned its ire toward them. As we all know, they survived being on the receiving end of Music City’s ire more than once – and made millions doing it.
“Kay” – John Wesley Ryles
A story song for the ages, and about Nashville, to boot. “Kay” is sung from the perspective of a depressed taxi driver, “I’m living and I’m dying, staring out at Music City, from my cab.” The singer moved his love, Kay, to town to give her a shot at making it big. He’s hearing her record on the jukebox – it “don’t sound bad.” Woof. Gut punch. (At least if she’s gonna be famous, let her sound bad!) The perspective in the song is dynamic and surprising in a modern context, but reminds of how literary and poetic country story songs in the ‘60s and ‘70s could be. And how narratively dense. “Kay” peaked at No. 9 in the U.S. and is Ryles’ best-known record.
“Nashville Blues” – Billy Strings, Bryan Sutton
Out of so many versions to choose from, we chose this one. Can you blame us? Perhaps Bryan Sutton’s joke at the top is the real reason it belongs on this playlist. He introduces “Nashville Blues,” a classic in the bluegrass and old-time canon, thusly, “Here’s a song about Nashville that Billy wrote on the way here stuck in traffic.” The crowd cheers at the joke and a man can be heard responding, “That’s gonna be a long song.” Everybody at the sold-out American Legion neighboring the famous, coveted 37206 zip code laughs. Hating Nashville unites us.
“Ten Year Town” – Hailey Whitters
Speaking of dues, Ashley Monroe’s “I Hate Nashville” immediately brings to mind Hailey Whitters’ “Ten Year Town.” Released in 2020 on The Dream, it drives to the heart of the strange but usual expectations projected by others and ourselves – onto Nashville, careers, dreams, and music- and art-making. What Whitters is really singing about – and Monroe, too, to a degree – is that country music is a trade. Whitters is asking what else she could do besides this, while noting all she’s had to do besides make music in order to make music her trade. But if, like Monroe and Whitters, the trade you’ve plied your whole life or for decades can’t make you a living, what good is paying dues? In investing 12 years in a “ten year town”?
“Nashville Without You” – Tim McGraw
You know what else is country AF? Referencing country songs in a country song. If roots music is going to be one thing, it’s going to be self-referential. All songs about Nashville do this to a degree, but Tim McGraw’s “Nashville Without You” does it remarkably well. Especially for highly stylized mainstream radio country such as this. As a bonus, this is also an “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” sort of love song, where one’s relationship to a place is entirely colored by another person and your shared connection to that place. Ryles’ “Kay” in another generation!
“Nashville” – Indigo Girls
Let’s not forget the folks who have the most reason to hate Nashville – in the music industry and outside of it – have always been women, queer folks, Black and Brown folks, and disabled folks. That’s certainly part of why so many women have written such excellent songs panning Music City. There’s an added layer of truth, an extra heaping helping of grit. 70 cents on the dollar, 12 years to equal the ten-year town requirement.
As an extension of that theory then, being both women and queer as alt-country indie folk artists in the ‘90s is a huge part of what imbues the Indigo Girls’ “Nashville” with honesty and resonance. It’s artful in its lyricism and for painting as much with absence as presence, fleshing out the story by leaving it out here and there. But it’s the perfect song to leave off with, as you continue your listening to the full 35-song playlist below.
Emily Saliers and Amy Ray touch yet again on the maelstrom of mixed feelings musicians and creatives feel about this place, reminding of the central existential love/hate in Monroe’s “I Hate Nashville.” Saliers sings:
I’m leaving
I’ve got all these debts to pay
You know we all have our dues
I’ll pay ’em some other place
I never ask that you pay me back
We all arrive with more
I left with less than I had
The song is so seemingly over-and-done-with Nashville and yet, there’s a crack under the door. The window is not quite latched. A pathway however slight to wiggle back in. You can see it again elsewhere in the song, “I can’t place no blame/ But if you forget my face/ I’ll never call your name again.” Are they singing to a person? To the industry? To Nashville? To all of the above?
One thing we know for sure, they hate (love) Nashville. Just like Monroe. Because how does she close her album, Dear Nashville? It’s how we decided to close our playlist, too. With “Quittin’.” Another song co-written by Monroe with co-producer Luke Laird. It ends:
So much for quitting
I guess I’ll stay on the ride
‘Til the day that I die
We should hope so. There are so many more songs about hating Nashville to write and to enjoy!
Below, sample many more songs that hate Nashville from artists like Marty Stuart, John Anderson, John Hartford, Margo Price, Donovan Woods, Lindi Ortega, Kacey Musgraves, Steve Earle, Kris Kristofferson, Charley Crockett, Dale Watson, Waylon Jennings, and many more.
Additional contributions and curation by Shelby Williamson.
Photo Credit: Ashley Monroe by Becky Fluke.
