In the early 2000s, no one listened to country music in the Northeast. Among blue-blooded Yankees, country music was looked down upon, and there were serious negative stereotypes about the genre and the South, more generally. Country music was for the backward hicks and yokels who lived in the boonies. Country music was for the guys in cut-off denim jackets with Confederate flag bumper stickers on the back of their rusted Chevys. Country music was for gauche people with horrible taste.

Ah, but so much has changed since then – all for the better. Along with rap, country is now one of the most popular music genres in America, a testament to how perceptions of the South and Southern culture have improved dramatically in the span of just two decades.

Not only that, but the rising prominence of Southern culture is becoming increasingly evident among college students. Many young Americans are abandoning the high costs associated with Northeastern universities and cities; instead, they are opting for Southern state schools that provide lower tuition, premier amenities, upscale housing, and a fun social scene centered around football tailgates.

I can personally attest to this change. Last Saturday, I witnessed country music and southern culture’s immense popularity firsthand at Zach Bryan’s sold-out concert in the Carolina Panthers’ stadium in downtown Charlotte.

I was never a huge country fan – at least not a fan of Bryan’s or any other modern-day country star – and up until the night of the concert, I harbored a quiet disdain for modern-day country singers. All those old stereotypes still lingered inside me, having grown up in the Northeast in the early 2000s and 2010s. I was like a World War II vet who refused to drive Japanese-made cars three decades after the war ended, clinging to a culture that had long been erased. I was weirdly stubborn about it, too. I liked my early 2000s New York City garage rock bands, like The Strokes and Interpol, and country was an affront to my personal tastes.

Bryan is quite famous among Zoomers and Millennials. He is a top modern country star, along with Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, and Jelly Roll, among others. His high-profile, messy, dramatic split from Barstool Sports personality Brianna Chickenfry in 2025 was the subject of much online scrutiny. At the time, many women believed he was abusive toward Chickenfry, whose real last name is LaPaglia. Many still believe he’s a total jerk. Dave Portnoy, the Barstool Sports founder, famously called Bryan an “absolute psychopath.”

But the throngs of fans at the concert Saturday night didn’t seem to care much at all. The venue was rocking at full-tilt, and as I settled in alongside my wife – with Coors Light soaking into my bloodstream – I had an epiphany: modern country music is absolutely electric. In the course of three songs, all the negative stereotypes I had ever held about country melted away, and I almost felt embarrassed for having been so contemptuous of it in the first place. I felt like a snob who was the living embodiment of all the negative stereotypes Southerners associate with the North: namely, the nose-in-the-air elitism.

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That being said, there will always be a part of me that rues the decline of Northern culture – the decay of New England’s elite institutions, once real intellectual hubs that produced great works of literature, art, journalism, etc. All the storied publications – The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair – no longer command as much cultural authority as they once did, and intellectual life on Ivy League campuses has withered to the point that even the students at these top-tier schools struggle to finish books.

Perhaps I connect this decline to the decline of my home state, Connecticut. And sometimes, I have a vague, forlorn attachment to New York City – well, an older version of the city, a city that perhaps never existed in reality but only in my imagination, where you could afford to live and work there without a highly lucrative job in tech, corporate law, or finance. When I watch the show Mad Men, which is set in the Manhattan advertising world of the 1960s, I sometimes wish I could have lived it, rather than experiencing it through fictional characters. I still quietly love that old world from afar.

But I only really have this world, and this world is increasingly southern, and I have discovered, thanks to my first country concert, that I actually quite like it. The change is good. As I was driving the other day, I voluntarily turned the radio to a country station. I wouldn’t have done that a couple of years ago. In fact, I would have turned up my nose, changed the station, and found a song reminding me of a time that had already passed me by.

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