\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 2017, the narrator in country hitmaker Chris Janson\u2019s song \u201cFix a Drink\u201d<\/a> seemed exhausted by party politics.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI turn on Fox News and then CNN\/But it\u2019s the same dang thing all over again,\u201d Janson sings in the bouncy pop-country tune, looking for a way out of the cultural fray. \u201cThe world\u2019s in the toilet and the market\u2019s in the tank\/Well, I can\u2019t fix that, but I can fix a drink.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tJanson\u2019s hit single was emblematic of the type of feel-good country music<\/a> that Nashville<\/a> churned out during the first few years of the first Trump administration<\/a>, as the industry grappled with how to address the polarization that the 2016 election had supercharged. The answer was songs primarily about bipartisan, boozy escapism that also preached civility and offered, per one Kenny Chesney single, a breezy roadmap for healing division: \u201cBuy a boat\/Drink a beer\/Sing a song\/Make a friend\/Can\u2019t we all get along?\u201d Chesney asked in \u201cGet Along,\u201d a chart-topper.<\/p>\n \n\tEight years later, however, the message being peddled by Nashville\u2019s country music<\/a> industry shows signs of marked change, just like that of many corporations, universities, op-ed pages, and American institutions from CBS<\/a> to the CDC<\/a>. The MAGA movement, emboldened by winning the presidency and both houses of Congress, has gone mainstream in this distinctly reactionary period in American culture. In many cases, embracing MAGA has proven to be good for business too, and Music Row has rushed to get onboard.<\/p>\n \n\tCase in point: When Janson was readying a new album to be released during Trump\u2019s second term, he previewed it with \u201cI Don\u2019t Give a Damn,\u201d a song that struck a different tone than that of \u201cFix a Drink.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m done apologizing\/I\u2019m standing for the flag,\u201d the proud Trump supporter<\/a> sang, before staking an overtly political claim: \u201cThe left ain\u2019t right\/And the right ain\u2019t wrong.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis is exactly the way I feel right now,\u201d he said in a TikTok video<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tJanson\u2019s pivot is only one example of the overt MAGA-fication of Music Row, which began to reveal itself immediately following Trump\u2019s second presidential win in 2024:\u00a0Trump was no longer a figure to shy away from, but one to embrace. In December of that year, right after the election, Jelly Roll chatted with the president-elect and hammed it up with Speaker Mike Johnson at a UFC fight. At Trump\u2019s inauguration the next month, Carrie Underwood sang<\/a> \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d and Parker McCollum performed Toby Keith\u2019s \u201cCourtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)\u201d at the Commander-in-Chief Ball \u2014\u00a0and they were two much more mainstream names than that of Keith himself, who was years past his commercial peak when he performed at Trump\u2019s first inaugural alongside Lee Greenwood.<\/a><\/p>\n