Small ‘c’ conservative with a libertarian streak: what Rishi Sunak’s love of country says about him
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“I’m getting into country music,” is not a statement you would ever expect to hear from a British prime minister. What on earth can have compelled Rishi Sunak to use the Telegraph’s Daily T podcast to declare a love of such a resolutely old-fashioned music format, inimically associated with blue collar, working-class life in the small towns and wide open plains of the USA? It can’t just be that adding cowboy boots and a Stetson to his usual shiny suit style could boost Sunak’s 5’6” frame by several inches.
There is a perhaps unfortunate sense of suspicion whenever a political figure deigns to tells us about their personal cultural tastes. We wonder do politicians ever really love music – or do they love what the music says about them? Tony Blair conspicuously flew the flag for Britpop as a way of aligning himself with a cool new countercultural patriotism, although I don’t think anyone was convinced by the dour Gordon Brown’s later assertion that cheeky Sheffield indie-rockers Arctic Monkeys were his favourite band, which reeked of something an adviser had suggested to burnish youth credentials.
David Cameron’s appropriation of Left-wing indie heroes The Smiths and The Jam was an interesting moment, brushing aside objections of the musicians themselves to assert a one nation claim on music beloved of middle (aged) England.
But at the start of a difficult election campaign, you have to wonder what message Rishi Sunak is trying to convey by suggesting he is going to the polls to the soundtrack of bearded, burly yanks in check shirts strumming acoustic guitars and singing twangy anthems about the joys of Tennessee Whiskey (the biggest hit of Rishi favourite Chris Stapleton) and the dangers of being caught in a Hurricane (the subject of Luke Combs’s breakout hit)?
I am not convinced that a man who has made the return of national service part of his re-election manifesto has really thought through the implications of describing Lainey Wilson’s Watermelon Moonshine as his “favourite song” – in which the comely country star recalls with nostalgic yearning the loss of her virginity aged 18 on a blanket in a field in Louisiana whilst drinking illegally brewed moonshine alcohol from a mason jar (“cut the burn with a little lime”). “Too young to know what love was / But we were learnin’ on a sweet buzz / There’s never nothing like the first time / And mine’s always gonna taste like / Watermelon moonshine.” Ooh, Rishi!
The artists who Sunak has cited as his new favourites are all American singer-songwriting superstars (which rather begs the question, what’s wrong with our homegrown singer-songwriters? Isn’t there something a little off about a British prime minister being overly in thrall to the sound and talent of a foreign superpower?).
Stapleton, Combs and the slightly less famous Wilson have risen over the past decade singing with unapologetically thick southern states accents, working in a space that brushes against outlaw alt-Americana but ultimately fastens closest to mainstream country and western, an old-fashioned style brought a little bit up to date by lush pop productions. It offers an innately conservative (with a small c) worldview yet with a strong libertarian streak, and I wonder if that is something Sunak is hoping to tap into.
Their songs are packed with the ephemera or rural life, trucks and bars, homespun wisdom, the espousal of family values that somehow also include a lot of heavy drinking. And I mean a lot. Combs’ simile for a perfect love match in Better Together is “like good ol’ boys and beer.”
Again, I’m not convinced Sunak has really thought through the implications of endorsing a star whose catalogue includes Beer Never Broke My Heart and the boozy party anthem 1, 2 Many: “There’s no stoppin’ me once I get goin’ / Put a can in my hand and I’m wide ass open.” Yee haw, vote Conservative for … looser licensing laws?
Country is having a bit of a pop moment in the UK (and, indeed, across the world). Taylor Swift may have set things in motion, the fact that the biggest star on the planet has country roots has surely helped it find a younger audience. This year Beyoncé brought a lot of cultural cachet to the genre with her radical black country-influenced album, Cowboy Carter.
It has presaged an unprecedented run of country adjacent hits (on both sides of the Atlantic) from folky American singer-songwriter Noah Kahan (Stick Season), country hip hop artist Shaboozey (drinking anthem Tipsy) and American Idol star Benson Boone (scorching country-rock ballad Beautiful Thing).
The current UK top 10 also includes a line dancing hit from pop country singer-songwriter Austin (Dasha) and a duet between bad boy rap singer-songwriter’s Post Malone with country pop superstar Morgan Wallen (I Had Some Help).
Wallen was not a name that passed Sunak’s lips, though he is by far the biggest star of this new country wave, with streaming numbers in America that rival Taylor Swift. Wallen has married modern hip hop production techniques to a brazenly redneck style on songs about, well, beer, trucks and broken hearts mainly. He was briefly threatened with cancellation after being caught on film in 2021 aggressively uttering America’s most taboo racist epithet – yet sold out the O2 Arena in the UK last year.
Wallen’s young and overwhelmingly white British audience sang happily along to songs celebrating a rose-tinted view of a mythical small town existence where women were loving, men drove big cars and drink flowed free, as if Wallen was providing an alternative narrative for audiences uncomfortable with the complexities of modern life. Is that a theme Sunak hopes might send a message or nostalgic reassurance to potential voters?
But there is a fair chance we are missing the smaller picture here. Maybe Sunak hasn’t thought about it deeply at all. Country is trendy, and Sunak appears to consider himself a trendy guy, with his slim fit, short leg suits and trainers. Interestingly, when he appeared on Sky News in April wearing a box-fresh pair of Adidas Sambas, there was an outcry on social media, accusing the prime minister of ruining the brand by association.
Footwear historian Elizabeth Semmelhack declared it “the death knell” for the retro trainer, the moment when something deemed cool flips to become deeply uncool. Is there a danger that Sunak might be about to do the same thing to the country music he professes to love, just when country was finally making a breakthrough in the UK? What could be less country than the British Prime Minister downing shots with the good ol’ boys at a square dance?
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