“EVERYTHING BUT COUNTRY AND RAP:” WHAT YOU REALLY MEAN. “Everything but country and rap” at its core is a class issue. “To admit you like country music is admitting you like something inherently and purely working class, which jeopardizes your status as middle class. There’s a real anxiety in this, and country music is an immediate ‘flashpoint,’ in Hubbs’ words, for this internal struggle of outward presentation.”

This is not so true in the South, of course, where middle-class status anxiety is less of a thing.