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It’s important to note that Toby Keith, given the opportunity to become a music industry chief executive, leaned in from the start. At the turn of the 2000s, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Keith, who died Monday at age 62, was known for his political impetus, commitment to American exceptionalism, and bicep-flexing threats. released a song.
Keith has had a 30-year career in country music, selling over 20 million albums and releasing 20 #1 Billboard country singles. But there is no doubt that he will be remembered first and most passionately for the songs of this era. In your ass, that’s the American way.” “American Soldier,” the warm hum of bombastic molasses. There’s even “Taliban Song,” a cheeky ditty in Jimmy Buffett’s mold that aims to satirize, if not outright sympathize, life in Afghanistan under the repressive Taliban regime. be.
Released in 2002 and 2003, these songs made Keith a champion of the culture wars. He instinctively understood that culture is politics and politics is theater, and he was determined to provide the soundtrack to this difficult period in American history.
Nevertheless, Keith’s career has also been an objective lesson in how one heated, hard-to-ignore moment can shine brightly and obscure the more subtle truths beneath. . For most of the rest of his career, Keith was a sly humorist, a good-natured brawler, and a chronicler of what was really going on beneath his thick skin.
Much of his best music was about masculinity being a performance. Take “As Good as I Once Was,” one of his great country songs of the 2000s. The song is sung from the perspective of a man who is declining physically and sexually.
It’s okay for a few more years
But there was a time when it returned to its heyday.
When I was able to really put it to sleep
And if you need love tonight
That might be enough
The semi-rap song “I Wanna Talk About Me” is a song about women who aren’t shown up, and it manages to submerge criticism of men’s impatience. and “How Do You Like Me Now?!” Perhaps Keith’s wildest song, a triumphant march for a Ford F-150 commercial.
But it’s also a song about defeat, dedicated to someone who never gave you time. “I couldn’t make you love me/But I always dreamed of living inside your radio.”
Early in his career, Keith was a burly sweetheart and a hell of a mean guy on songs like “Who’s That Man” and “We Were in Love.” Over time, caricatures came to replace the man.
In an era before the threat of “cancellation,” Keith toyed with exclusion by drawing ideological lines, but for a time at least it was considered expedient in Nashville to draw those lines within them. . Much of the outside perception that country music was a walled bastion of conservatism was forged during this era, thanks to Keith and the many performers who influenced him.
But Keith was more politically slippery than his songs indicate. Although he has long been a registered Democrat (“a very conservative Democrat,” he told Playboy in 2005) and sang movingly about the sacrifices of the military, unlike his father, he He had never served in the military himself.
His father’s experiences were part of the inspiration to write “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” but he chose to release the song because it was written by the Department of Defense. It was after being told that the troops would accept the song as a morale booster. Keith told Rolling Stone in 2004 that he had previously been on the fence about whether to put the song out, as he expected it would eventually happen in a big way. “This song will have a negative impact on many people,” he said. “So I had to weigh both sides. Am I willing to fuss and fight with people so that other people who need to hear that song can hear it?”
The song became a statement of purpose and set the tempo for the next phase of his career. His next two albums, “Unleashed” and “Shock’n Y’all,” were both his four-times platinum certified and are his most commercially successful releases. And one that shaped his public image in a way he didn’t always shy away from.
“Most people think of me as a redneck patriot, and I’m OK with that,” he told Time magazine in 2004. In 2009, actor Ethan Hawke wrote in Rolling Stone about seeing Keith (or someone very similar to him) dressed up by Kris Kristofferson in 2003 as a devoted leftist. . For his courage-stealing image, he is also an Army veteran. (This story is probably false – they both avoided confirming it later and were photographed together shortly thereafter – but it does suggest that Keith is a performer who is preoccupied with his posture.) strengthened public awareness.)
When the Dixie Chicks (now The Chicks) made disparaging remarks about George W. Bush in 2003, Keith poured gasoline on the fire and mocked frontwoman Natalie Maines alongside Saddam Hussein at a concert. I showed him a close-up photo. At that moment, the genre was his. He remained a hitmaker for a decade while the Dixie Chicks effectively went into exile.
In a 2005 interview with Playboy magazine, he expressed remorse for how the tension developed. “I was very disappointed in that interaction. It all ended in a fiasco,” he said. “I felt like I was lowering myself.”
In his later years, he continued to avoid clear political affiliations. In 2009, he performed at the Nobel Peace Prize concert, where the honor was awarded to Barack Obama. (He encountered some resistance from Norwegians who saw him as a less than stellar champion of peace.) And in 2017, he performed at a concert during President Donald Trump’s inauguration weekend. There he had already shown his civility by conspicuously thanking President Obama. He felt anachronistic.
In recent years, Keith has reshaped his rebellion away from politics and toward age-old mischief. He also has an unpredictable, caressing voice and, especially in his last decade, has been an almost sentimental soul singer, hiding in plain sight. You could hear it in his 2018 Whisper “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” where he sang about avoiding death, both literally and figuratively. Gone are the puffy chests and loud masculinity, stripped away to show resilience in weakness.
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