Look, I'm on record almost ad nauseum about how much I hate the Farm Emo. It's the lowest of low brow. I could have written a hit Nascar-nursery rhyme by age 6, but I'm no sell out. Look no further than two of the top grossing country acts who were formerly terrible rappists. Post Malone was a high selling but low talent rappist because his shitty auto-tuned product already appealed to the lowest common denominator. He just had to dumb down the bars a bit to move over to country. Jelly Roll was a high talent low selling rappist in the absolute worst genre of rap (hick-hop..it's like a more southern version of ICP). Spin up a couple formulaic country ballads (actually, Jelly Roll's "Save Me" is pretty out of line with typical country in that it's self written, authentic, and not obnoxious) and they're off to the bank without breaking a sweat.
I can at least understand the appeal of a lot of the older country that was original and performed by people who actually, you know, were from the country. Seems like very little of what has been produced in the last 30 years falls into that category. It's an absolute insult to the people that listen to it, who should absolutely be enraged at the caricature it's creating of their heritage , but instead they boot scoot their way down to RAC to pick up some by9's to blast it from the back of the Cummings while the artists live in cozy apartments in NYC.