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David McClister

Tyler Childers Doubles Down On Americana Critique: “It’s Become Just A Costume”

Honesty is underrated these days.

Thank God we have Tyler Childers to keep the country music compass pointing north.

If you remember back to 2018, Tyler received the Emerging Artist award at the Americana Awards, and after they mispronounced his named (Child-ers, not Chill-ders), he let everybody in the crowd know exactly what he thought about the term “Americana” in his acceptance speech.

“As a man who identifies as a country music singer, I feel Americana ain’t no part of nothin. It is a distraction from the issues that we are facing on a bigger level as country music singers. It kind of feels like ‘Purgatory’.”  

And in a January interview with World Cafe, Tyler elaborated on his outstanding Americana Awards acceptance speech, and to nobody’s surprise, his mind hasn’t changed.

“I was intending to ruffle some feathers I suppose… there was a minute there where I was thinking about what I was getting ready to do and I was like ‘ya know I don’t think I’m going to do this’ and then he said ‘Tyler Child-ers’ and I was like ‘Eh, I already got it written out why not?’ so I went up there and did that.

It was at the Ryman which is the Mother Church of Country Music and they’re holding the Americana Awards which I feel is a big hindrance in maintaining more true-to-roots country music.

And everybody always talks about the state of country music and puts down commercial country and says ‘somethings gotta be done’ and ‘we need to be elevating artists that are doing more traditional country’ but then were not calling those artists country artists, they’re getting put into this Americana thing.

It is what it is, and I don’t really know how to define what Americana is. We’re our own thing, it’s a new time, and I don’t know what it’s called but I’ve been calling it country, you know? I think a lot of times it’s kind of become just a costume.”

Make no mistake people, Tyler Childers is unapologetically, 100%, a country music artist.

And right now, he’s one of the best we have.

He also performed a couple songs for World Cafe, including the title track from his album Country Squire, and the lead single, “All Your’n.”

“Country Squire”

“All Your’n”

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