We all know Shooter Jennings as the son of country music icons Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, but in recent years, he’s become one of the most sought-after producers in country music. He’s produced records for Brandi Carlile, American Aquarium, Jason Boland, Turnpike Troubadours, Jeremy Pinnell, Benjamin Tod, Lukas Nelson, Jake Owen, and most recently, Charley Crockett, among others—and that list is only going to get longer in the years to come.
Of course, one of the most exciting projects he’s been on in recent memory is the resurrection of his father’s archival records… songs that Waylon wrote and recorded years ago and shelved for one reason or another. Shooter has worked to revive those songs (without any AI), releasing Songbird in 2025, and the upcoming Diamonds, which is due out later this year.
And speaking of AI, Shooter has been one of its most vocal opponents in the music industry, as well as a vocal opponent of the streaming model, which pays songwriters fractions of pennies per stream.
But one of his most recent tweets got me thinking…
Obviously, we live in an extremely divisive and politically polarizing time, which gets supercharged by our access to social media. Thanks to social media, we’ve essentially allowed a loud minority of morons, on both sides of the aisle, to craft narratives that wind up being the prevailing public sentiments surrounding a number of music artists today. Take Morgan Wallen, for example… he’s never done anything political in his entire career, but anytime he comes up in public conversation, he’s immediately labeled a MAGA racist in the comments. Same thing for Carrie Underwood, who performed at President Trump’s inauguration and Garth Brooks who performed at Biden’s. Toby Keith actually performed at Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, but that was before we started attributing every honorary performance as a political endorsement.
And then you have Eric Church, who has unquestionably been one of the most inspirational country artists of the past 20 years. Just about any artist in country music who is exploding right now can point to him as a major influence, including the aforementioned Morgan Wallen, along with Ella Langley, Luke Combs… the biggest stars in the genre. But no matter what I write about Eric Church, could be something as simple as a tour announcement, it’s met with comments about him being “anti-Second Amendment” or about how he’s a “vaccine-pushing lib.” Of course, he famously said he’d take a needle in the eyeball if it meant he could get back on stage, and that even though he’s a “Second Amendment guy,” he wasn’t a fan of the NRA. That quote came shortly after a gunman murdered dozens of country music fans in Las Vegas.
The point is, no matter what Eric says or does, political or otherwise, there’s a group of people who will forever view him through that political lens of being “anti-Second Amendment” or this “Tony Fauci-loving lib” who was pushing vaccines during COVID… that’s his legacy in their eyes. And no amount of evidence to the contrary, including Eric’s own stated beliefs, can change their minds.
Back in 2021, Luke Combs, who by all accounts (including my own personal interactions with him) is a wonderful human, joined a panel with Maren Morris and others to talk about this perception of racism in country music and essentially had to answer for a Confederate flag sticker on his guitar when he was much younger (remember, this was a post-George Floyd world where all anyone could talk about was how racist country music allegedly was). He apologized for it, and much like Eric Church, whenever we blog about Luke, there will inevitably be some ignorant comment about how he’s a “liberal snowflake” who “bent the knee” to the woke mob. Tyler Childers is now forever associated with “gay coal miners” to some. And some only like Tyler Childers because they associate him with gay coal miners. It’s just so exhausting…
Which brings me back to Shooter, who recently said he was actually somewhat glad that some of his music heroes aren’t around today to have their musical legacies tarnished by all this political nonsense.
He said:
“As morbid as it sounds… Sometimes I’m glad a lot of my heroes didn’t make it to current times. Can you imagine if Jimi Hendrix was alive and made a statement on his political views one way or the other? He’d be torn down by half the country and become just another clickbait social media clipped talking point, totally dismembering his incredible musical legacy by attaching him to one side of the political dialectic and exploiting him.”
Isn’t that so true?
Whenever you think of Jimi Hendrix, you think of one of the world’s most incredible, transcendent, revolutionary guitar players… maybe you also think a little bit about Woodstock, hippies, and LSD, but overall, you think: LEGEND. There’s no asterisk next to his name. Some would call Eric Clapton one of the greatest guitar players of all time, and Rolling Stone had him at #4 in 2003, and at #2 in 2011, but since his position on COVID vaccines (after allegedly suffering a vaccine injury), he’s been relegated to #35 by Rolling Stone in their 2023 “The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” And if you think that his legacy as a great guitar player has nothing to do with politics, this is what the article says:
“These days, nobody really considers Clapton god (his COVID comments clearly rule out any chance of being all-knowing), but that doesn’t stop guitarists from worshipping his playing.”
So now for many, including the folks at Rolling Stone, Eric Clapton comes with an asterisk… guitar legend no longer in the top 30, let alone the top 5, and prominent anti-vaxxer. As if his guitar playing and musical legacy should have anything to do with what he thinks about COVID. Granted, some artists lean heavily into their politics, and they’ve chosen to make that a focal point of their live show… Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Kid Rock, the Dixie Chicks, Green Day, Ted Nugent, and Hayley Williams lately, to name a few. It makes it hard to put the politics aside when it’s that blatant. Some just use politics to stay relevant… it is what it is.
But today… you can’t sit down for an interview with Rolling Stone, GQ, The LA Times, Pitchfork, or whoever it is and not be met with some kind of political line of questioning. And it’s always framed in this disingenuous way that essentially reads like, “We’re giving you an opportunity to be on OUR side of the history… please answer accordingly or you’ll be met with public shame.” And they are met with backlash… often from both sides of the aisle. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t… and then thanks to the way those clips get blasted around social media, all of a sudden one quote becomes forever enshrined into the cultural history books. Fans latch onto certain artists because of their political views, not their music. And even some critics tend to elevate artists based on their political views. Or as we saw in Clapton’s case, relegate. Once again, it’s all so exhausting…
And look, I’ve never shied away from politics here, and we’ve been very outspoken about our political beliefs. But I’ve never asked a single political “gotcha” question in an interview or podcast. I comment on the political conversations, mostly when they say something absurd, but I’m really not here to create them, and I’ve certainly done my fair share of trying to correct false narratives. I also don’t post headlines on social media without an accompanying article providing full context and commentary. There’s probably three dozen country music Instagram accounts these days who mostly just post headlines, with a small quote… no commentary, no context, no nuance, just a tasty headline and a quote. It drives me absolutely nuts when I write 2,000 words on something controversial that an artist said, and then they turn around and say “it was taken out of context.” No, you didn’t read any of it, you just looked at a headline you didn’t like… all the context was there. That said, I won’t pretend like I haven’t participated in this to a certain extent over the course of my 12 years in the business. I mean, Maren Morris is such a headline machine with some of her nonsense.
But Shooter’s overall sentiment still stands true in my mind… as much as we’d all love to see our musical heroes live forever, would today’s toxic, divisive, social media climate just destroy everything we hold dear about some of them? Probably…
