Written by Jay Black.

There’s been a lot of talk over the last two years about “Making America Great Again”. I don’t know if I can speak to that. Honestly, I think if you’re charting the decline of America, it probably begins on my birthday (during the Bicentennial, for any conspiracy buffs out there!)

What I can say, definitively, is that country music is currently suffering a desperate, almost perilous crisis: male country stars have gotten *way* too good looking.

The male country stars of my youth looked and sounded like the songs they sang: kind of like leather that you left out in the rain and then allowed to bake in the Alabama sun. Their faces had cracks that they filled with whiskey and tears. Their jowls drooped like the one-eyed basset hounds they sung about losing in their songs.

Most crucially, they made me feel good about myself. I could listen to a Johnny Horton song and only think about German Battleships. I didn’t have to worry about a low-carb diet paired with a core-focused cross-fit program.

This isn’t true any longer. Whether its Obamacare or FEMA camps or contrails (my money is on some combination of all three), the country stars of the present look like they’ve just gotten back from a 28-day detoxification program with their good friend Gwyneth Paltrow. Their skin is flawless, perfectly moisturized and taut beneath white tee shirts just a half-size too small for their muscular frames.

This is very discomfiting.

I don’t listen to country music to *aspire* to a lifestyle. I listen to country music to feel better about my own life!

Nashville needs to take the temperature of the nation. More specifically, it needs figure out exactly how sad, dumpy and addicted to opiates we are and then give us male country stars who are just a shade sadder, dumpier and more addicted than us.

Make Country Music Ugly Again! #MCMUA!

This week’s Speaking Millennial uses the appearance of the very talented country singer Payton Taylor to discuss this important issue, as well as many other topics (including Rebecca Black, manicotti, and Taylor Swift). It’s a wonderful interview coupled with an important message to the country music industry and its obsession with male-models who also happen to have record contracts. Download it now!

And, as always, we ask you to please, please, please subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes! Get Speaking Millennial into your inbox faster than Blake Shelton gets to Pilates class! You won’t be sorry!

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