Themes of contemporary country music during the 2010s moved from “bro-country” songs promoting alcohol consumption, partying, and hook-up culture, toward tracks outlining consensual, presumed heterosexual, romantic relationships. Close listening to these “gentlemanly” songs reveals a specter of coercion, raising questions about the nature of consent. Using music by Sam Hunt and Thomas Rhett as case studies, this chapter investigates how male country artists represent romantic relationships as an idealized goal where consent is implied rather than expressly indicated. Case studies unravel how silent partners are pressurized and narrators hear or assume “yes” where no consent is offered. Investigations of songs by chart-dominating male country artists allow us to notice how and when in these songs women’s voices may be heard, silenced, or made irrelevant. Applicable beyond just country music, this chapter offers a means for understanding how the idea of consent manifests within popular musics more broadly.

Critics of commercial country music say that the music is homogenous, cliché, and that the so-called bro-country subgenre has taken over. This chapter uses interviews with hit songwriters in Nashville to examine the social and structural factors that influence the way songwriters practice their craft. One such factor, the “360 deal,” is a type of recording contract introduced as a way for record labels to recoup some of the revenue lost with the decline of recorded music sales. Though these contracts are legal agreements between artists and their labels, they have entirely restructured the careers of professional songwriters and the music that they create. This analysis of country music in the twenty-first century is based on a deep understanding of the occupational arrangements that underlie the creation of songs to argue for understanding the structures that shape the songwriting community as critical to the formation of country songs.