Kid Rock’s Trumpian Roots and Branches
In southern rock, Kid Rock, and bro-country, do we see the building blocks for a future state-sponsored rock culture?
Southern rock as a genre had faded by the mid-1990s, but its legacy lived on under other designations. It found a liberal home in Americana and certain jam bands, but settled largely amongst right-wing audiences associated with country music culture. That trend began at the end of the ‘70s when perceptions of the failure of the Jimmy Carter administration sapped the last vestiges of progressivism out of the genre. Since then, Hank Williams Jr.-style country rock has morphed into today’s bro-country, as represented by the likes of Jason Aldean, Chris Janson, Brian Kelley, Morgan Wallen, and Kid Rock.
All white males, these singers exude a macho bravado unchecked by the so-called political correctness of their era. Like their forerunners, they trade in a right-wing populism that romanticizes small towns and rural culture, taking particular pride in southern identity as an image antithetical to northern or coastal liberalism. Despite or because of its increased ostracism this century, the Confederate flag can often be seen at bro-country concerts, whether from the audience or the stage. For supporters, it symbolizes pride in white male resistance to the multi-cultural society imposed by the “deep state” or “establishment”, or it stands for the “traditional” lifestyle of the South before the 1960s.
Assuming the role of spokesmen of the white heterosexual working-class once represented by Lynyrd Skynyrd, bro-country artists are just as outspoken as these southern rockers in pinpointing America’s problems, selecting from a lengthy list that includes the godless, urbanites, liberals, immigrants, minorities, criminals, and dissenters. In “Try That in a Small Town” (2024), Aldean suggests vigilante justice for today’s array of “Un-American” trouble-makers, telling those that might “stomp on the flag” or try to take his guns, “See how far ya make it down the road.”
Kid Rock’s lyrics are the same nationalistic clichés, conspiracy theories, chest-beating threats, and unconstitutional remedies once peddled in the songs of Charlie Daniels and Williams Jr. They are also the very meat and potatoes the far right feasts upon.
Kid Rock’s Trumpian Variants
Although not directly connected musically to the current crop of bro-country acts, Kid Rock provides a connecting path between ‘70s southern rock and today’s Trumpian variants. He references Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” (1974) both musically and lyrically in his 2008 hit, “All Summer Long”, and—alongside Aldean—opened for the aging rockers at their 2018 homecoming show in Jacksonville. Moreover, the Detroit rapper-rocker became such close friends with Williams Jr. that in 2015, he bought a house (sight unseen) next door to him in the southern Alabama countryside, helping solidify his southern rock and far-right credentials.
Until recently, musical artists have been reluctant to support Donald Trump, fearing a negative effect on their brands. However, on board early and throughout has been Kid Rock, at first glance an unlikely associate considering Trump’s aversion to black culture and Kid Rock’s absorption of it throughout his career. Kid Rock even has a bi-racial son and has supported black arts so much in the Detroit area that he received an NAACP award from the local chapter in 2011.
Like Trump, though, Kid Rock is not exactly the organic man of the people his image suggests. Raised in a wealthy suburban neighborhood, his father was a local businessman, running a car dealership that often put him at loggerheads with trade unions. His son inherited his independent go-getter spirit and entrepreneurial acumen, such that the musician has become part of the wealthy elite that Trump privileges.
Today, Kid Rock calls Trump “one of his besties” and has gained access to the president’s inner circle. Of their relationship, one might ask, “Who co-opted who?” While the singer has helped ingratiate Trump with his white working-class following, Trumpism has opened up new markets for the aging rocker. According to investigative journalist David Peisner, Kid Rock’s old friends are dismayed by the artist’s turn to the far right, some speculating that he has become drunk on the power it has afforded him, some feeling he has been adopted for political purposes.
Yet, Trumpism is compatible with many traits long evident in the artist’s career and life. As MAGA becomes increasingly synonymous with opportunistic and egotistical men, many renowned and celebrated for their coarseness, grift, and vengeful nature, Kid Rock appears less like a MAGA outlier than a leader of its vanguard. Like so many of the ambitious sycophants surrounding the president today, Kid Rock has learned to market from Trump, in the process luring his captive followers while they collectively embrace him.
The results are apparent in the singer’s live shows, which increasingly look like Trump rallies, complete with endless streams of American flags, a giant screen flashing images of his “bestie” for the rabid fans, and Trump merchandise sitting beside his own. Watching him perform the adulterated Trump-worshiping version of “American Bad Ass” (2000) at the 2024 Republican National Convention was little different than seeing the average Kid Rock gig today.
A provocateur with a rhetorical style straight out of MAGA central casting, Kid Rock did not so much ride the wave of the manosphere as help develop it. Long affiliated with the Republican Party, he helped push prior candidates to the right, injecting coarseness and clichés wherever the party labored with old-fashioned courtesy, decorum, or statesmanlike behavior. George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain all co-opted the rapper-rocker to help their presidential campaigns, Kid Rock consolidating their proto-MAGA base with his informal presence.
Has a musical artist ever been so willing to be integrated into a political party? His participation even reached a stage where some in the party called for him to challenge Debbie Stabenow for her Michigan Senate seat. Kid Rock fueled the speculation by posting a photo of a “Kid Rock for US Senate” yard sign on Twitter. Although it was a joke, the saga did not end until the singer had conned potential supporters out of donations via the KidRockForSenate website he set up, the funds accrued eventually given to CRNC Action, a college Republican group.
Kid Rock the Co-Opter
Like the party and the politics he works for, Kid Rock has long been proficient in the art of co-option. Seeing comedian Bill Maher constantly criticize Democrats for their “woke” and “politically correct” behavior, Kid Rock did the seemingly impossible by bringing together Maher and Trump for a détente dinner at Mar-A-Lago, despite the two adversaries exchanging nothing but barbed insults over the prior decade. When Maher reported back on his show that Trump had been civil, friendly, and normal, many concluded that the co-option had been a success and that Maher (and his audience) had been played for a purpose.
Co-option has been the hallmark of Rock’s musical career, too. His use of rap, rage rock, country, and southern rock is a strategic move to exploit potentially profitable genres for his identity. Rap helped him with his street image and rage rock with commercial success, but southern rock secured his far-right status.
Lynyrd Skynyrd have proven to be a significant symbol for Kid Rock, used to connect him to a rural, white working-class demographic beyond his prior urban base. It was Lynyrd Skynyrd that inspired the young performer to fly the Confederate flag at his shows, a practice he stopped after receiving the NAACP award.
His ” All Summer Long ” hit employed a more coded dog whistle to the same constituency. Its nostalgic lyrics and sampling of the definitive riff from “Sweet Home Alabama” transport audiences back to a time and place when a rock band openly defended the state’s segregationist governor, George Wallace.
For those who might find no political meaning in Kid Rock interpolating this particular song, one might wonder if they would feel the same hearing Skrewdriver, the most notoriously extreme-right group in rock history, covering it, too, while confirming its long-lasting symbolic resonance by adding a pledge of allegiance to the Ku Klux Klan in the final verse.
Kid Rock is beloved on the far right for other songs, too, many of which pander to the talking points and conspiracy theories trotted out daily by Fox News and other far-right outlets. Two that function as propaganda pieces are “We the People” and “Don’t Tell Me How to Live”, both from his recent Bad Reputation (2022) album. It becomes quickly apparent who the “We” in “We The People” are, and it does not include Anthony Fauci, President Biden, or members of the media, all of whom are skewered with an unceremonious “Fuck you.”
After indulging in his constitutional right to “scream” epithets at his enemies, the song’s narrator ultimately calls for “love and unity” as the way forward! “Don’t Tell Me How to Live” offers more of the same, the title succinctly encapsulating the collective sentiments of MAGA nation. Grievance after grievance is aired, enemy after enemy shared, a whole generation of millennials singled out for shame with the line, “A nation of pussies is our next generation.” More insight is given into the singer’s concept of unity here, too, “We the people” articulated as “My way or the highway.”
Will Trumpism Kill Rock?
Despite the demise of most of their members, original southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd still perform, now to multi-generational crowds at festivals and county fairs, their hits still played on classic rock radio stations. Their politics have changed little; the Trump era merely allows them more permission and encouragement to air their far-right grievances. Like Kid Rock’s, their concerts are barely distinguishable from Trump rallies, the predominantly white working-class male attendees flying Confederate flags without fear of censure.
What became of “Sweet Home Alabama”, the song scrutinized since its release in 1974? Like the band, it has become an artifact of right-wing southern heritage culture, the musical equivalent of Civil War re-enactments. Its political implications have become shrouded or diluted over time, and the tune is now deployed without controversy by the Alabama Tourism Department or played as a rallying anthem at University of Alabama football games.
Southern rock, like heartland rock in general, will continue to be used as a political football, though. It appeals especially to the far right by representing a populist agenda, one sufficiently malleable to be claimed, co-opted, and used. Its succinct chorus lines mirror the slogans of such politics, and its songs’ emotional yearnings for better times tap into the fear, anger, and nostalgia the far right relies upon. Furthermore, its romanticized representations of white working-class males provide the self-esteem that, when coupled with grievance, can produce the kind of reactionary politics we see on the right today.
Led by the likes of Kid Rock and Jason Aldean now, but no doubt by their replacements in the future, one can imagine a scenario in which southern heartland rock provides a foundation for state-sponsored arts under a Trump-like government. This administration’s current war on liberal arts, education, and culture may well be paving the way for the kind of society witnessed in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, or Kim Jong Un’s North Korea.
These regimes co-opt and sponsor culture that mirrors and promotes their political agendas, while defunding, condemning, and even imprisoning those artists who fail to meet official nationalistic standards. So, when history of rock and pop classes are taught in American schools and universities in the future, will students learn about the American greatness of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kid Rock and the traitorous betrayals of Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift?
Works Cited
Peisner, David, “How Kid Rock Went from America’s Favorite Hard-Partying Rock Star to a MAGA Mouthpiece”. Rolling Stone. 19 May 2024.