Sorry this is a day late, I’m old and the jetlag knocks me around now a lot more than it used to.

I landed early on Friday morning and went straight to the Going Global music summit in Auckland, and one of the best interviews I listened to was with country music sensation Kaylee Bell. You might have seen her opening for Ed Sheeran on his Mathematics tour. Or singing on The Voice Australia.

Or, like me, you might have tuned her out a little because you do that with country music. Bell talked about that on stage. What it was like growing up in a family that loved and listened to country, but in a town and a nation that didn’t. And in fact actively dismissed it.

I was thinking about that, because my grandfather loved country music, and so I think through that, we listened to a little more of it growing up than most kids. I often say my first real concert was Michael Jackson’s HIStory tour in the 90s, but actually my parents took us to see Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton on their Islands in the Stream tour at Mt Smart Stadium in 1987. I tried to find photos of it, but it seems to be impossible to find any online.

That same year, Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmy-Lou Harris released Trio, a grammy-winning album that we had a cassette of in the car, and was one of the few we agreed on on family roadtrips (the other being, I think, The Muppets soundtrack). Anyway, the three of them sounded amazing.

Dolly’s passing this week was one of those rare moments when the world seems to be in complete agreement that we lost a really good one. She was an incredible philanthropist, helped millions of children learn to read, funded the Moderna vaccine, was a dedicated ally, and was funny as hell.

But it also made me think about how none of us think it’s embarrassing to know all the words to Jolene at a karaoke bar. That there are some country songs that are just a unifying force and cause us to stop with the knee-jerk “country music sucks” reactions.

Equally, those of you who are as old as me will remember Kenny the Busker on Courtenay Place in Pōneke, and how it didn’t matter how much you’d had to drink, we all knew all the words to The Gambler at about 2am.

It made me realise that, for me at least, I’d grown up forcing country music down the hierarchy of cool. It was something you associated with pick-up truck-driving MAGA republicans. With Taylor Swift before she was cool. I spend all this time defending pop music, but have literally never bothered to unpack my history with country.

Now, of course, country is “having a moment”. Lil Nas X, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs. Even here in Aotearoa we now have a dedicated country music radio station (just the one, I imagine my American readers dying at that, I know you have plenty).

For artists like Kaylee Bell, who forged a career in the face of a home nation that mostly didn’t care about country music and thought it was lame, it must feel pretty good. Although as she said from the stage on Friday, she’s just glad a new generation of young fans get to grow up surrounded by the music they love.

Which leaves me wondering what I'm tuning out right now. My most on-repeat album at the mo is HINA’s Descending Dreams, which defies simple genre but is a bit indie and yes, a bit alt-country. The hierarchy of cool is a thing you do to yourself — decades of Jolene and The Gambler living in my head rent-free while I told anyone who asked that country music wasn't for me. Kaylee Bell's fans won't have to run that con on themselves. The rest of us might want to check what else we've ignored or let slip away.

more good stuff

• best thing to do this weekend is watch bestie Mike’s talk How to Draw an Orange: “we’re born to make marks”.

• an incredible essay: The Wrong Kind of American, by Julia Curlee, a trans woman who worked in the Trump Whitehouse.

• i loved this from bestie Betsy, about a workshop she ran with kids creating games: “the thinking and the doing are the same thing”. There’s some bigger conclusion here about what’s wrong with farming everything out to AI, but just enjoy the games instead.

• voting is now open for the Tiny Awards. Go check out the ten finalists and enjoy some tiny, personal, handmade web delight.

finally, in my lego city

Forward this email to someone you once sung The Gambler with.