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Trump v Beyoncé: Why country music is being ripped apart by politics

By Louise Callaghan
The Times·
12 mins to read

The music America invented is booming, but now it’s trapped in a culture war. Louise Callaghan reports from a festival in deepest Kentucky.

The sun is high in the sky over a field outside Ashland, Kentucky, when Gavin Adcock takes to the stage at Rock the Country, billed as a “festival for the people”. In the crowd women in spangled cowboy boots eat corn dogs ($20, mustard included) and men toke on their pastel-coloured vapes.

They cheer for Adcock, a

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