I'll remember Toby Keith for songs, not feuds with Taylor Swift and Dixie Chicks | Opinion

When I learned Toby Keith was dead, I thought of his voice sharp and deep over my dad’s old barn radio. The long yellow barn lights were flickering overhead, and the cows were mooing low for feed. I was 14 years old and tired and frustrated over being no good with cattle and tractors — and wondering if there was anywhere I fit in.

Then came Keith’s voice singing “How Do You Like Me Now?!” telling me that such a place existed:

How do you like me now?

Now that I’m on my way?

Do you still think I’m crazy,

Standing here today?

In other words, I didn’t think of his politics, but the internet immediately demanded that we do so.

Toby Keith leaned into controversy with Natalie Maines, Taylor Swift

Critics attacked him for his battles with The Dixie Chicks and a disputed controversy with Kris Kristofferson, and supporters reduced him down to his patriotism and bashed Taylor Swift for not defending him after he gave Swift her start. Not only is that a nasty debate about a guy who just died of stomach cancer, but it reflects a huge mistake: making our culture about our politics.

'A dying community:' What a Wisconsin beer town shows about saving rural America

It’s become popular to say politics is downstream of culture — meaning our political debates reflect broader things already happening in other parts of society. When we take it the other direction, and let our politics dictate how we look at music, movies, and more, it fans the flames of our worst divisions, tearing at problems like our rural-urban divide and other ways we’re failing to understand each other.

There’s no question Toby Keith leaned into controversy. He feuded with Natalie Maines of The Chicks (then The Dixie Chicks), who famously said she was ashamed to be from the same state as Republican President George W. Bush. There actually is some question as to whether he ever feuded with the acclaimed songwriter Kristofferson — Rolling Stone reported that Kristofferson, a Vietnam vet, confronted Keith about boosting war without ever serving his country, but both stars denied it later. Then again Keith’s public statements and songs like “Courtesy, of the Red White and Blue” don’t leave much question on where he stood on how to respond to 9/11.

Keith's politics were more nuanced than controversies suggest

But his actual politics were more complex, and he wrote about so much more. The song that played on our barn radio when I was a kid told the story of a small-town boy who was ignored in high school, and went on to be a star. It came at the right time for me. My dad had been sick earlier that year. After years of falling short on the farm, I had worked a long winter stepping up in his place to help keep the farm going. Proud to help but beleaguered by the broken machinery and other mistakes, I’d decided I wasn’t cut out for farming and was wondering if I’d ever find my own way. Toby Keith said hell yes you will, in a language I understood in rural Wisconsin.

Country music controversy: Why we’re getting Oliver Anthony, 'Rich Men North of Richmond' and rural America all wrong

By the way, later in life, the songs of his supposed adversaries did similar things. Maines singing about her journey back from the Bush controversy — one in which she got death threats from angry people who fell into this exact trap and took the rivalry too far — was a song that taught me about persistence. And I’ll always remember Kristofferson’s “Come Sundown” playing on the porch of the little house where I lived in Nashville in my 20s. Sitting in the doorframe in the middle of the night, my heart broken, I figured out how to move on from being all alone in life.

Point being, we’d all be better off if we evaluate our music (or film, literature, art, or anything in our culture) by the stories being told, not the statements being made. I’m not saying a guy who took controversial stands shouldn’t face criticism. And I’m not saying Keith’s songs were above critique — if I had to pick, I’m a Kristofferson man myself, as far as music goes.

What I’m saying is we shouldn’t have to pick. And thinking we do is what’s keeping us all from understanding each other a little better.

Brian Reisinger grew up on a family farm in Sauk County. He contributes columns and videos for the Ideas Lab at the Journal Sentinel. Reisinger works in public affairs consulting for Wisconsin-based Platform Communications. Previously, he worked for Republican U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Ron Johnson, as well as Gov. Scott Walker. He splits his time between a small town in northern California near his wife’s family, and his family’s farm here in Wisconsin. He studied journalism and political science at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and has won awards from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, Seven Hills Review literary magazine, Wisconsin Newspaper Association, and more.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Toby Keith's death reminds us that music best not judged by politics