An Open Letter to Trigger of Saving Country Music

Because Saving Country Music needs to be saved from the fool who claims to be its savior.

Triggerman,

Congratulations, T-man. You are the only man in America who can get DDoS-attacked over a Morgan Wallen hate piece and still find a way to make yourself the victim. I imagine you in your digital bunker, sipping artisan cold brew, whispering, “First they came for the bloggers …” as if your login was the last firewall protecting civilization.

You call yourself the “benevolent dictator” of Saving Country Music – which is adorable, if by benevolent you mean presiding over a one-man HOA for twang. You have made a career out of gatekeeping while pretending you are holding the gate open for the little guy (the one nobody has heard of). Here is the truth: you are not saving country music, you are saving country music for yourself. Every article reads like a sermon from the Church of Trigger – the gospel according to a man who thinks Nashville should be a monastery and that fun is a sin if it comes with an 808 beat.

Morgan Wallen Is Saving Country Music

Let’s talk about that Morgan Wallen piece that got you cyber-ambushed. You called Wallen a “complex problem,” which is the polite way of saying you want him cancelled but ain’t got the nerve to admit it because you need the traffic. It’s a funny kind of journalism that wrings its hands about redemption while secretly rooting for relapse. If Wallen stopped throwing chairs tomorrow, you would have lost a punching bag and half as many clicks.

And then there are your album reviews – brutal enough to make Pitchfork blush. You took I’m the Problem and called it “perfectly unremarkable.” That is exactly how many of us would describe your prose: perfectly unremarkable, except with more adverbs, self-importance, and sanctimony.

Your website outage? Your near-eviction from your hosting provider? Your ransom note from a hacker who probably just wanted you to shut up about Tyler Childers and a lot of other low-fi, low talent strummers for five minutes? These are not omens, Trigger. They’re hints from the universe that maybe the gate you’re guarding doesn’t lead anywhere interesting.

So keep on firing off blog posts from your fortress of purity. Keep insisting you are the last honest man in country music. But don’t be surprised when the rest of us climb over the gate, track mud on the sacred floorboards at the Opry, and blast Morgan Wallen on repeat.

Signed,

Someone Who Would Rather Listen to “I’m the Problem” Than Read Another Two-thousand Word Jeremiad

For more open letters guaranteed to make their intended recipients go apoplectic and have a heartattack.