Over the last few years, one of the recurring themes in popular country music has been songs about “dirt,” and developers and investors approaching rural folks wanting to buy the family farm or homestead out from under them.
The song “Buy Dirt” by Jordan Davis won the CMA Song of the Year in 2021, which surprised a lot of folks since Davis wasn’t exactly a superstar. Cody Johnson’s song “Dirt Cheap” from his recent album Leather, and the title track to Justin Moore’s most recent album called “This Is My Dirt” both tell the story of farmers who refused to sell out to developers when businessmen came dangling large sums of money in front of them.
Going back further, you can see similar themes of standing up to developers in songs like James Hand’s “Old Man Henry.” In many respects, you could draw parallels to Miranda Lambert’s 2011 Grammy winning song “The House That Built Me.”
All these songs reinforce that land and houses aren’t just places and property. They’re homes. They’re memories. They’re a piece of us that when they get bought up, sold, bulldozed, and/or developed, that little piece of us is lost in the process.
This theme has become so recurring in country music, some might argue it’s become cliché. But the reason these songs are resonating is because they’ve never been so poignant and strikingly relevant.
While so much of rural American is being bought up for tract housing and strip malls, some neighborhoods and entire communities have simply become assets in the portfolios of private equity firms. Many people in America feel like the American Dream is up for sale as home and property ownership for younger generations has become a virtual impossibility.
If there was an unspoken villain in all the country songs about this subject, it would be private equity and alternative asset firm Blackstone. These are the viper capitalists who’ve turned neighborhoods and communities into investment assets, buying up thousands upon thousands of single family homes, pieces of land, apartment complexes, and even trailer parks, then sometimes evicting the tenants or original owners, jacking up rents, and bleeding the local community dry.
Blackstone is far and away the largest commercial landlord in history, and now these cretins have decided that the way to entice new investors to their funds is to “go country,” dressing their executive suite robber barons in cowboy duds, and singing a very bad country song.
Yes, the point here is to be ridiculous, exploit the fact that “going country” has been so popular in 2024, and have a little “fun” right before the Holidays. But the irony shouldn’t be lost on any of us.
Perhaps calling for a Luigi Mangione moment is overkill, but maybe we could get Jesse Welles to twist off on these idiots for their patent lack of self-awareness. The brazenness of this marketing strategy is pretty bizarre and galling.
Keeping private equity firms like Blackstone and BlackRock out of private home and real estate ownership has become a bipartisan cause as people in both rural and urban locations have witnessed how it eviscerates communities and takes the single most important asset to building wealth in America—the single family home—out of play for many.
So no Blackstone, this isn’t cute, or smart, or hilarious. It’s hideous. And of course, the song has to be a bad parody of a bad radio country song to boot. Hopefully these executives get visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Future over the Holidays, because none of them deserve a good night’s sleep.
Merry Christmas!
