There's a very real reason why country music and pickup trucks go hand-in-hand

There’s a very real reason for why country music and pickup trucks go hand-in-hand.

Anytime you listen to a country song, it feels like there’s a pickup truck somewhere in there.

But why is this the case? Why is it not limos or convertibles that have become synonymous with the genre?

Well, there’s actually a lot of history behind this connection.

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Pickup trucks and country music – why do these two things go together so well?

If you think of country music, a lot of things will spring to mind: cowboy hats, horseback riding, string guitars.

But there’s also a good chance that a pickup truck will be at the forefront of your mind.

Country singer David Allan Coe probably put it best when he said the perfect country song had the following: “Mama, trains, trucks, prison, or getting drunk.”

You only need to look at the discography of several country stars to see that pickup trucks tend to pop up quite a lot.

Even Taylor Swift was name-dropping them back in her country days – “I hate that stupid old pickup truck you never let me drive”.

Nowadays, she’s got a car collection so vast that she’s undoubtedly forgotten that pickup truck.

So what’s the deal – where does this cultural association stem from?

It was a question that Caleb Jacobs over at The Drive was curious about too, and he consulted three experts to get some answers.

He spoke to Bill C. Malone, the world’s eminent country music historian, Jocelyn Neal, the department chair of music at the University of North Carolina, and Aaron A. Fox, associate professor of music at Columbia University.

They had a lot to tell him.

Dr. Neal told Jacobs that mentions of pickup trucks in country songs increased around 30 years ago thanks to a ‘southernization’ of American culture.

“Driving a pickup truck becomes a very shorthand way for a songwriter to evoke that whole sense of who the protagonist of the song is – a celebration of southern masculinity and independence,” she said.

That makes sense – after all, country songs always seem to be telling a story, don’t they?

Because pickup trucks have often been used for work on farms and ranches, they’ve come to be linked with that way of life.

And what do most people think of those professions?

They’re hard labor jobs for people making an honest living – the ultimate everyman, right?

Fox expanded on this point: “Hard work, hard play, and having your work sort of shade into your cultural identity. And thus, the truck that you drive for work is what you drive at home too.”

What is the ultimate American vehicle?

For Malone, who wrote the book Country Music USA, the pickup truck is a symbol of ‘home’ and ‘rambling’.

As more and more southern people moved northwards to work for Henry Ford and other industries, the ‘rambling impulse’ grew.

There’s a lot of factors at play.

But let’s face it – you see a pickup truck, and you think America.

Especially if it’s got the red, white and blue flying off the back of it, like this Toyota Tundra pickup truck.

Here’s something to ponder – will electric pickups have the same patriotic appeal and make their ways into country songs?

Will we be hearing about Cybertrucks and Slate trucks in Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw songs going forward?

Only time will tell.

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