"Barbara Ching defines the features that make certain country songs and artists hard. She compares hard country music to high American culture, arguing that hard country deliberately focuses on its low position in the American cultural hierarchy. The artists sing of failures to live up to American standards of affluence. The songs are set apart from mainstream country music, which focuses on nostalgia, romance, and the patriotism of regular folk.

Ching demonstrates that hard country's bad puns, sad stories, and unsavory characters are not as simple as we want them to be. In a style that demands both devotion and alienation from its fans, hard country ultimately seeks out the extreme and the objectionable, and in doing so, shows us the darker side of ourselves."--BOOK JACKET.