The Biggest Scandals To Rock Country Music

Of all the contemporary, popular forms of American music, country is the most conservative and content with life. More so than pop, rock, or hip-hop, country music and its biggest acts generally don't rock the boat too much and compose and perform songs about how the simpler life is, the better it can be. That's why when controversy occasionally emerges from the country music industrial entertainment machine, it seems to hit harder and feel all the more scandalous and tawdry.

From when its tropes solidified and it became a national force in the 1940s and up through to the present day, country music has generated countless stars. And some of its biggest names and most prominent hitmakers have been taken down by scandal, or had their personal or professional lives temporarily or irreparably damaged by some bad decisions, untoward actions, or unfortunate circumstances. Here are the most shocking, the darkest, and the most boot-shaking moments in the otherwise outwardly upstanding history of American country music.

Mutt Lange is among a handful of music producers whose name is well known, but that's probably because he oversaw some of the best-selling albums of all time. After producing AC/DC's "Back in Black," Def Leppard's "Hysteria," and Bryan Adams' "Waking Up the Neighbors," he took a gig behind the console for "The Woman in Me," the sophomore album by Canadian pop-country singer Shania Twain. Her first album didn't sell very well, but "The Woman in Me" did; thanks in part to Lange's signature radio-friendly sheen, the LP sold more than 10 million copies and made Twain a country superstar. The producer and the singer weren't just professional partners, but romantic ones, too — they married in December 1993.

The pair worked together and raised a son, until everything ended with an announced separation in May 2008 and a subsequent divorce. Twain's confidante and champion during that traumatic time: businessman Frédéric Thiébaud. They met in the mid-1990s after Twain employed Marie-Anne, Thiébaud's wife, to be a nanny and housekeeper. Twain and Marie-Anne Thiébaud enjoyed a tight friendship, and the four adults would enjoy vacations and holidays with one another. Then Twain learned that Lange and Marie-Anne were having a tryst. "The person to comfort me was Fred because he's been through the exact same thing," Twain said on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." Commiserating over their spouses hooking up brought Twain and Thiébaud together. They got married in 2011.

Shortly after releasing his second LP, the chart-topping "Dangerous: The Double Album," in 2021, country singer-songwriter Morgan Wallen instantly set his career back and painted himself as a villain. Tabloid TMZ acquired and posted video footage of the musician using a racial slur. After a night of partying in Nashville, Wallen was seen returning to his home, yelling loudly with and at his friends. It irritated a neighbor, who picked up a camera. Along with jovially calling one pal a "motherf***er," he called another a "n*****."

Within the week, Wallen's label, Big Loud, put a hold on the musician's contract. The iHeartRadio consortium of radio stations pulled Wallen's songs, including those from what was at the time the No. 1 album in the U.S. Country Music Television instituted a ban on Wallen, too. "After learning of Morgan Wallen's racial slur late last night, we are in the process of removing his appearances from all our platforms," a CMT representative said in a statement (via NBC News).

"I'm embarrassed and sorry. I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back," Wallen told TMZ. "I promise to do better." Other country stars weighed in on X, known as Twitter at the time. "The news out of Nashville tonight does not represent country music," wrote Kelsea Ballerini. Mickey Guyton, a Black country singer, added, "The hate runs deep."

In 2023, Jason Aldean released "Try That in a Small Town." Created by four other writers, the song paints an image of a tiny American burg where crimes and perceived offenses are punished quickly and extra-judiciously by gun-toting citizens. "See how far you make it down the road, around here, we take care of our own," Aldean sings after listing actions like spitting in the face of a police officer, burning a flag, robbing a liquor store, and stealing a car. "I recommend you don't try that in a small town," the song threatens.

The video for "Try That in a Small Town" reiterated the message with some politically charged imagery. Aldean mimed playing the song by a courthouse where a Black man was once lynched, and the clip also includes footage of Black Lives Matter protests, presented as one of the things one shouldn't theoretically try in a small town. After receiving numerous complaints, CMT removed the video from rotation. "If you've got common sense, you can look at the video and see I'm not saying anything that's not true," Aldean said on the "Coop's Rockin' Country Saturday Night" podcast (via Deadline). Despite the controversy, "Try That in a Small Town" reached No. 1 on both Billboard's country and pop charts.

Being voted the Entertainer of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards is a major honor. Among those who've received the accolade: Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, George Strait, and in 1974, Charlie Rich. At the 1975 CMA Awards, organizers asked Rich to hand out the prize to the new winner, a passing of the torch that the country superstar took literally. Rich opened the envelope he was given, and announced that the winner was John Denver, a mid-1970s superstar more aligned with folk and pop than country. Sarcastic commentary on that fact was implied by Rich's behavior. "The winner," Rich said, before taking out a lighter and setting the paper aflame to peals of laughter from the crowd, "my friend, Mr. John Denver." The broadcast then cut to Denver, via satellite, gracious and unaware of Rich's actions.

In a since-deleted website post, Charlie Rich Jr. offered several excuses and justifications on behalf of his father. The elder Rich had apparently just fractured multiple foot bones and was heavily medicated during the CMA Awards. "Secondly, he and another country star got to drinking Gin and Tonics while waiting in the dressing room. The show was long, so by the time Dad was supposed to go on, the drinks on top of the medication got him buzzed," Rich Jr. said (via Saving Country Music), also suggesting that his father set Denver's name ablaze because, "He thought it would be funny."

Generally a singer-songwriter of crowd-pleasing, fun-loving, humor-injected hits like "Online" and "Start a Band," country star Brad Paisley at least tried to open up the conversation and inspire some musical genre-blending with his 2013 single "Accidental Racist." Paisley, who co-wrote the song, sings from the point of view of a white Southern man trying to express his pride for where he's from — by displaying Confederate flag imagery — while also not wanting anyone to think he supports Confederate ideas like slavery or institutionalized racism. He admits that he's "got a lot to learn," before LL Cool J delivers a guest verse that encourages a dialogue about racial issues via leading by example. "If you don't judge my do-rag," LL Cool J raps, "I won't judge your red flag. If you don't judge my gold chains, I'll forget the iron chains."

Paisley and LL Cool J earned criticism for being so dismissive of something as brutal as slavery. "It's pretty insane to compare an inoffensive piece of headgear to a flag that represents a treasonous secession movement [devoted] to maintaining the practice of slavery," wrote David A. Graham in The Atlantic. "It's even more insane to compare jewelry to, you know, slave shackles."

In the 1940s and 1950s, when Western swing was a popular country music subgenre, fiddler and bandleader Spade Cooley was a major star. After hosting a local variety show in Santa Monica, California, in the 1940s, he became a national sensation. His first single, "Shame on You," spent nine weeks at No. 1 on the country chart, the first of half a dozen big hits that included "Detour" and "You Can't Break My Heart." In 1945, Cooley married his backup singer, Ella Mae Evans.

As country music evolved in the 1950s, Cooley's star power dimmed, and he descended into alcoholism and drug use. In 1961, after mutual infidelity, Evans proposed divorce. Days later, police in Kern County, California, arrested Cooley on a murder charge. Authorities believe that the musician had struck and beaten Evans until she was dead, in front of their 14-year-old daughter. Later in 1961, Cooley was convicted of murder and earned a life sentence, after entering and then withdrawing an insanity defense.  After he repeatedly expressed remorse, a parole board was set to release Cooley in February 1970. In late 1969, the musician was given a 72-hour furlough to perform at a police event. He played, walked off the stage, and died of a heart attack.

Son of foundational country musician Hank Williams, the much rowdier Hank Williams Jr. became a party-country icon with smash hits like "Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound" and "Family Tradition." Williams scored his most famous gig ever in 1989, when ABC hired him to remake his 1984 song "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" into the opening theme to its blockbuster "Monday Night Football" broadcasts.

The song served as a ritualistic weekly pump-up tune for more than two decades, kept around even when "Monday Night Football" moved to ESPN. Then in 2011, Williams was a guest on the Fox News talk show "Fox and Friends." The panel discussed how progressive President Barack Obama went golfing with conservative Speaker of the House John Boehner. Williams called the outing "one of the biggest political mistakes ever," per Rolling Stone. "It's like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu," meaning Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel. "They're the enemy," Williams said of Obama and then-vice president Joe Biden.

In a statement, ESPN said it was "extremely disappointed" with Williams' remarks and then dropped the singer's theme song from "Monday Night Football." Williams apologized via a press release (via CNN). "The thought of the leaders of both parties jukin' and high fiven' [sic] on a golf course, while so many families are struggling to get by, simply made me boil over and make a dumb statement, and I am very sorry if it offended anyone," he wrote.

In a musical genre that rewards authenticity, Loretta Lynn became a country juggernaut. Largely autobiographical hit songs like "Blue Kentucky Girl" and "Coal Miner's Daughter" won Lynn many fans, although she lost a few in 1975 with the release of "The Pill," which was recorded in 1972 but shelved for three years. Lynn — who married at age 15 and had birthed four children by the age of 20 — co-wrote the song, a celebration of the birth control pill and the women's rights revolution it helped spawn. Reproductive rights were a hot button issue, however, and the conservative-and-religious-leaning country music establishment objected to "The Pill." It quickly peaked at No. 5 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs and then faltered when it lost a lot of airplay after radio stations started to ban it. However, pop fans curious about the scandal took "The Pill" to No. 70 on the pop-based Hot 100, the biggest crossover hit of Lynn's career.

The controversial taint on "The Pill" never fully disappeared. Despite Lynn's formidable standing as a country legend, the song still suffered a soft ban from country radio. In 2022, the year Lynn died and was widely memorialized, "The Pill" earned exactly one spin on terrestrial radio nationwide.

The bluegrass-inspired country trio then known as the Dixie Chicks (later dropping the first word for its antebellum connotation) became one of the biggest country acts of the late 190s and early 2000s. And then almost instantly in March 2003, the Texas-based group lost a lot of fans and the support of the country establishment. Just before the George W. Bush administration controversially invaded Iraq on the hard-to-prove auspice that the country was illegally harboring weapons of mass destruction, lead Chick Natalie Maines said during a London concert (per CNN), "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

The fallout came quickly. The radio conglomerate Cumulus told its stations to no longer play any Chicks songs, and within two weeks of Maines' remarks, the Chicks single "Travelin' Soldier" fell from No. 1 on Billboard's country singles to off the chart completely. Maines clarified her remarks in a statement issued two days after the London concert (via CMT). "I feel the president is ignoring the opinions of many in the U.S. and alienating the rest of the world. My comments were made in frustration, and one of the privileges of being an American is you are free to voice your own point of view." Days later, Maines publicly apologized to President Bush. It took three years for radio to bring back the Chicks, just in time for their album "Not Ready to Make Nice," with a title track that references the death threats the musicians had received.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues or is dealing with domestic abuse, contact the relevant resources below:

• Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
• Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.