For as long as I can remember, I swear I’ve always hated country music. Coming from Los Angeles, I hear little to no country music played on our city streets and beach boardwalks. More often than not, a little reggae, tons of rap, and a dash of soul are echoed between the buildings and palm trees of my hometown. Thanks to this musical cacophony that in no way resembles the happy sounds of country music, I never really had the urge to listen to artists like Florida Georgia Line or Luke Bryan, and I quite frankly have never understood why anyone would blast that kind of music willingly.

Fortunately, my anti-country mindset changed when I moved to North Carolina during my first year of college. There, I found that my roommate and at least a third of my peers possessed playlists filled with nothing but country music… To my unexpected delight, I have grown to love this genre of music and appreciate it in a manner I never thought I would, all thanks to my time in the Carolinas. So, as an ode to country music and my time in the South, here is an open letter to country music.

Dear country music, country fans, guitars, trucks, and especially country artists….

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that I never acknowledged you as one of the greatest genres of music ever. I’m sorry that I didn’t have the decency or the heart to stop and give you the attention you deserved back when I was in the process of developing my musical tastes. All of these years I have taunted you, ignored you, and called you stupid, ignorant of how wonderful you actually are. I remember thinking of Stagecoach as the strangest musical festival on the face of the earth… But now, because of you, I have a new appreciation for honest, simple music such as yourself. I don’t know how you do it, but you make me feel alive in a way I’ve never felt before (as cliché as it sounds). Thanks to you, I am now guilty of--nay, the PROUD owner of--several country stations on Pandora that I admittedly play every day without shame. You are the ideal, universal genre of music that can be played anywhere in any setting, and for that I thank you.

To be completely honest and somewhat sentimental, some of my fondest memories were created in the presence of country music. My first love, my first college roommate and first college friends, my first tailgate party, my first introduction to line dancing…. The list goes on. I strongly believe that I wouldn’t be the person I am today without having had the chance to appreciate life in North Carolina and create these beautiful memories to your soundtrack. Country music, you allowed for a cross-cultural communication between a city girl and her Southern friends, through long car rides and weekends of campus-wide kickbacks. Missing out on all of those unforgettable times would have been a shame, and country music still reminds me of the people I love, places I’ve been, and things that I am so glad to have experienced down in that dusty place called the South.

So thank you… Thank you country music for opening my eyes to a whole new world of magic. Thank you for your honesty, your beauty, and your lyrical genius. Thank you for allowing me to have a love affair with you and branch out from my old relationships with R&B and other genres of music that I have listened to my whole life. Thank you for introducing me to an inexplicable feeling of joy and freedom. And thank you for gifting the world with talented individuals like Sam Hunt, Tim McGraw, and Thomas Rhett (who are incredibly talented, but aren’t too hard on the eyes either...).

You are joy. You are truth. And you are a whole lot of beautiful stories wrapped up into a lovely mixture of lyrics and guitar strums.

Thanks for finding your way into my life. Please never leave.