This Is the Worst City for Country Music Fans

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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This Is the Worst City for Country Music Fans

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Country music has its roots somewhere in the South during the 1920s. Some called it cowboy music. However, it has a relationship with gospel and bluegrass music as well. In the 1950s, its audience grew outside its traditional boundaries as Johnny Cash became a national star and Elvis Presley emerged from Memphis. Today, Billboard treats it as a major part of the music industry and publishes a Hot Country Song list of the most popular albums every week. The annual CMT Awards are part of the TV music calendar.

Lawn Starter recently released its “2021’s Best Cities for Country Music Fans” ranking. The study looked at 182 large American cities and ranks them based on “the number of country radio stations, concerts, and performance venues.” The ranking methodology also turned to social media: “We also gauged the size of the local fandom based on Google search trends and availability of museums dedicated to the genre.”

On a scale of 1 to 100, the worst city for country music fans by far is Killen, Texas, with a rating of 34. In contrast, the top city should be no surprise to anyone. Nashville took that spot. Its score of 77.13 on a scale from 0 to 100 was well above any other city.

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Killen has a population of just over 150,000. Much of its economy is supported by the huge military base, Fort Hood. Killen is located 55 miles north of Austin and 125 miles southeast of Dallas. It is among the fastest-growing cities in America. Forty-five percent of the population is white. Another 35% is Black and another 20% is Hispanic. The median household income is just about $44,000, which is well below the national average.

The next lowest on the list is Brownsville, Texas, which sits on the Gulf of Mexico, just north of the Mexican border. It has a score of 54.

Click here to see which is the best city for country music fans.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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