Queer Country: Tyler Childers and Country's First Gay Love Story

Summer 2023.

Rumors and snippets of a song for the ages had made the rounds on TikTok for years leading up to its official release, posted in grainy cell phone recordings from darkened stadiums and music venues. The lyrics alone might have solidified the song as a generation’s greatest love song. Its artist had more up his sleeve.

In a summer hallmarked by country music headliners objectively leaning into the genre’s racist and anti Black tendencies, highlighted by the release of Jason Aldean’s controversial “Try That in a Small Town” music video, filmed at a county courthouse infamous for hosting the lynching of Black men in the early 20th century, Tyler Childers entered the fray in late July 2023, releasing the music video for “In Your Love.”

The song had rested in Childers’s catalogue for years, more than a decade. A sentimental tune he’d carried with him, like William Cullen Bryant and “Thanatopsis,” from his teen years, through early and chronic addiction, then beyond, into sobriety, marriage, and fatherhood. While Childers had gained success with his Send in the Hounds Tour, his Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? album, a musical feat combining Appalachian religious and musical roots with a brighter, more inclusive worldview–and in spite of “Way of the Triune God’s” smashing TikTok virality–Tyler’s turn toward what many deemed “gospel music” and away from his rockabilly, heavily drug-inspired schtick, left many fans bemoaning online: “Tyler needs to get back on drugs!” “Sober Tyler sucks!” (go to any Facebook or Reddit posts; it’s there–most of it even worse).

Into this ethos Tyler poured out his old lyrics, holding in his hands the would-be wedding song of a generation that he couldn’t let go quietly into that good night.

The music video for “In Your Love” was written and produced by Silas House, poet laureate of Kentucky, and his husband, Jason Kyle Howard. Together, they brought a uniquely Appalachian story to Childers’s lyrics, deeply infusing the song with the first gay love story on country music video. While many drive-by fans continued to balk at this turn, loudly berating the video and, by extension, Tyler Childers, on social media, attacking not only the LGBTQIA+ bent but also Tyler’s sobriety, others hailed the video for the cultural moment it exuded. Queer, rural/redneck/hick/hillbilly folks flooded the social media stage, praising Childers for the nod. For his part, Tyler, whose cousin happens to be gay and Appalachian, wanted to create an artistic moment within country music where his cousin could see himself represented. 

Tyler Childers is no stranger to pushing the boundaries of country music, especially after his turn away from drugs and alcohol. In 2020, he released a Black Lives Matter inspired album entitled Long Violent History. The album, almost exclusively instrumental, ends with a passionate verse about the connections between Appalachia’s fight for freedom, paralleling that with the struggles Black Americans have endured. When fans misinterpreted the album’s intention, Childers, a persona that tends toward the painfully shy, filmed and released a 6-minute long video clarifying his stances. 

For Tyler Childers, the depth and complexity of his works dive deeper than Appalachian coal mines. They pull up the mire, dig the black from the lung, and bring any manner of dark thing into the light. While there were hints of inclusivity on his Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? album (I argue the titular song itself is about being gay in the south), “In Your Love,” while not lyrically sexualized, in video was situated in a new rhetorical space. In fact, by casting a neutral love song in the light of queer love, Childers deepened the meaning of his own lyrics. That final verse certainly has more power in this context.

Beyond that, this music video holds a candle to the often ass-backwards views typically espoused in mainstream country music–those of exclusivity, racism, hatred, misogyny, and so much more.  (Looking at you, Jason Aldean; let’s not even get started on whatever…this is). Childers understood fully the negative reactions that were to come related to this piece, but he did it anyway. Part of what made the reception so stunning was that folks were mad about a kiss–love–and not the physical exploitation of coal miners, the devastation of land, and the negative influence of hatred. 

But this human truth remains: “We were never made to run forever, we were just meant to go long enough to find what we were chasing after.”