Bluegrass musicians use the term “crookedness” to describe the addition or deletion of beats and measures (Rockwell 2011). In modern country music, it illustrates the meaning of lyrics. Temperley (2007, 2018) coined loose-verse/tight-chorus (LVTC) to note fewer dissonances in melody and harmony in choruses in rock music; Biamonte (2015) similarly showed fewer metric dissonances in choruses. Country music flips this archetype into tight-verse/loose-chorus (TVLC) so that choruses tend to be more metrically irregular, subverting listeners’ metric expectations and creating layers of meaning.

This paper adapts Temperley’s framework to apply to phrase rhythm and expands Biamonte’s applications to metric dissonance, connecting metric manipulations to a long history of crookedness in country music. First, crookedness has evolved into a composed component of choruses in country music, as I show through examples from the early- to late-twentieth century (Neal 2009, Mitchell 2024, Murphy 2023). Then, using Chris Stapleton as a case study, I analyze crookedness in country choruses at metrical and hypermetrical levels using Temperley’s Metrical Preference Rules (2001). To examine how crookedness results from text setting, I analyze phrase structure through Attas’ approach to phrase rhythm in popular music (2011) in combination with Callahan’s sentential lyric types (SLTs, 2013), in which the syntactic attributes of lyrics cause phrases to expand.

Providing a framework to identify and analyze crookedness, this paper shows how Stapleton manipulates archetypical phrase structures in popular music to tell stories through metrical interest. As these analyses show, crookedness is not merely a remnant of old-time and bluegrass traditions in contemporary country music but a composed, narrative vehicle. Reversing the rock LVTC, country artists align a song’s climax in the chorus with metric instability, making them an expressive marker of this genre.

In November of 2024, Chappell Roan shocked fans by debuting her new country song “The Giver,” live on SNL. Previously, Roan presented her queer, hyperfeminine drag queen persona through the mainstream dance-pop characteristic of her 2023 debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess. The classic country instrumentation and use of southern vernacular in “The Giver” (2025), however, revealed a new layer of Roan’s drag persona: the “cuntry costume.” In this paper, I argue that Chappell Roan visually and musically appropriates country styles and themes in order to queer genre and gender conventions in “The Giver.” In other words, genre is the catalyst for sonic drag. The lyrical narrative (Meier 2019; Neal 2007), vocal delivery (Nobile 2022; Malawey 2020), and visual aesthetic (example 1) in her music video spotlight and subsequently parody expectations of gender performance in traditional country music. This expands the bounds of her personal drag and reminds her audience that authenticity is relative to her persona, not the real person behind it.

“The Giver” contains hallmarks of traditional country instrumentation: guitar, drums, bass, banjo, strings. Even Roan’s signature yodel is at home in this genre. A closer look at the narrative (example 2) and vocal delivery (example 3) demonstrates how Roan crafts innuendo in order to capitalize on country imagery while singing about lesbian sex. The chorus is a cheeky nod towards country’s socially conservative understanding of womanhood, one where these gender conventions are inherently “natural” (Neal 2016). Each phrase that directly references Roan’s ability to please—“I” statements— breaks into a more supported and higher belt, contrasting with the rest of the chorus which is sung with a smaller range and speech-like delivery. This comfortable, mid-range chest voice challenges conventions of the perceived “female” voice (Fournier 2015), so it is notable that the shift into a higher belt coincides with Roan’s narrative acceptance of the “giver” role. Roan is queering country culture in order to prove that despite significant artifice, she is still read as authentic to both her persona as a drag queen, as well as her identity as a queer woman.

While metric and hypermetric irregularity in country music has received significant attention (e.g., Neal 2000; Rockwell 2011), tempo variability in country has been little examined. In this study, we analyzed 240 songs—the top 15 Billboard country hits in every even-numbered year between 1968 and 1994 along with 1979 and 1995—in order to 1) examine patterns of tempo variability; and 2) trace trends in variability over time, comparing them with mainstream pop.

In country music recorded without a click track, there are instances of fermatas that can temporarily withdraw a sense of pulse at a half cadence, as well as subtle tempo differences between song sections, and sometimes long-term tempo drift. There is often a correlation between a fuller texture and a faster tempo.

In addition to examining patterns of tempo variability, we also analyzed trends over time. Relying on tempo coefficient of variation (CV) measurements, we found that tempo variability in country music gradually decreased between 1978 and 1995, with the trend largely driven by greater use of click tracks. Relying on previously established tempo CV standards and supplementing our statistical analysis with interviews of top country drummers, it appears that click tracks were occasionally used in country hits of the late 1970s and gradually became more common until they were the norm by the early 1990s. The slower pace at which country adopted click tracks and sequencing in comparison to mainstream pop, and its general rejection of sounding drum machines, in part stems from country’s emphasis on tradition, authenticity, and simplicity.

There can still be subtle patterns of variability when a click is used, and songs like Travis Tritt’s “Tell Me I Was Dreaming” combine use of a click with ritardandi. But the use of metronomes implicitly rejects country’s long history of tempo variability. The rise of click tracks in country echoes previous unrecognized technological developments in the genre, with these tools often hidden behind a constructed veneer of conservatism (Miller 2017; Fox 1992).