Sunday, May 31, 2026
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An Alternate Theory Why Martina McBride Backed Out



I have a theory as to why Martina McBride, Bret Michaels, and other musicians backed out of the Great American State Fair, and it’s not one I’m hearing or reading elsewhere.

But first allow me to provide some important background material. 

McBride can claim she was initially promised a nonpartisan event celebrating all 50 states and that that’s why she agreed to participate.

But I’m not so sure she’s not using that as a face-saving excuse.

This event is organized by Freedom 250, which is a public-private partnership with ties to the Trump administration.

Remember when Jason Aldean released a song — Try That In A Small Town — where he scolded Antifa and other leftist protestors? And remember when CMT refused to air the video?

If you’ve paid attention the past 10 to 20 years, you’ll realize that even the Country Music industry has gone woke. Not necessarily woke in the sense that it’s an epidemic among singers. Although some singers, unfortunately, have gone that route.

Conservative musicians, John Rich among them, realize that at the corporate and executive levels, the industry is now run by leftists. They hate Trump. They hate MAGA. They hate the people who buy Country Music albums and attend Country Music concerts.

And this leads to my theory as to why McBride dropped out of the Great American State Fair. 

Leftists who now run the Country Music industry probably told McBride and others that if they perform at this event then their careers are finished.

Obviously, executives who oversee other sectors of the music industry are no different. And obviously, the woke people who run concert venues and talent agencies probably made the same threat to McBride and other artists.

Rich said that patriotic Music Row executives in Nashville got replaced by “people from LA, people from New York” during the 2010s.

“And when the new guy comes in he would start changing the culture of that label, which bled all the way down into the artist, and it bled all the way down into the publicity departments, and what kind of songs you were allowed to cut and not cut, what interviews you were allowed to do, who you were allowed to interview with,” Rich said.

“I started getting in trouble with the label because I was doing interviews with Sean Hannity… I played a song at the first big Tea Party rally in Georgia, it was 20, 30,000 people, and my record label went absolutely insane that I did that. ‘You’re going to upset half your audience.’ And of course they’ve got their money invested in you to go sell records to everybody, and from their perspective I’m alienating people. I said, ‘Well you’ve got liberal artists that are out here saying all kinds of stuff that I don’t like, you’re not worried about them.’ They go, ‘That’s not the point.’ It WAS the point.”

And, honestly, when CMT is shoving drag queens down our throats at awards shows and when the final music product itself is putrid, then, yeah, wokeness has infested the industry.

McBride probably did what she had to do to keep her career.

Warhammer is a journalist with more than 20 years or professional experience. Follow Warhammer on Twitter @Real_Warhammer

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