The South is rising again.
It appears the influence of Southern culture is growing, particularly among college-aged students who are fleeing the expensive schools and cities of the Northeast for state schools in the South that offer cheaper tuition, fun tailgates, luxurious dorm rooms and top-of-the-line amenities.
Between 2018 and 2022, the number of students from the North who attended public schools in the South increased by 30%, according to The Wall Street Journal. The past two decades saw an 84% increase in Northerners bailing from the region for Southern schools. And who would blame them? Smart kids from the Northeast are going to take warm weather year round, less politicized campuses and affordable cities post-graduation over New England winters, the angry liberals shutting down school and the obscene prices of New York and Boston. (Click HERE to sign up for Mr. Right’s weekly newsletter)
BRISTOL, TN – SEPTEMBER 10: Fans of the Tennessee Volunteers and Virginia Tech Hokies tailgate outside Bristol Motor Speedway prior to the game on September 10, 2016 in Bristol, Tennessee. Tennessee defeated Virginia Tech 45-24. (Photo by Michael Shroyer/Getty Images)
The shift is also evident in the popularity of country music. In 2023, 36% of streams on Spotify’s top 50 songs in the U.S. were country bops. Country singers Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan are two of the biggest artists in America right now. The number one song on Billboard’s Top 100 is currently a country banger, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey. Pop star Beyonce has even made a country-themed album, “Cowboy Carter,” which apparently contributed to a spike in cowboy boot sales.
People are even obsessing over singer Lana Del Rey’s southern transformation from Fordham philosophy student to Waffle House employee to wife of a Louisiana alligator guide. (RELATED: Latest Celebrity Marriage Is A Victory For Normal Guys Everywhere)
The rise in popularity of Southern culture might also have to do with the precipitous decline of elite New England culture, embodied by the Ivy League schools, small liberal arts colleges in the middle of nowhere and waning establishment magazines like The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, all of which were once home to the best thinkers, artists and writers America had to offer. No longer. None of these cultural bastions have the same firepower as they did decades ago, and even if they did, no one would care. Literary and intellectual culture is all but dead. People don’t want to read books anymore. Young Ivy Leaguers, the heirs apparent to places like The New Yorker, can’t even finish them.
It’s not just New England. A place like San Francisco offers no better, with its absurd prices, homelessness, its tech/hustle podcast culture and drug-fueled orgies.
Maybe young kids just want normal now, and the South is probably the best place for normal. Less puritan, more fun. Less stuffy, more laidback. Less high-minded, more down-to-earth.
