Earlier this year, the country-trap song “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X spent 19 weeks at number one on Billboard’s Hot 100, longer than any other song in history. To date, it has been streamed more than a billion times, making it the most popular country song ever released. Well, to those who consider it country in any case. The controversy around the track’s genre kicked off in the spring when Billboard pulled it from its Hot Country chart, declaring that it did “not [embrace] enough elements of today’s country music”. Cue a snowballing dispute over what is and is not welcome under the country music banner, why exactly a black artist might not be accepted by that particular community and a Mr Billy Ray Cyrus remix that went stratospheric.

Yet, even as the plays racked up, one long-time Nashville songwriter told the Los Angeles Times, “It’s a novelty song… No one’s talking about it.” And as far as die-hard country fans go, that pans out. After Billboard reluctantly did an about-turn, the song swiftly fell off the country charts after peaking at number 50, even as it was reigning supreme over the Hot 100. While the kids (and many millions of grown-ups) love it, the Nashville old guard clearly does not.

Wherever you put your horses with regards to that cut (and its posse of starry remixes), it’s indisputable that, with his styling for “Old Town Road” at least, Lil Nas X is country, from his beloved cowboy hat to the tips of his fringed leather jackets. And just as Lil Nas X was trading his chaps and spurs for laser tag chic, Mr Ken Burns, the war documentarian, debuted his latest decades-spanning film Country Music, which served to occasion further reflection. Why, this correspondent wondered, has the style of country musicians enjoyed such a popular rebirth? Their typical get-up – cowboy hat, cowboy boots, western shirt, Wrangler jeans – is both eccentric and time-worn, essentially unchanged in the past half century or so.

Not only that, but the look is as much a cliché as the old joke about what happens when you play a country song backwards. (You get your girl back, you get your dog back, you get your job back.) Still, just as every country singer who really matters has put their own spin on that sonic trope, nearly every singer has made that uniform his or her own, whether by altering the colour scheme (Mr Johnny Cash), adding idiosyncratic touches (Mr Willie Nelson, Mr Gram Parsons) or deconstructing it altogether (Mr Billy Ray Cyrus). Simply put, a country musician without a singular signature look is all hat, no panache.

A survey of the genre’s nearly 100-year history reveals a slow-burn evolution. Hillbilly music gave way to a budding Nashville scene in the 1940s and 1950s, which in turn bowed to the outlaw period of the 1970s before the dawn of the mass-market era of the 1990s. In the 2000s, many country musicians got uber-patriotic, whereas in this decade they have turned increasingly fluid. All the while, certain mainstays, including the western shirt and the cowboy hat, have remained ever present as other elements, such as bolo ties and Mr Hank Williams’ unexpected fondness for fine tailoring, have mostly faded away. Today, country style is an enduring influence among the fashion set. Mr Ralph Lauren’s vintage cowboy hats, Mr Todd Snyder’s trucker jackets, Mr Brunello Cucinelli’s luxurious western shirts and visvim’s modern remixes of workwear staples all draw directly from the American south.

When examining the allure of country style, it helps to understand where those elements came from and why artists adopted them in the first place. At the very beginning, country musicians, so called because they were literally music makers who hailed from the countryside, didn’t dress in a manner that seems “country” to our present-day sensibilities. Mr AP Carter, the paterfamilias of country’s first family, grew up in Appalachia, but favoured tweed suits, which reflected his background as a travelling salesman. This fondness for tailoring spread to other early icons, including Messrs Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams, who upgraded Mr Carter’s look with fine suits that reflected their status as professional showmen.

Our current understanding of country style was born of the Stetsons and flamboyantly embroidered western shirts that Mr Gene Autry wore in the 1936 film The Singing Cowboy, an early talkie western. Duly inspired, Nashville stars of the time adopted his look and made it their own. Mr Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys favoured cowboy hats and boots and suits tailored with contrast piping. Mr Williams wore wide silk scarves modelled on those a cowboy would wear to protect him from the sun. And it wasn’t long before country style entered its baroque period, influenced by its rougher, louche offspring, rock ’n’ roll. Mr Jerry Lee Lewis, never one for subtlety, wore loudly patterned shirts like his friend, Mr Elvis Presley, who dabbled in country himself. Mr Johnny Cash, true to his hit song “Man In Black”, adorned himself in, you guessed it, black, but he did so with a sartorial flair that flagrantly defies black’s reputation as basic. Pompadours? Python boots? Camp-collar shirts? No style was too loud or too loose for this generation. Despite these flourishes, these men stayed relatively faithful to the country look’s skeletal garments.

As with anything steeped in tradition, country music also spawned a generation of adherents who rebelled against it. Mr Willie Nelson is a perfect example. He began his career in Nashville writing hits for artists such as Ms Patsy Cline, before striking out on his own in Austin, Texas. There, he grew his hair, developed his well-known fondness for herbal refreshments and pioneered a brand of music called outlaw country. His style evolved, too. Gone were the suits and clean-shaven face; in came T-shirts, bandannas and a beard. Country went hippie and suddenly all bets were off. Country-adjacent stars such as Mr Keith Richards and Mr Bob Dylan incorporated denim shirts and elaborate belt buckles into their rocker wardrobes while Mr Waylon Jennings donned rock staples such as leather jackets. Those who straddled the line, such as Mr Gram Parsons, wore wildly embroidered suits and turquoise cuffs that wouldn’t look out of place in Taos today.

As country went corporate in the 1990s, so did the clothes. Mr Garth Brooks still favoured cowboy hats, sure, but one suspects that was mostly because he was bald. (If there is such a thing as a performative cowboy hat, his are it. They are huge.) And yet, however unlikely it once seemed, the clothes worn by Mr Brooks and his oft-mocked contemporary Mr Billy Ray Cyrus presaged the anything-goes, high-low, mix-and-match wild style of today.

Indeed, even Rick Owens has a colour-block shirt that resembles the one worn by Mr Brooks on the cover of his best-selling album The Chase from 1992. As for Mr Cyrus, the denim jacket he donned for the sleeve of his effort the same year, Some Gave All, bears a strong resemblance to one from Nudie Jeans named the Billy. Notably, and perhaps revealing a deeper kinship than belied by their record-shattering collaboration, much like Lil Nas X, Mr Cyrus previously earned notoriety for his decidedly uncountry footwear choices. In a 1993 review of his live show, the Hartford Courant sneered at his “moon boot-sized high-top sneakers”, the kind of shoe that would be coveted by hypebeasts today. That review also groaned that there was “scarcely anything to do with his country” in his set, a remark that’s interchangeable with much of the hand wringing over “Old Town Road” mere months ago.

So what has our review taught us? That country style is largely in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. That, regardless of one’s musical preferences – whether Lil Nas X or 1990s-era Mr Cyrus, Messrs Cash or Nelson, Williams or Wills – to put on these clothes is to align yourself with a surprisingly progressive subset of fashion. That this often misunderstood style is at its core abidingly tolerant of both refinement and quirk. That it is both timeless and yet persistently relevant to how we live now. How you remix it is up to you.

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