There’s always been at least two things that country music — and the country at large — could rally behind: Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. We can now add “vehement opposition to data centers” to that very short list.
Over the last few weeks, country artists of all political stripes have been coming out against the industrial facilities, which gobble up electricity and water and are quickly becoming this era’s radioactive-waste dumps, with residents in both rural and urban communities shouting “not in my backyard.” Count Brad Paisley, Tanya Tucker, Gavin Adcock, and Willie Nelson among those voices.
Paisley was the first to speak out about a proposed data center in his hometown of Nashville, which would have been constructed 500 yards from the local zoo. Paisley took to Instagram to address his followers, and ask them to sign a petition to halt any progress. “It would be an enormous monstrosity, an absolute eye sore and detract in every way for not only that zoo, but also that area,” Paisley posted, with artists like Jack White, Sheryl Crow, and Margo Price chiming in with approval.
Adcock — a confrontational and proudly conservative artist who has Facetimed with Donald Trump and engaged in some onstage Joe Biden-bashing — also railed against data centers online. In anInstagram video he opposed their construction in rural areas, where local resources are being compromised and impacting farmers, their animals, and their land. Adcock spoke to the “rich money-grubbing assholes” pushing for and installing the centers. “These people are getting punished for living in the country,” Adcock said of farmers and those living near data centers.
Tucker, who was born in Seminole, Texas, agrees. She posted an appeal to Texas Governor Gregg Abbott last week to “save rural Texas” and pause data center projects in her home state. “It’s going to hurt our heath, our wildlife, our water table, our water resources,” Tucker posted. “It’s going to scar our land forever.” According to reporting from The Texas Tribune, approximately 248 data centers are planned for the state.
And now, Nelson himself has weighed in on the construction of data centers in his native Abbott, Texas. “The last thing we need is a loud, water thieving, light polluting, data center anywhere near our town (or any others for that matter),” Nelson wrote. “The strength of rural America has never come from big industrial footprints. It comes from generations of people, open spaces, local businesses, and a connection to the land….let’s not allow our own demise or give up control over necessary resources in the U.S. and especially in Abbott.”
It seems clear that opposing data centers is an issue that many Americans can agree upon. In May, a Gallup poll found that only seven percent of people polled were strongly in favor of constructing the centers. Earlier this week, protesters showed up at President Trump’s speech in Michigan, where multiple projects are planned, including a massive OpenAI site. Earlier this spring, Rolling Stone explored how the centers, which are highly supported by the Trump Administration, could have an impact on the midterm elections.
“Amid so much partisan division, opposition to data centers seems to be the thing that unites Americans right now,” Megan Mullin, faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, told Rolling Stone. “It’s tempting to attribute this resistance to a growing wariness about technology and the titans who control it, but in reality it’s rooted in the one thing that has always united Americans: our deep affinity for where we live.”
Country artists like Adcock, Paisley, and Nelson are uniquely situated to speak to the issue. Not only do they represent rural people and farmers, who are poised to bear the brunt of the destructive environmental factors that data centers bring, but they can also speak to AI’s impact on the creative community.
“AI is already taking our intellectual property without asking,” Paisley wrote. “You feel the effect on Music Row. And it’s not pleasant. Similarly these plans to build a data center next to the zoo are much in the same way, without the blessing of those affected most.”
One artist who has yet to take a clear stance, however, is John Rich. The Big & Rich songwriter was appointed “Special Enjoy for American Landowners” by President Trump earlier this month after raising a ruckus against the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plan to construct a methane power plant in rural Tennessee.
In an interview with RFD-TV, Rich repeated a statement he attributed to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins — “There’s a right way to build a data center and there’s a wrong way to build a data center” — and predicted news about Washington, D.C.’s approach to the facilities will be coming in “a couple of weeks.”
