From the moment I was exposed to country music in the halls of my high school, all I could see were people whose lives were so greatly different from my own. Not in a way that was interesting or intriguing, but in a way that only amplified the isolation I felt as a queer, immigrant woman. I, like many others, felt the genre was so distant from my life, that listening to country music made me feel like an alien.

If you asked me a year ago what my relationship with country music would look like when I got older, I would probably tell you that there wouldn’t be a relationship at all. Luckily, 2019 was the year country music progressed beyond the same handful of stories. It was the year country music was reclaimed by the outlaws; ones who are marginalized, isolated, and excluded by the very industry that they are now dominating. From the origins of the cowboy, to questions of who and what country looks and sounds like, the country music scene experienced the most intense identity shift of the year.

It’s difficult to talk about the genre’s evolution without acknowledging the impact of Lil Nas X and his song, “Old Town Road.” The song blew up when Lil Nas X posted it on TikTok in December of 2018. By March of 2019, the song was re-released under Columbia Records, and within the same month, it broke into the Billboard Hot 100. It reached number 19 in the Hot Country Songs chart, only to be disqualified because it just wasn’t “country enough.”

By August of 2019, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” had re-entered the Hot 100 and broke records by becoming the longest-running number-one single in Billboard’s history: 17 consecutive weeks at number one. He later became the first openly gay Black male artist to ever win a Country Music Award, even though in many ways the award was a snub.

Despite his burgeoning and ongoing success, Lil Nas X still faces scrutiny in terms of whether or not his music qualifies as country, which begs the question: why are we so intent on limiting country music’s potential? Why not look beyond an antiquated conception of the genre that relies on exclusion and erasure to make its mark?

Kacey Musgraves has proven that country doesn’t need to be so stuck in its ways. Her music sounds relatively traditional, but her lyrical wordplay challenges a pervasive attitude of indifference at best, and bigotry at worst. In “Rainbow” she examines the impacts of climate change. In “Follow Your Arrow” off her 2019 album Same Trailer, Different Park, she voices her support for the LGBTQ+ community and encourages her fans to be empowered and autonomous, which is something country radio wasn’t always on board with. Musgraves’ insistence on creating space and disrupting traditional, normative notions of respectability is paving the way for the future of country.

Like Musgraves, Donovan Woods, a Canadian country musician, has been putting in the work to dismantle the oppressive nature of country music. In an interview with A.Side earlier this year, he described the role of accountability in his music. “I want to make sure I’m making music that isn’t just the status quo, or a tool for the oppressors,” Woods says. This is particularly important because the responsibility of transforming a country should be a shared ambition, versus the exclusive role of artists on the margins.

In the year that Lil Nas X forced open narratives for who can be a cowboy, Orville Peck has made progressions of his own as an openly gay country music star. Shrouded in mystery, sensuality, and pride, Peck has created a space where his Johnny Cash-esque vocals dissect his male suitors, and his live shows are often accompanied by drag performers. Peck has discussed how the concept of the lone cowboy is one he identifies with as an outsider.

Artists like Mitski and Solange, have embraced the imagery of the cowboy and have started using it to tell their own stories of lives that have been overlooked by more “traditional” country mainstays. Even Meghan Thee Stallion spent most of 2019 adorned in a bedazzled cowboy hat.

If this has proven anything, it’s that music is adaptable. It’s flexible, it evolves, and it is dynamic beyond our wildest dreams. It’s easy to think of country as a thing of the past; an outdated set of attitudes that are wholly detached from the lives of the world population, but with artists like Lil Nas X and Orville Peck putting on cowboy hats and demanding the spotlight, I have high hopes for its future.