Toby Keith wrote all kinds of country songs. His legacy might be post-9/11 American anger

Country music fans are celebrating Toby Keith's rich collection of songs in the wake of his death from stomach cancer

NORFOLK, Va. -- NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Toby Keith’s songs accomplished, for some, what great art is intended to: They sustained people in challenging times, particularly U.S. service members and their families during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11. For others, Keith’s work sowed division and was blindly patriotic — a wedge that deepened America’s cultural fault lines.

Keith, who died Monday of stomach cancer at age 62, is being celebrated for his immense catalog across a diversity of subjects, from small-town heartache to his preference for red Solo cups. But in the fractured political landscape of 2024 America, it’s the long-tail legacy of “Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)" that may be remembered most.

For many in post-9/11 America, the 2002 song caught the mood. It featured the lyric: “We’ll put a boot in your ass. It’s the American way.”

Keith’s steering of his music into overt nationalism defined his career and helped set country music — one strain of it, at least — on a more political path that continues to this day in the music of folks like Jason Aldean on the right and Jason Isbell on the left. And yet many observers say it would be unfair to dwell only on those pages from Keith's songbook.

“You have to recognize that (Keith) was a good songwriter, and that there are songs there to love no matter what political stripe you are,” says Chris Willman, who wrote the 2005 book, “Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music.”