The discussion of this song on my facebook page went to something like 35 comments, and many things were brought up, and nothing was settled. I think the song is important, especially with regards to new Nashville, but I am not sure that it is any good.  So, the score is a formality, but I wanted to mention a few things about the track itself. 

1) I think that this is a direct response to work about the south that has come out in the last few years by people younger than him, that is not historicized. I think that he is pointing out the difficulties of cosmopolitanism. 

2) I wonder about the inclusion of Dixie. The man who wrote it was from the North, and he was confused that it became an icon of the south. Plus, in this discussion of the new South, there is flirting with racist signifers without really pushing the idea fully and completely--Paisley saying, you know you want to play with the nature of the South, let's work out exactly what that means. 

3) The meta-work of the elder statesmen seems more dignified than the "I can still party with the kids" vibe of deseprate clinging of people like Keith or McCaw. 

4) I also, wonder--and this is somewhat related, if he is pandering. Paisley can be insanely pandering--see his George Jones duet Too Country for an absolute nadir. b) I think that in the criticizing of other people for refusing to see the implicaitons of southernhood that they espouse, that he is actually doing the opposite of pandering--but can you pander as a critique of pandering, can you meta-pander? c) he has done songs that are harrowing in their depictions of the geography of economic failure: A Man Don't Need to Go To Hell or  You'll Never Get Out of Harlan Alive d) so the interesting paradox of Paisley--is how he is capable of making dumb and fun shit, shit that panders, and shit that out Haggards Haggards, e) considering that he is in the middle of being phased out, he is working out how to figure out how to make that paradox work for him. I think that this is why the song works as a corrective. 

5) With Romney losing, and perhaps Atwater's Southern Strategy losing, and the old ideas of the south being slowly reworked or replaced, ideas or discussions of what the South is, are in the middle of a major demographic shift. What would a Southern Identity without pandering look like? Can you imagine a country music equivalent to, for example, the flatl affect and cultural irony found in the photographs of Eggleston? 

6) Can all of the feedback over a children's choir make an argument about the dissonance of a new South--and having Dixie overwhelm the platitudes of the song's first few minutes, that is saying something about the bedrock of history always presenting itself, but it is kind of a sweet and soft way of reminding one of that history. Neither Hell or Harlan were singles, and this is a single. That might give evidence to  the pandering element. 

7) The song holds so much baggage--but he allows for that baggage to be held. and much of that baggage is commercial. It is a song that is very, very current to Nashville--and one of Paisley's many, many talents is a shrewdness about audience--this song is a genius example of that shrewdness, and so the meta/paratext becomes integral to the text itself--but I'm not reviewing the paratext.  I love his voice. Warm and burnished as burled walnut. I love the song Dixie--though I know I am not supposed to, and I love it mostly because I used  to listen to it on a collection of Disney folk songs that my mom got me for Christmas when I was 6. I love the cleverness of the guitars shredding (pun intended) Dixie. I love how slick the production is. I think the lyrics are interesting enough to pass for substantial. As a text it's a 7 or 8. As a paratext, who knows?