The fact that you refer to "the country music industry" and not just "the music industry" makes me wonder how much of Nashville you've really experienced. I know tons of people who work in the music industry here and not one of them has anything to do with country music. Music in general has a huge pull here, whether it's for young singer-songwriters, indie bands, audio engineers, people who work in live events, videographers, etc. Most of these people tend to be extremely liberal. Nashville has plenty of problems and is severely lacking in infrastructure compared to my hometown, a large east coast city, but there are a lot of positives here that have nothing to do with cultural conservatism or country music.
The article is about government, which is a shit show here by almost any definition. The city has a massive council that is at war with the state, to the extent that the state just passed a law to cap the council size out of sheer spite. They're handing over billions to buy a stadium for a rich sports franchise. They handed out tax credits to Amazon for jobs in an office building that they're never going to fill.
There are reasons people would want to live here despite this, my list isn't exhaustive. But I can't see any world in which "good governance" appears anywhere on the list, unless you measure it only by how low your taxes are and how lax regulation is (I'm aware some do).
Maybe the extremely pro business, pro developer, pro tourism Nashville considers itself to be a success, but I can't get on board. There has to be a metric other than growth when making decisions, and I'll personally never willingly live in another city that is so blindly focused on it.
