Country music is the only genre I can think of that people are embarrassed to admit liking. Not all people, of course… the U.S. is full of proud country music fans unafraid to fly that flag.

But in the circles I travel in, liking country music is akin to wearing a mullet or attending a monster truck rally. It’s more than just uncool… it’s a social and political betrayal of sorts.

Recently my sister posted a Facebook status saying she is “officially in love” with Blake Shelton (whom she has discovered through his TV show, ‘The Voice’) but she prefaced that comment with “I’ve never been a big country music fan,” a disclaimer I doubt she would have provided had he been an alt-rock musician.

I suspect this aversion to country music is rooted less in the actual music than the political and religious associations that come with it. Country music is the stuff of put-a-boot-in-their-ass, rally-round-the-flag, and keep-out-the-foreigners. It’s probably country music fans who aren’t satisfied with even the long-form birth certificate, right?

And country music is rarely nuanced. It traditionally adheres to rigid societal and gender roles, depicting girls who want to grow up and meet a man like their daddy, and boys who are too tough to cry. The emotional landscape it covers is two-dimensional and easy.

It was Brad Paisley’s 2009 album American Saturday Night that finally turned me from a country music skeptic to somebody who isn’t ashamed to admit he’s a country music fan. That album was a perfect entry point for a Blue State listener. It celebrated multi-culturalism and Barack Obama, to the point that some blame its left lean for one single’s failure to reach #1 on the charts (it reached #2).

Two years later, Brad Paisley is back with This is Country Music, an album that is positioned in some way as a make-up record for those who were thrown by his last effort. That puts me in an interesting position, having become a fan of Paisley precisely because American Saturday Night was so different.

But it’s not as if that record is my only exposure to Paisley. I’ve since bought all of his albums, and I love every one of them — the “real” country albums as well as the more cosmopolitan. The truth is, the man can do little wrong.

This is Country Music is Paisley’s tribute to the genre he loves. In the title track, which opens the album, he recites a list of things country music does that you don’t find in other music. Praising Jesus, talking about cancer, telling your boss to shove it. “This is real, this is your life in a song” he sings in the chorus, and I guess he’s on to something. You don’t find many high-minded lyrics in country songs… the sort you need to puzzle over to tease out the meaning. You find songs about the problems and passions of real life.

Brad Paisley has mastered his craft, and he knows it. He ticks off songs on this album like items on a grocery store checklist. Gospel song, check. Love song, check. Lost love song, check. Finger-picking guitar romp, check. Duet with pretty blonde, check. You know what you’re going to get from a Paisley album the way you know what you’re going to get from a Pixar film — when you’re tearing up during the musical montage, it doesn’t succeed any less because you knew it was coming.

A song on This is Country Music called ‘One of Those Lives’ is about a man bemoaning his bad day at work when he hears that his friends’ son has cancer. The cynic in me wants to hate a song like that for being about as shameless as those TV ads where abused puppies stare sadly at the camera, shaming you into sending in money. But I’ll be damned if I don’t get choked up hearing Paisley’s earnest delivery of the chorus.

Paisley is a master of love songs and he delivers a couple of nice ones here, though nothing on the level of ‘Then’ from American Saturday Night. ‘Love Her Like She’s Leavin” has a chorus reminiscent of a lazy old Eagles tracks, but maybe that’s just because Don Henley contributes backing vocals. ‘New Favorite Memory’ feels like an update of Eric Clapton’s ‘Wonderful Tonight,’ with Paisley watching his wife get ready for a night out and realizing that everything she does is his “new favorite memory” of her. What a sweetheart.

But elsewhere, things aren’t going so well. In ‘I Do Now,’ the narrator realizes too late what he lost when he broke his marital vows. ‘Remind Me,’ a duet with Carrie Underwood, has him pleading with his wife for a glimpse of the passion that marked their early years together: “I miss the way that it felt back then, I wanna feel that way again…. remind me.”

The sweetest song on the album, ‘Toothbrush,’ follows a relationship from brushing your teeth before a first date to helping your little boy brush his teeth years later. I’d like to think that’s the one that most mirrors Paisley’s own home life. One of the dangers of country music fandom is that you get emotionally invested… I couldn’t care less if Bob Dylan or Elvis Costello go through three or four wives, but if Brad Paisley got a divorce I’d be weepy.

Having listened to a lot more country music since discovering Paisley, I will say that he’s way ahead of the curve on a number of fronts. While he exemplifies the genre, he also represents the best it has to offer. There’s a reason I haven’t bought music by any of his peers (with the notable exception of Miranda Lambert).

Besides his quick wit and appealing sentimental streak, it is Paisley’s musical acumen that sets him apart. To quote a co-worker of mine, he “plays like Knopfler.” Indeed, his guitar work is sublime, and he creates interesting musical landscapes for even the most throwaway songs.

Take ‘Working Like a Tan,’ a track about nothing more or less than a woman sunning herself. Paisley turns the song into an irresistible surf-rock symphony, complete with Beach Boys harmonies. I’ve listened to it a dozen times and I keep hearing something new. ‘Be the Lake,’ a corny come-on, rides in on a bluegrass intro and features a bridge of fiddle, banjo and guitar that I could listen to for hours. ‘Eastwood’ is a spaghetti western instrumental track featuring whistling by Clint himself. I expect Quentin Tarantino to use it in a movie any time now.

Paisley’s sense of humor is on the back burner on This is Country Music with one major exception, standout track ‘Camouflage’:

He does make a quick political point in that song, suggesting that the Confederate flag (which “offends some folks”) be replaced by one in camouflage (“designed by Mother Nature and by God”). But that’s the closest Paisley gets on this album to polemics.

No, Paisley didn’t set out to preach about politics or even religion. He’s singing the gospel of the banjo, the fiddle, the electric guitar. His sermon is full of smiles and tears, big choruses, songs you know by heart before you’ve even finished listening to them.

If this is country music, count me in.