Self-Delusion
Sueleen thinks she can sing. Sueleen cannot sing. Sueleen is offered proof beyond compare that she is never going to become a singing star when she is coerced into stripping off her clothes by businessmen attending a political fundraiser as a response to her off-key lack of talent. Sueleen ignores this reality and insists she is special even after this experience as she did before it. The film is notable for the way it predicted the future state of America: Sueleen is the prototype for every contestant on shows like American Idol that got up and made a fool of themselves without a trace of irony.
Art as Commodity
Country music is consistently presented not so much as an art form as a it is a commodity to be merchandised and sold. The most successful figure the genre, Haven Hamilton, is little more than a construction of instantly recognizable stereotypes whose songs are empty platitudes designed to appeal to the most basic and unsophisticated of ideals. The only country music figure who seems to possess any real artistry nevertheless lacks any sort of actual emotional connection to the songs that are packaged for her to sing by her domineering husband/manager. Sueleen is so blinded by the idea of reaping the benefits of stardom that she is willing to sacrifice all dignity to attain that stardom.
Politics is Show Business
The overarching theme of Nashville is also quite prescient: the commingling of the worlds of show business and politics to the point where they are inseparable and indistinguishable. The fragmented narrative structure in which characters connected to country music and characters associated with politics cross each other’s paths and become embroiled in each other’s narrative may have seemed like a cinematic conceit at the time the film was released, but today has come to look like a documentary broadcast on a 24-hour news channel.
