Agree with this. I grew up just outside of Nashville but my mom's side is several generations of Nashville. I was born there. Nashville today isn't what it was when I was a kid. By the time I was in high school, most of my peers in Nashville schools were transplants. When I was at UT, the kids that said they were "from Nashville" had only lived there 2-6 years before graduating high school.
There's still "soul" but you got to know where to find it I guess. I feel it when I'm home and driving through but it's in the little things I guess. When I talk with actual generational locals and see the things from my childhood.
East and Southeast Nashville are flat as a pancake. If you come from the East you enter through flat land. It's hideous.
But if you come from the West, Southwest, or North it's hill country. I personally love the hills between Franklin, Fairview, West Nashville, Ashland City, all the way to Hendersonville area.
Since 2016 I've interacted with more international people and the number of people who know Nashville has increased in recent years. It went from people knowing Jack Daniels (not Nashville) and Miley Cyrus (seriously) to kinda place Tennessee on a map to just last week talking to a Serbian. I said I was from Tennessee and he said, "Oh! You know Nashville?!" In some respects I love that Nashville is an "IT" city right now and proud to say I'm from there. In others its sad when I come home and everything is different.
