If your drinking and doing the music thing, the Miss Delta easily beats the others. OKC and Tulsa are superior to any metro in the others.
Also, Lol at the rural deep south being better than NY or Mich. It's a parade of mutant racist hicks out of Flannery O'Connor story, plus upstate NY is gorgeous.
Yeah, you clearly haven't been to Western NY
I've been along the Erie Canal, Finger Lakes and Cooperstown. Plus Niagara and the Thousand Islands. Some old industrial towns look sad but the rural parts are amazing. Rural Alabama is one giant Kudzu patch with god knows what living in those trailers.