This Bryan Andrews “Country” Album Is Terrible

At this risk of coming across as hyperbolic, politically biased, or just perhaps plain ol’ mean, it is nonetheless the honest, objective, dispassionate assessment of someone who’s been reviewing country albums for 20 years professionally that Independence Day by Bryan Andrews truly might be the worst “country” album this outlet has ever been tasked to review, and certainly challenges for the distinction as being one of the worst “country” albums of all time.

Amid the race to the bottom that right-leaning mainstream country performers such as Lee Brice and Brantley Gilbert are currently devolving into, the extremely left-leaning politically-focused Bryan Andrews just bested them and beat them all to the bottom with this horrendous, embarrassing, uneven, and even un-mastered effort that proves that those indoctrinated with propaganda from the left can be terrible too, and make the worst possible music any human might ever be tasked to interface with.

Bryan Andrews has blown up big viral on social media due to his politically-charged posts calling out right-wing country artists and fans as fascist boot lickers and Nazis, leveraging Jason Aldean and Morgan Wallen hatred into a huge footprint that even had him sitting down with Joseph Hudak of Rolling Stone for a politically-slanted discussion. He’s a master at leveraging algorithms with political rage bait while looking to use the attention to seed a career in entertainment.

But then here comes the music itself. Not wanting to fall into the trap of giving an unmitigated attention whore any more attention than he deserved—or opening up an opportunity for Andrews to be able to claim victimhood, which is the favorite ploy by these opportunistic attention seekers addicted to the dopamine hit of the algorithm—the whole Bryan Andrews phenomenon has been avoided heretofore. However, the horrendous nature of the “music” on his first official studio album and its characterization as “country” cannot stand unchallenged.

First and foremost, the lion’s share of this music is in no way country even from the most liberal (pun intended) interpretation of the genre. Instead it even surpasses Brantley Gilbert’s nu metal-infused bloviating cock rock to veer into the realm of cacophonous Christian metal, just without the worship component. Spectacularly outdated while attempting to be sonically opportunistic in an embarrassing manner, Andrews leverages the worst inspirations from artists he’s actively calling out like Jelly Roll and Morgan Wallen to inform his odious sound. This album comes across extremely similar to Jelly Roll as he was converting from rap rock to court the country market.

It’s not that a couple of songs aren’t country-ish, and the message of some of these Bryan Andrews songs isn’t resonant, and his words on class struggle, oligarchy, and the inherent corruption of the ruling class couldn’t be well-received by a greater audience if tooled in a different manner. If there is one glimmer of credit Andrews deserves for this otherwise monstrosity of an “album,” it’s that he shows some cleverness with how he renders the lyrics.

But overall, the lyrical approach to each song is very “one note,” even if the music is all over the place like a bad rash. And though you want to pat Bryan Andrews on the head for the songwriting, the average song on Independence Day has four songwriters. Just just exactly how much is Andrews contributing to his own music? He’s not as much a songwriter as he is a vessel for an idea of how to exploit political acrimony into a musical product to capitalize off of his social media attention. This is one of those projects where the famous happens first, then they figure out the music.

Nobody’s being convinced of believing or converting to anything through the music of Bryan Andrews. There isn’t even an attempt to do this in the lyricism. There’s not storytelling or allegory, or trying to get people to walk in someone else’s shoes. There’s a lot of rage, and a lot of mental unsettledness. Bryan Andrews and Independence Day are not a rebuke, an addressing, or a potential solution to the crumbling empire and late stage Capitalism the United States is clearly suffering through. It’s a symptom of it. It’s the co-opting of acrimonious attitudes for commercial gain, while aiding and abetting the nation’s downfall by adding to the severely judgemental “blame the other side, and insult them with the most maximalist pressure” mood of the nation.

There’s no nuance to anything Bryan Andrews does or says. Anyone who he might have even a tacit disagreement with him online is immediately marked as a Nazi and a KKK member as he screams at his sun visor in his latest viral post. He’s one of those guys who doesn’t stimulate conversation, but ends it with his “you’re a fascist” take on everything. The more apoplectic and extreme he is, the more viral he goes, feeding the narcissistic rage and dopamine addiction tied to social media clout. This is especially true for his rug pull “I’m gonna stop talking about politics to further my country career … nah, I’m not” posts that have become as predictable as his boiler plate MS NOW takes.

But even beyond the music itself, Independence Day enacts a “fart and fall down” moment for Andrews in the way the album isn’t even mastered properly. At the risk of getting too technical or nerdy, whenever you have a collection of songs all on the same album, they need to be mixed and mastered individually to make sure they sound presentable on a range of speakers and devices, and then the songs need to be mastered with each other so the listening experience comes across as cohesive. That process was forgone for this project that cobbles together previously-released singles with a few new songs.

The experience of Independence Day is already beset by the way Bryan Andrews has no musical compass whatsoever, and is simply gravy training off of perceived sonic trends to the point where no song sounds soncially like any other. Though he cites the country music Outlaws in numerous songs, there is nothing tied to that sonic direction on this record. But then going from one track to the next, the volumes and signals are so aggressively unaligned, it makes for a cheap, and frankly insulting experience for the listener. In 20 years of reviewing albums, this issue has never been so incredibly pronounced.

Some will say this is excusable because this album is supposed to be a “mixtape” of sorts. But in truth, just like the cover art, it’s a give-up, low effort affair. Margo Price also took the mixtape approach with her Independence Day release of protest music, Days of Unrest, and none of these mixing/mastering issues are presented at all. And by the way, if you’re a left-leaning country music fan, for the love of everything, go listen and tout the Margo Price record.

In fact, where was someone like Margo Price, Jason Isbell, or even Brandi Carlile or Maren Morris to help counsel Bryan Andrews on the direction of this music? If it is your mission to infiltrate country music with more left-leaning perspectives, Bryan Andrews just set that mission back by many years. And with all the social media attention he sucks up, it’s also cutting the legs off songwriters and performers in the country space that are actually good, and are making inroads via that mission. They should distance from it, just like many left-leaning country pundits distanced from the terrible NY Mag/Vulture take on country a few months back that also undermined their interests.

You’re not seeing any review media coverage or support for Andrews’ Independence Day because even the political apparatchiks embedded in country media larping as journalists know it’s a dog. Yet make no mistake about it, you still have a segment of Boomers and left-leaning social media functionaries that will continue to push Bryan Andrews and his music because they like his message and foolishly think he’s making a difference in the country music industry instead of inadvertently undermining their own political interests, just like the same idiots that think that John Rich is a country superstar.

Bryan Andrews isn’t infiltrating mainstream country, despite his recent appearance at CMA Fest. He’s being placated and tokenized. They’re using him as a shield and an indemnity against political criticism, in part because they know his career will never blow up big, so there’s no risk to platforming him. The Opry does this with many performers as well.

Saving Country Music asserts all of this knowing that politics is the domain of the irrational, and Bryan Andrews might use this honest assessment to couch himself as a victim and mine content—because after all, what he needs more than anything else is social media content. Meanwhile, the politically-incited population will insist this negative assessment is solely the result of a right-leaning, boot licking, MAGA-supporting bigot. Because how else could you not like this music? The ultimate way you show your undying fealty to a political cause is how you’re willing to stomach a lie, including saying the music of Bryan Andrews is excellent, and country.

But it’s not, and you can’t claim something is country just because you want to, especially when it’s so clearly the domain of others genres, except a song or two. This music and the entire project isn’t just bad. It’s disastrous. “I will never stop making music that I believe in. Because this is my country damn music,” Andrews says in the intro. But just like so much of politics perpetrated on both sides, this entire thing is predicated on lies.

1/10

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