As Predicted, “Bro-Country” Is Now a Term of Endearment
Not to go all Bobby Bones on your asses by pointing out the obvious about something upcoming and then taking a self-ingratiating victory lap when it comes to fruition, but just as I’ve been saying ever since the term “bro-country” was widely adopted by naysayers of the current male-dominated laundry list phenomenon in country music, eventually it would be co-opted by the very “bros” it was meant to call out, and be used as a term of endearment.
Well now ladies and gentlemen, we have reached that point, and in a big way.
The problem with the term “bro-country”, and why it has never been adopted by Saving Country Music was because it’s not really descriptive enough of what is wrong with the songs it’s being appointed to. The reason bros are bros is because they lack self-awareness, and call each other “bro” all the time. So when “bro-country” became the prevailing term for checklist country, it was only a matter of time before it went from an unsavory describer of a subset of country that pointy-nosed intellectuals look to bemoan, to the being adopted by the very douchebags it’s meant to demean.
Cases In Point (just a few, but there’s many more):
”Thomas Rhett, one of the leading songwriters and performers in the bro-country trend recently posted a “Bro-Country” Playlist on his official YouTube VEVO channel touting “The Best of Bro-Country” where you can sit back, press play, and listen to 41 straight minutes of songs like Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise”, Brantley Gilbert’s “Bottom’s Up”, Luke Bryan’s “That’s My Kind of Night”, or Thomas Rhett’s own “Get Me Some Of That”. Looks like Rhett has no problem with him or his contemporaries being called “bro-country.”
”On April 21st, Country Outfitter posted a playlist called “10 Bro-Country Songs For Summer” ; no, not to laugh at the trend, but to promote it. It showcases such sizzling summer anthems as “Ready Set Roll” by Chase Rice, “Drink To That All Night” by Jerrod Niemann, and “This Is How We Roll” by Florida Georgia Line. “Tropical getaways, ice cold beer and late nights sitting on the tailgate are just a few of the topics covered by many of country music’s leading men,” Country Outfitter touts. “While we wait for the weather to decide its next move, we’ve put together a heated playlist of bro-country songs for summer.”
”In a Florida Georgia Line review in The Edmonton Journal from April 15th titled “Florida Georgia Line Push Right Buttons with Bro Country“, writer Tom Murray gushes, “There were couples dancing in the upper terraces, rows of drunk bros in ball caps with fists extended, shouting themselves hoarse at nameless workday ghosts, and lots of selfies being taken. What more can be said?” He went on to give the band credit for their “reassembly of clichés,” and even had the guts to infer, “If Hank had been born in 1990, then you can be sure he would have done it this way as well, except maybe with Chuck D or Eric B on the remix, not Nelly.” Ugh.
”Not to be outdone, there is an entire radio station touting the virtues of bro-country, and even using it as the very definition of their format. KSTN in Stockton, CA decided to reformat in March, and named bro-country as their specific format. “The Bull”, as the station is being called, greeted the airwaves with their new format by playing 48 straight hours of Luke Bryan’s “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” on continuous loop. Lawyers are looking into if this violated the Geneva Convention protocols on torture.
What Is a Better Alternative to Bro-Country?
Of course the problem with nicknames is you can’t pick them, they pick themselves, and bro-country has by far become the accepted nomenclature for songs by male country artists that spout the virtues of beer, trucks, back roads, tailgates, cutoffs, etc. etc. without any regard to narrative. But this trend isn’t anything new in pop country; only its dominance of the genre is, but even then you can go back many years to find its origination. Jason Aldean’s “Dirt Road Anthem” was definitely a bro-country song, and it was the biggest-selling country song in 2011.
Bro-country is simply a construct of pop country, just like country rap is. “Pop country” is a term that has always had negative connotations, especially amongst the artists that wear their tough exteriors proudly like the ones in the “bro-country” realm. Saving Country Music had been using the term “laundry list” for years to describe the type of listing off of country artifacts and signifiers that accompany a “bro-country” song. I remember being on a tour bus as part of the 2011 Country Throwdown/Willie Nelson 4th of July Picnic with a bunch of young songwriters, and being in the midst of a conversation about “checklist songs” that basically mirror the definition of “laundry list”.
But of course neither of these two terms will be adopted. Bro-country is here to stay, and destined to be adopted widespread by the very sots it was meant to criticize.
April 24, 2014 @ 9:38 am
I’m partial to the term “douchebilly.”
April 24, 2014 @ 1:39 pm
I like that. 😀
April 25, 2014 @ 6:00 pm
Hahaha love it!!
April 24, 2014 @ 9:49 am
Here are my approved terms for these guys:
Fucking idiots
April 24, 2014 @ 10:25 am
I refer to it as “half-wit hillbilly hip-hop” because I think terms like bro-country and country-rap lend it too much dignity.
April 24, 2014 @ 10:39 am
I’ve begun calling it “corporate country.” I think it’s a befitting term. The other alternative name I would use is “disco country,” since some feel this is country music’s disco era.
Or keep it simple and call it hot garbage.
April 24, 2014 @ 2:22 pm
I have to agree with this – that’s exactly what it is….corporate country muzak
I like the negative connotations…but imo the term ‘bro’ has major / overt negative connotations and look what’s happening with that…..
Fucking idiots is right lol
April 24, 2014 @ 2:37 pm
But country music has always been corporate, going back to the 50s. One could argue that it was even more corporate a half century ago, with Nashville country music industry being dominated in a monopolistic fashion by RCA. Even the Bakersfield Sound artists were largely signed to Capitol Records.
Also, let’s not demean disco by comparing it to bro-country. The Kelly Clarkson/Vince Gill song best represents disco-country, and it is superior to the vast majority of songs currently on country radio.
April 24, 2014 @ 3:17 pm
Both valid points. Disco is actually far and away better than bro country. Sorry disco fans!
So I guess hot garbage would be the best thing to call it 🙂
April 24, 2014 @ 3:47 pm
I think when people refer to something being “corporate” they mean that it is corporate in a specifically negative sense. The culture of corporations and the way they operate has changed significantly since the mid-twentieth century, including the music business.
Even so, the dominance of RCA in the Nashville sound era was a bad thing, and that era is usually only referred to around here in a negative context, especially in reference to how the monopoly was defeated by the likes of Neil Reshen, Tompall Glaser, Willie Nelson, and others. The good thing is that the radio side of the business at the time was enough of an open field that non-corporate dominated music was able to break through. Today that isn’t the case.
April 24, 2014 @ 4:54 pm
I agree that, in general, the culture of corporations has gotten significantly worse in the past 50 years. However, in the case of the country music industry, artistic freedom today is significantly greater than it was in the Nashville Sound era.
April 24, 2014 @ 3:53 pm
“Also, let”™s not demean disco by comparing it to bro-country. The Kelly Clarkson/Vince Gill song best represents disco-country, and it is superior to the vast majority of songs currently on country radio. ”
Out of curiousity, I listened to the song. It doesn’t strike me as disco at all. More like classic ’70s r & b. Not a bad song.
I was a teenage rock fan during the disco years and I still detest that music with a passion. If I’m at a party and all they’re playing is disco music, it will ruin my time. I take no nostalgic pleasure from it whatsoever.
I think the comparison of bro country to disco makes a lot a sense. They both are formulaic, frivolous, utterly disposable party music.
April 24, 2014 @ 4:51 pm
Believe me, I am not a disco fan. In general, I strongly dislike dance music.
I would still rank bro-country as much worse though, due to the loudness of the production (a hard rock feature, not a disco one) and especially due to the uniquely stupid lyrics.
April 24, 2014 @ 10:50 am
“The Bull”
seems appropriate
April 24, 2014 @ 11:00 am
The lesson with “bro-country” is that you can’t pick the names of genres and sub-genres, they pick themselves. We can try our damnedest to self-appoint names as we deem appropriate, but in the end, this will never work, whether it with negative or positive connotations. In the end it is whatever resonates the deepest in the current zeitgeist.
April 24, 2014 @ 11:44 am
I agree.
From “alt-country” to “freak folk” to “shoe gaze,” the genre names that catch on are the ones that are catchy and easy to say, not necessarily the ones that are the most accurate.
I think it happens with other terms too, with words like “hippie,” “yuppie,” ” hipster,” etcetera.
April 24, 2014 @ 11:04 am
Now, if only we could get them all to wear the pinwheel hats, so they’d be easier to spot.
April 24, 2014 @ 11:13 am
Of all the transgressions against traditional country that we’ve seen over the past few years, I didn’t think anything would enrage me more than after last year when CMT Hot 20 host and bro/pop-country personality Cody Alan mis-quoted Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes as “and who’s gonna give their heart and soul to get to you and me” during the networks coverage of the George Jones funeral.
Until now when I read Tom Murray’s quote above that had Hank been born in 1990 he’d “be doing it this [bro-country] way.”
And what the hell does it even mean that FGL reassembled cliches? Does that mean they sang about girls, trucks, then beer, instead of beer, girls, then trucks?
April 24, 2014 @ 12:27 pm
Edmonton Journal writer has no got dang business speculating about what Hank Williams would be doing in this time period. The man had creative intelligence and innate poetic abilities, it is dubious that he would be participating in an artistically and lyrically bankrupt genre such as “bro-country.” His granddaughter Holly said “Hank would be Americana if he were alive today,” at last year’s Americana Music Awards, which seems somewhat more plausible. But such thought experiments don’t even make sense, because it is impossible to know how country music might have evolved if Hank had never lived in the first place.
Also, born in 1990? Both members of FGL are older than that, and a lot of the men participating in “bro-country” are in their late thirties.
April 24, 2014 @ 2:20 pm
Tom Murray should give a listen to this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN5bpBq95OU
April 24, 2014 @ 11:21 am
Trigger, it’s ‘Get Me Some Of That’. Gotta get the title right or Thomas Rhett will come after you with some cool hand movements.
April 24, 2014 @ 11:37 am
The problem with “pop-country” is that it can describe anything from Patsy Cline to bro-country.
I have to admit that the task of coming up with a name for this phenomenon is difficult.
April 24, 2014 @ 11:43 am
Exactly. I would say that ‘Need You Now’ is a great example of pop country and that is a very good song I think but is by no means real country.
Not all pop country is bad or offensive or even a threat to the art form of country music.
April 24, 2014 @ 11:53 am
I always differentiated between “country pop” and “pop-country.” For example, the former could describe Patsy Cline or Eddy Arnold, the latter was a term of disparagement used by the likes of Hank III to describe a type of modern commercial country which was divorced from traditional country music in its values. I might be the only one who thinks of it that way though.
April 24, 2014 @ 12:46 pm
Many traditional country fans in the 60s thought of Patsy Cline, Eddy Arnold, and the other Nashville Sound artists as commercial and rootless as well.
April 24, 2014 @ 1:31 pm
Good point. It just seems useful to clarify because I am not against good country-pop, but when I am specifically critiquing modern commercial country I sometimes refer to it as “pop country” because that is the common term for it, or at least it was until the “bro country” thing came along.
April 24, 2014 @ 11:45 am
the anti bro country songs sound just as pop and laundry list as the songs they are trying to satirize
April 24, 2014 @ 7:37 pm
I don’t hear any synthesized music or (bad) rapping in the protest songs. Like many country songs, the song in the above video and another is just vocals and a guitar. Any song that uses heavy synth to replace country instruments is far more pop than the most country/pop songs. Bro country is pop/rock/rap and not country at all. Some of those songs might be just 1-5% token country. Also the lyrics in-between the bro country lyrics in the protest songs are more original.
April 24, 2014 @ 12:47 pm
Trigger, were you serious? Did that bull station really play one song 48 hours straight?
April 24, 2014 @ 1:32 pm
http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/127871/kstn-a-is-now-the-bull-simulcast-with-105-9-transl
As ALL ACCESS first reported FRIDAY (NET NEWS 3/15), KNOX INC Classic Country KSTN-A/STOCKTON began spinning the format wheel, the last 48 hours of which featured a continuous loop of LUKE BRYAN”™s “Country Girl (Shake It For Me).”
The wheel landed firmly on Country earlier today, as KSTN-A, simulcast with its recently acquired 105.9 translator became “THE BULL,” launching with 10,000 songs in a row.
Radio stations do this a lot these days ahead of a format change to create attention. Apparently this station used to play classic country. Another one bites the dust.
April 25, 2014 @ 12:15 am
“Not dead which eternal lie
Stranger eons, death may die
Drain you of your sanity
Face the thing that should not be”
April 25, 2014 @ 12:12 pm
Bro-country is pretty much the musical equivalent of Cthulhu…
And how about “frat-boy Peter Pan bullshit”? Surely that couldn’t be spun into a positive…
April 25, 2014 @ 2:36 pm
I’m not very surprised about KSTN’s new format. Stockton is a poor, decaying, urbanizing town in California’s central valley. A pretty depressing place.
It would be interesting to see what direction KATM in nearby Modesto takes. They were the big country station in that market, if I recall you could get their signal all the way from the eastern suburbs of the Bay Area all the way out to Yosemite. They played a lot of mainstream commercial country stuff, but I remember they used to have a decent classic country program on Sunday evenings that I used to listen to on the way back from camping trips in the mountains.
April 29, 2014 @ 10:30 am
This isn’t uncommon at all, the radio group I used to work for played Proud Mary for 72 hours straight leading up to the programming launch of a new classic rock station.
April 24, 2014 @ 1:24 pm
@Eric:
Thing is, Patsy Cline could sing straight-up honky-tonk music, and she did, in her live appearances. Check out some of her early TV performances on YouTube. There’s definitely more of a directness and an edge to what she’s doing there, and it’s because she’s backed by a small band and not smothered in 100 violins.
I’ve got a term for what they are calling “bro country”, but there are ladies who read these comments.
Maybe “bro” is short for “Brokeback Mountain”?
April 24, 2014 @ 3:09 pm
How about i dont give a fuck no more & tried of hearing about these losers?!
April 24, 2014 @ 3:10 pm
Read Murray’s article over again. It’s tongue in cheek.
April 24, 2014 @ 3:15 pm
He reached out to me and said that it was more sarcasm than I was giving it credit for, but stands behind his quote about Hank Williams, which I’ve since expanded upon his request.
April 24, 2014 @ 3:46 pm
Lets just call them the
“sellout generation”
April 24, 2014 @ 5:30 pm
I, for one, have absolutely no problem with the makers of “bro-country” claiming it and labeling as so. The more widely accepted and understood that term is, the easier it is for people with inch-deep understanding of the genre to differentiate between whatever bro-country is and what country music is to most of us.
If the average person asks you what kind of music you like today and your answer is “country music”; how often do you have to tack on a clarifier? And is your clarifier succinct? Mine rarely is, but it would much more so if folks understood what “bro-country” is.
April 25, 2014 @ 12:30 am
My only exposure to bro-country (faux-country?) is through this site. The benefits of listening to zero radio. 🙂
April 25, 2014 @ 5:43 am
Been thinking about this a lot lately: when Country music is at it’s finest it communicates a powerful, subtle, or complex message in a simple way.
Ignoring nomenclature entirely, my problem is with shallow music that ignores the qualities that have made the genre great.
This is why bro-country is stupid. This is why drug+devil horns country has become stupid. This is also why Eric Church has some good songs. He hasn’t forsaken entirely the challenges of writing and performing a great country song.
I’m personally kind of glad these perpetrators have owned up to a name. As Rage told us, it’s first important to “know your enemy.” ALL OF WHICH ARE AMERICAN DREAMS…
April 25, 2014 @ 6:19 am
I listened to a TON of country back in the early 90s and even THAT era seems more honest and real. Maybe it was the lack of dudebros and pitch correction.
Which, btw, if you flash the horns but you use Autotune in your songs? You might be a douchebag.
April 25, 2014 @ 10:44 am
I’m disappointed, but not surprised, by Thomas Rhett. I thought “Beer With Jesus” was cute the first few times I heard it. But in hindsight mixing beer with Jesus in the song made his shift towards bro country quite predictable.
April 25, 2014 @ 2:50 pm
At least “Beer with Jesus” had true musical beauty. That quality is completely lacking in his most recent songs.
April 25, 2014 @ 10:45 am
“Tropical getaways, ice cold beer and late nights sitting on the tailgate are just a few of the topics covered by many of country music”™s leading men,”
Yeah they also talk about sipping moonshine, Friday night football games, and girls in cut off jeans. Real moving poetic stuff that I’m sure Kristofferson and Nelson wish they could come up with.
“If Hank had been born in 1990, then you can be sure he would have done it this way as well, except maybe with Chuck D or Eric B on the remix, not Nelly.”
Please tell me that the guy who said that is face down in an alley with a boot stuck in his ass. This comment turned my stomach to read it. Hank possessed the ability to tell a full story in one verse of his music that made you feel the emotions of the characters in his story. Bro Country is nothing more than one random cliche after another thrown together over a rock or hip hop beat that tells less of a story than the label on a tube hemmoroid ointment.
Give it time and this genre will go the way of hair metal. What is popular today will be laughed at tomorrow.
April 25, 2014 @ 11:30 am
“Bro Country” and “Frat Boy Country” are dumbing down the genre. I haven’t listen to mainstream radio in years. I want songs with substance.
April 25, 2014 @ 11:41 am
At a different blog where I love to lurk. There is a blogger who will eat this term up. Sadly the blogger wouldn’t know real country music if it bit em in the ass.
April 25, 2014 @ 2:31 pm
I was scrolling through the “genre” stations on Pandora and sure enough there is a “Bro Country” station. All Jason Aldean, Brantly Gilbert, Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan all the time dear lord.
April 25, 2014 @ 4:01 pm
Even though I do like the douchebilly term, I will say its ridiculous that we as a fanbase/critics/artists/other related people of Country Music have so many subgenres and special little titles and nicknames for certain acts.. So with that I feel the need to simplify some things…Kinda like the Ron White Heightened State Of Awareness System, I have two personal Subgenres of Country Music… Those two are : Country Music and Not Country Music! A keyword to this system is the word “personal”. I don’t discriminate. I like artists in both the mainstream and underground. At the same time I do feel there are artists at both ends that aren’t really country and or just plain suck. That’s the best part of this system. You get to choose what fits!
While we are at it on classifying things I have another idea. Gonna pitch this show to CMT or GAC ( Shoot they may very well work together on this!) The running title of the show in Small Town USA ( not a knock on Justin Moore) and idea is to get every single living legend, modern era performer, underground performer and just in general every living industry personnel thrown in one big small town together and have them live out the songs that they write, sing and produce. The ones that do so successfully get to continue on with their careers,and while the others that aren’t so successful get hung like True Grit. Also hosted by Steve Austin as well. I think it’s a hit.
***End of A Very Random Yet Creative Rant***
April 25, 2014 @ 6:34 pm
I’d like to know where Zac Brown Band stands in all of this. I detest all bro-country which, I hate to say, seems to include “Chicken Fried”. But other songs by ZBB don’t fall into that category, do they?
I think ZBB is one of the only good things they play on most country radio stations. Almost everything else is bro-country bullshit. The most angering part is that some of my friends like to say they listen to country music and all they talk about is… brace yourselves… Blake Shelton, Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line… you get the picture. It’s saddening.
April 26, 2014 @ 2:40 pm
Zac Brown is moderately talented and usually listenable, which means that his music is better than average by the low standards of what passes for country today. Yes, his songs sometimes have a “frat boy” side. So did Garth Brooks, e.g. “Friends in Low Places” comes to mind. I don’t have a big problem with a singer having a frat boy side once a while, but I do have an issue with singers and record labels trying to fit songs into the bro country stereotype.
April 25, 2014 @ 7:41 pm
Ryan Roberts wrote “I will say its ridiculous that we as a fanbase/critics/artists/other related people of Country Music have so many subgenres ”
That is true, but country music doesn’t even register on the scale of ridiculousness that hard rock/heavy metal has on the market. I don’t think there are enough characters allowed on comments to get into all the metal sub-genres.
As far as bro-country? Good for them. Please, please, please co-opt this moniker. It makes it a whole hell of a lot easier for me to know what to avoid.
April 26, 2014 @ 1:17 pm
I think we should just call it corporate country, since it’s like corporate rock. No artist is gonna embrace being called corporate country.
April 26, 2014 @ 3:00 pm
I am sadly under the conclusion that this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. But when it does get better, it is going to come like a ton of bricks, just like Nirvana in 1991.
April 26, 2014 @ 5:22 pm
They had the radio at work tuned to a country station. At one point I heard seven songs about partying, “ice cold beer”, and some woman who apparently goes by the name of “girl” consecutively. I was hoping this bro country thing would be on the way out but it seems to be going as strong as ever.
April 27, 2014 @ 8:41 pm
Thomas Rhett is with Big Machine. Leave it to them to be the first to brag about bro-country and use it for marketing. They’ve always been more about marketing and hype than substance and great country music. Kings of pop.
How about this for a catchy new term http://twitter.com/leeannesavage/status/459715672138723328
#CookieCutterCowboys LOL Some of them aren’t even cowboys, more like cowgirls.
Can’t wait for the Bro-Country Gold albums to start rolling out in a few years!
April 29, 2014 @ 2:54 pm
I happen to know Tom Murray from the Edmonton Journal is personally not a fan of FGL at all, and was bending over backwards in the name of “fairness” to give them credit for at least being “good” at what they do. He made some off the record comments about them that could never be described as gushing.
August 8, 2014 @ 10:24 am
I had to come out of lurkdom to comment on this…as a female who has never fit the “party beach sorority hot chick” molds…I have been extremely alienated by the bro songs. I’m 33, a mother, from the Midwest, work 40 hours a week, don’t drink, been married for 12 years. I used to identify with the songs about marriage and parenthood, supporting a family and trying to live a good, happy life while struggling to make ends meet…now I feel like I crashed a frat party where all the girls are 10s and the guys are leering, drunken good old boys. These songs are so insulting too any woman who wants to be regarded as a whole human being and not just a compliant, tanned “little” cutie who is perpetually young and ready to “slide on over here.”
March 16, 2022 @ 7:47 am
How ’bout “J. Crew Country,” since most of these dudes resemble (or think they resemble) male models instead of good ol’ boys ?