“Boom” By Walker Hayes Is The Worst Album In ‘Country’ Music History. Full Stop.

Down with Pop Country 269 Comments

WARNING: Language

Friends and neighbors, I know you would rather spend your time reading about something a bit more positive in nature than the rabid attitudinal protestations of some twisted up music critic spouting off about this grotesque specimen of audio diarrhea, and during what is supposed to be a festive season no less, and with so much else out there in the world today eating at your mind and angering your blood. But it would be such a gross dereliction of Saving Country Music duty to not draw and quarter this audio monstrosity, I would die from neurotic distress due to the feeling of unfullfilled purpose if I let this embarrassment achieve wide recognition without a murmur of protest, let alone the barbaric yawp of sheer unmitigated ferocious dissent it deserves to be met with. The only question is if I can steady my hands enough through the roiling anger twitching behind my eyes, and the abhorrence to the mere notion of this album that’s bubbling my bile to physically type what must be shared.

Fuck this album, I’m sorry. I would rather personally watch my male genitalia cleaved clean off my abdomen with the combination of a rusty maul and a frozen sledge hammer, then strapped up with a Go Pro and my eyes clamped open and forced to watch on a monitor as a carrion bird carries it far away before ultimately descending into some foul-drenched alleyway drowning in refuse to vulturously pull at the bloody and putrefying flesh with its beak and talons, only to regurgitate it hours later after it’s marinated in the most vile hell of scavenger digestive juices, to then be re-consumed eventually by an emaciated mongrel and vomited up again in the middle of the road, and trundled over by heavy vehicles so many times it becomes no more discernible from a spot of grease discarded from the undercarriage of a Toyota than listen to one more electronically-derived and idiotically conceived millisecond of Walker Hayes’ Boom.

I’m embarrassed to be a part of the same animal species that would produce such an audio abortion and proffer it to the public for consumption.

First off, understand that everything about Walker Hayes is complete and utter fabricated bullshit. The songs of Boom are in no way a representation of him, let alone country music. Boom isn’t just not country music. Boom isn’t just the exact polar opposite of country music. No, Boom is literally the most acidic and destructive form of music to the country genre that not just has ever been produced, but that could ever be conceived of by the human brain or artificial intelligence, or a combination thereof. It is diabolic in its scope of cultural degradation. Even a performer like Luke Bryan should see the value in adamantly opposing Boom. It’s that virulent. Even someone like Sam Hunt should see that the danger Boom poses to country music as absolutely existential. Boom isn’t just bad, it is apocalyptic. It is literally the worst thing possible, ever.

Walker Hayes is a complete construct of desperation, and of slavitude to whatever he thinks will sell, along with an assessment from the new Country Music Antichrist, Shane McAnally, who relaunched the old mothballed label Monument Records just to produce and release this piece of shit, and inflict the world with the pussing musical scourge known as Walker Hayes and Boom. Not even Nashville’s unscrupulous major labels would sign off on this it was so terrible. Shane McAnally had to make a label especially for it. Being the principle puppetmaster behind Sam Hunt wasn’t enough for Shane McAnally. Now there should not be a shadow of a doubt left in anyone’s mind what McAnally’s agenda in music is, which is to completely reshape “country” into his own image, which happens to be an extremely urban, stultifying, primarily laptop-composed shitblob served with an almost sadist attitude, and with the sole purpose of making himself lots of fucking money at the direct expense of the intelligence and mental well being of the masses. Selling copies of Boom is like purposely giving people a disease to make a profit. It is cultural poison.

And what is the motivation for all of this?

Go back and listen to Walker Hayes circa 2013, when he still had his fucking Justin Bieber wind-blown haircut. It’s still utter garbage of course, but it’s nothing like Boom. Where is the extremely, extremely urban accent, the talk rapping, and all the other bullshit that makes Boom so bad? Walker Hayes utterly failed in country music because he has so much nothing, MIT could use the space where Walker’s talent should be as an absolute vacuum for scientific experiment.

But what Walker Hayes did have was six kids, and now he has a seventh on the way. And with a complete lack of life skills, and apparently no grip on the principles of family planning, Walker had to figure out some way to put food on the table. Some people cinch up their belt, swallow their pride, and get a real job. Walker on the other hand decided to stick his nose deep into the shittiest trends in country music, make a record that encapsulates all of them and in their entirety, and Shane McAnally was unscrupulous enough to see it could make them both a mint. Yes, because Walker Hayes doesn’t know what a fucking rubber is, we now all have to pay by listening to the inane, intellectually-insulting, culturally-appropriating doltish odes to stupidity that Hayes compiled in his fucking garage on a laptop and is passing off as “music.”

For serious Walker, it may not be my place to tell you how to live your life, but just stop procreating, dude. Wear protection. Gets some tubes tied or gonads snipped. Finish in the butt, whatever you have to do, but quit making us all suffer from the fact that you’re so unskilled, you can’t even pull out in time, let alone put a half decent song together. Go listen to “You Broke Up With Me.” Honest to God, Walker Hayes can’t even fucking whistle.

Walker Hayes is the perfect example of ferreting out the most glittering example of mediocrity among the unwashed masses, and shining a spotlight on them, making everyone else in society aspire to achieve that level of devolved stupidity under the perception of that’s how you succeed. The only skill that Walker Hayes possesses is the ability to completely detach himself from self respect, and do whatever it takes to “make it,” no matter the cost to himself or the public. Anybody could do what Walker Hayes has done with Boom. They just don’t have the thorough lack of scruples it takes to be able to stoop so low.

And don’t act like I’m being a bully here. You’re really going to try and tell me after listening to “Dollar Store” or “You Broke Up with Me” that even Walker Hayes doesn’t know this stuff is utter refuse? Yet he is still willing to present it for human consumption. That means he’s not just incapable, he’s also culpable. There is a song on this record called “Mind Candy” where the 37-year-old Walker Hayes with seven kids is openly obsessing over a 17-year-old from his past. Boom isn’t just embarrassingly awful and age inappropriate in large swaths, it’s utterly immoral in moments.

And while we’re on the topic of sex and immorality, I hope the ghost of Lou Reed materializes in front of Walker Hayes, reefs him in the nuts so hard they pop out of his ears and dangle down like earrings below his lobes, and then skull fucks Walker for so blatantly ripping off “Walk on the Wild Side” with his inbecilic “Dollar Store.” Attention estate of Lou Reed: sue Walker Hayes. Sue him hard, and sue him now. “Dollar Store” is the straight up filching of a melody, open and shut.

Nothing about Boom is original. Even when Walker tries to get meaningful, it’s still a con job. “Halloween” is the exact same song as Kane Brown’s “Learning.” Same exact theme, and same exact structure. If you can suffer through both, give them a listen. When you’re 37-years-old and derivative of Kane fucking Brown, you know how much you blow. Everything on this record is appropriated. There is only one song that isn’t a scathing insult to the listener, and that’s “Beer in the Fridge,” and it’s still extremely underwrought, and couldn’t even be stretched out to 2 1/2 minutes. Even “Craig,” which is about a pastor who buys Walker Hayes and his family a minivan, is full of self-absorption and opportunism. Craig is no hero if Boom is the result. He’s an enabler.

This isn’t just a matter of opinion or taste. It is utterly irresponsible of Walker Hayes and Shane McAnally to release music such as this. And before anyone chooses to moralize about the harshness of this assessment, how about you turn your ire to how this album has to be the most glaring example of cultural appropriation to ever be recorded. Yes, this is yet another historical low for Walker Hayes and Boom. The astounding robbery of black heritage, urban music modes, and ethnic annunciations from one of the most lily white, Mobile-born, Caspar Milquetoast, Southern fucknards breathing on the planet right now should have every politically-incited opinonator out there at Slate and Noisey seeing double red and typing away furiously at think screeds. This guy make Elvis look like a saint. I would call him the Vanilla Ice of country, but that doesn’t cut nearly low enough.

If you’re going to give shit to country for not crowning Beyoncé queen and giving her every single fucking award in the genre because she released one song that wasn’t really even that country, then by golly, I want to see you hypocrites up the ass of Walker Hayes from this affliction he’s causing to not just country music, but hip-hop culture as well by making a white mockery of the art form. Walker Hayes is an equal opportunity offender. If you have any sense of taste and perspective, regardless of your cultural compass, you should be writhing with spite and anger.

I’m sorry folks, but not enough negative can be said here. Walker Hayes and Boom deserve to be roundly and vehemently rejected by everyone in the country music industry, and by all who hold intelligence dear in society. And this is not hyperbole. Boom is the worst album of “country” music in history, and should be universally repelled and impugned by everyone, buried or burned as the example of cultural rot that it is, and never spoken of again except in reference of what we can never allow to befall our precious, fertile ears again.

Two Guns Extremely Down! (-1/10)

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