Cute, Florida Georgia Line, cute. Call your latest album Can’t Say I Ain’t Country and act as if this somehow insulates you against what any country music fan worth their salt already knows inherently. I can, and will say you ain’t country if I damn well please, as will the rest of us.
Bad pop star Walker Hayes recently infiltrated the mainstream country ranks after unleashing the terrible hit “You Broke Up With Me.” Now this hack is going out on tour, and since he has no original thoughts, Walker and his PR team have chosen to put the task of naming the upcoming tour in the hands of the unwashed masses.
If you’ve ever doubted the existence of a higher power, or the ability in all of its supreme benevolence to summon the forces of nature and impose its will upon the crust of the Earth, perhaps you now have a reason to hit your knees.
The very mild and misappropriated traditional country moments in “Down To The Honky Tonk” are not what make this song appealing or even redeemable to true country fans, it’s what’s wrong with it. The whole premise of “Down To The Honky Tonk” is a dud.
Country music still needs saving ladies and gentlemen, and is still searching for the absolute statistical rock bottom when it comes to quality and substance in songs. Defining the “worst” has officially reached new parameters. So let’s cover our ears, pinch our noses, and set these stinking piles of refuse up to ceremoniously knock them down.
Well, it’s happened. After Music Row hijacked the term “Outlaw” and ran it into the ground with uncool pop country douchewads to the point where the term is virtually unable to be rehabilitated, they’re now moving on to the term “real country” with help from Shania Twain and Jake Owen.
In 10 years and 11 days of owning and operating Saving Country Music dot com, I have never once seen someone display such bold-faced effrontery and wanton disrespect for the gorgeous and historic institution of country music as this wash up and his $50,000 diamond-encrusted gauge earrings.
Spectacularly relevant to 2014, “Hotdamalama” from Parmalee is the Bro-Country mega hit that never was, served with ragingly misogynistic language and imagery that would get you fired from 95% of 2018 workplaces with no severance and a sexual harassment lawsuit trailing your decommissioned ass out the door.
Who the hell is Jordan Davis you say? Well he’s that pop country guy; you know, the one with the beard. Because how the hell else would you tell him apart for the reams and reams of these generic pop country bros stacked up so thick up and down Music Row you need a cattle guard to get through them?
WARNING: LANGUAGE – Somehow, inexplicably, Keith Urban has figured out how to take the most iconic guitar riff in the entire 70+ year history of country music, and make it sound like the last dying gasps of a faulty smoke detector smacked repeatedly with a sledge hammer, and slowly drowning it in a bucket of 7-year-old used motor oil.
For many true country music performers, the bug to write, sing, and play country music bit them at an early age, and never left. For others, country music is simply a vehicle for fame and riches. Specifically, many of them first tried to make it in professional sports before flunking out or getting sidelined with injury.
Jake Owen ain’t Jack. And he ain’t no Mellencamp either. It appears the years of prolonged exposure to radioactive bronzer treatments have finally all but officially fried his brain. Yes this song makes me nostalgic. It makes me nostalgic for a time in music when new songs from country artists weren’t complete and utter shite.
The song is complete trash of course, with paint-by-the-numbers lyrics, and absolutely no acumen evidenced in the composition. But the best (or worst) part is this entire thing—in the immortal words of Ralphie from ‘A Christmas Story’—is nothing more than “a crummy commercial.”
We were so swept up in praising ourselves for all the gains made in the independent realm of country music in 2017, it wasn’t until here in the dwindling moments of the year that we realized just what a dreadful era 2017 posed in the mainstream.
For six glorious years, God Almighty graced us poor little creatures moving about the face of the earth looking for shelter and sustenance by abstaining from raining any new Sugarland material down upon us as the band stayed on indefinite hiatus, with the real possibility of staying mothballed until eternity.
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….
Man did Music Row in Nashville turn in a whole slew of stinkers this year, setting new lows for the substance, and non-country-ness of “country” songs in 2017. This year was a great example of how you should never think it can’t get any worse, because it can, and did, and by a long stretch.
Bro-Country godfather Luke Bryan is getting ready to give birth to his latest recorded monstrosity called What Makes You Country in a day or two, and in a recent feature in New York Times Magazine aiming to prove to us all what a good ol’ average Joe country boy he is, some pretty mirthful revelations emerged.
I don’t care if Walker Hayes is the most upstanding citizen from his affluent suburb, donates to charity, is sweet as pie to his fans, and gives mouth to nose resuscitation to orphaned puppies. This is not the type of incendiarily vapid stuff we need infecting anything being sold as “country.”
Calling this year’s race the “Big Machine Brickyard 400” is probably not the most savory development for true country music fans in itself. But Big Machine has announced they’re going the extra mile with their 2017 Brickyard sponsorship, at least for one of their artists: Brantley Gilbert.
This is a formulaic, Mad Lib-style, paint-by-the-numbers, women as a possession truck rap with fake piano imposed on a generic pop song, propped up solely by the perfectitude of Dylan Scott’s pectoral muscles and the come hither sturdiness of his jaw.
It might actually be the intangibles and industry tentacles extending from Walker Hayes and “You Broke Up with Me” that make the whole thing so sinister. This is not just the lead single from a Sam Hunt knockoff you’ve never heard of before.
Oh man are these some stinkers. Not only does an elite and highly-trained group of mainstream country artists seem to be like devoted experts at defining new lows for the genre, in 2017 the amount of non-country-ness of some of these “country” songs is so off the charts, it’s like they’re purposely challenging each other.
A complete run down of what country music fans can expect from the 2017 CMT Awards being held on Wednesday, June 7th from Nashville, including lists of performers, presenters, nominees, and everything else we know about the presentation.