Forget Hank, Bebe Rexha Had No Clue Who Florida Georgia Line Was Before “Meant To Be”
It comes up often in discussions about many of today’s new “country” artists and fans. Could they even name a song from someone like Ernest Tubb or Roy Acuff if you put them on the spot? Or how about the King of Country Music, Hank Williams? Some may not even be able to name you a song from George Strait, and probably consider Kenny Chesney classic country.
Part of this has to do with the importance of country music’s past being so diminished in today’s popular culture, but part of it has to do with the fact that you have music fans now that were born after the year 2000, and they just need to be brought up to speed on the history of the genre. It’s not their fault, and it’s important that older country fans and the artists of today communicate the importance of country music’s history to them, and exude patience and understanding while doing so.
But can you imagine having the #1 song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for the last six months—something Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, George Strait, and Kenny Chesney never came close to doing—and not even knowing about the massive present-day pop country band you collaborated with to pull it all off before you walked into the room to write the song with one of them?
That’s the revelation that came from pop star Bebe Rexha about her song “Meant to Be” with Florida Georgia Line in a recent interview with ABC Radio. Bebe Rexha admitted she had no idea who Florida Georgia Line was before writing “Meant To Be” with Tyler Hubbard. Now she’s done something that no other country artist except Sam Hunt has done in history—top the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for an incredible 26 weeks.
There are so many ways to illustrate the absolute absurdity of what has happened with Bebe Rexha and “Meant To Be,” but this one might take the cake. At least Florida Georgia Line know who Hank Williams Jr. and Alabama are, and can cite them as influences. It would almost be endearing for Bebe Rexha to not know who Florida Georgia was if it was due to taste, and not a complete black hole of knowledge about anything that has to do with “country” music.
What is going on with “Meant To Be”—and more importantly the Billboard rules that have allowed the song to completely rewrite the history books, and the gaming of the streaming system to boost certain songs—is unprecedented not just for the chart achievement itself, but because it’s being done by someone who has never been more outside of country music mindset, and more clueless about what country music is. We’ve never had an artist with a #1 song of any length who couldn’t name a top contemporary country artist of their time, let alone pass a Hank Williams knowledge test. Now we have one who couldn’t do either that will now forever be ensconced in the history books, pushing all the country greats from the past and present down a peg.
From the very beginning, country music was founded on paying traditions forward from forefathers and foremothers to preserve the culture of the American South and West, so the voices and stories of country music’s ancestors would never be forgotten, and would act as a living history of a people and a sound. This is what makes country music different from pop or any other genre. It doesn’t mean pop artists can’t make country music, or that country artists can’t dabble in pop, or that they can’t collaborate together, and evolve the sound over time. But preservation of the roots must always be an imperative. That is why anointing an artist such as Bebe Rexha is such a dangerous enterprise. She doesn’t symbolize a continuing on of the country music lineage. She symbolizes the absolute ignorance of it, and breaking of the ties that bind country music to its past.
In 1995, the country music supergroup The Highwaymen made up of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson recorded a song called “If He Came Back Again.” It was four living legends of country music all coming together to pay tribute to another country music legend, Hank Williams. The song wonders aloud if people would even recognize Hank Williams if he were to walk out among the present-day population. Now imagine someone so clueless about this history of country music, they couldn’t even recognize Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, or Johnny Cash?
That’s Bebe Rexha. And according to numerous metrics published by Billboard, she’s the biggest artist in “country” music stretching back to last year, and counting.
Something must be done.
May 30, 2018 @ 8:21 am
No surprise. Also maybe more type than she’s worth.
May 30, 2018 @ 8:30 am
This song is topping country charts today? I’ve never heard of her or this song.i guess I really have divorced myself from country radio. It’s all Spotify or Christian radio for me these days.
May 30, 2018 @ 8:33 am
I had no clue who Florida Georgia Line was before I started reading SavingCountryMusic.com.
May 30, 2018 @ 8:27 pm
Ha! Me either. Or Sam Hunt. Not only that, but not even any of the kids at work know who the hell they are. Luke Bryan – sure. Jason Aldean, sure. But I work with a lot of young idiots who listen to really bad music – but still not one who has ever heard of these Florida, Hunt, or Rexha idiot – or half the other that only seem to actually exist on thi site! 😀
May 30, 2018 @ 8:38 am
I agree something must be done. But what can we do, Kyle? Sue the CMA?
May 30, 2018 @ 10:30 am
The CMA is asleep at the wheel with this topic and so many others. Billboard is really the biggest culprit here, and pressure must continue on their editorial board to not allow this defacing of country music to continue. That’s why I keep posting about it.
May 30, 2018 @ 9:09 am
You guys should do what I do and write bad yelp reviews on country stations in your area for the garbage they keep spewing out and promoting.
May 30, 2018 @ 9:24 am
If not for FGL, I’d have no idea who Bebe Rexha is. If not for autotune, I’d have no idea who FGL is. If not for greedy record company executives and program directors, I’d have no idea who Sam Hunt is. Ignorance would be bliss.
May 30, 2018 @ 9:43 am
Wait. She’d never heard of FGL.. isn’t that a good thing? I’m not sure if her being unaware of certain contemporary artists makes her completely clueless. How do we know she doesn’t know her country music history? She could just be like the rest of us in these comments and be blissfully unaware of the crap spewing out of country radio.
May 30, 2018 @ 10:31 am
Yeah I know that makes a cute point, but in reality it proves how utterly clueless she is. And no, she doesn’t know about older country artists either. She’s already admitted that in the past.
May 30, 2018 @ 9:53 am
Under “Genres” her Wikkipedia page lists only Pop, R&B, hip hop, dance-pop.
No mention of Country.
May 30, 2018 @ 10:02 am
In ten years there will be no county music as we know it . As younger artists move towards country they bring more rock sounding songs and pass it off as country
May 31, 2018 @ 10:20 am
Uhhhhh….you mean like its been for the past 7 or 8 years?
May 30, 2018 @ 10:20 am
Well, here you go. Bebe Rexha is fulfilling the role of females getting radio play. Hope everyone is happy. Spin-off artists will now follow suit.
May 30, 2018 @ 10:34 am
Bebe Rexha is very directly keeping actual country women off the radio waves and charts in an era when they are already facing insurmountable odds. This is a very big part of this story going under-reported.
May 30, 2018 @ 10:33 am
What the hell is this, a Bebe Rexha diss track? I have no idea who commissioned y’all to write this. It’s ludicrous. It’s not Rexha’s fault that her collaboration with FGL made her the most popular country music artist in the business. I personally think that it should be at the top of the pop charts only, like Hailee Steinfeld’s collaboration with FGL “Let Me Go”. If Bebe Rexha is ignorant of country music, who gives a s**t? Doesn’t mean we have to write her off as a musical artist and call her uncultured.
May 30, 2018 @ 10:35 am
You have a dollar sign as part of your name.
May 30, 2018 @ 10:42 am
Boom roasted
May 30, 2018 @ 10:46 am
I was thinking the same, Trigger.
Meanwhile, I’ve been at my desk with The Firewatcher’s Daughter and Bear Creek on repeat in my headphones since 5:30 am. If only we could replace Rexha with Brandi Carlile….
May 30, 2018 @ 10:52 am
Trigger wins the internet today!
May 30, 2018 @ 5:01 pm
Get the hell off of this site and go back to whatever pop suburb you came from.
Sincerely, the arti$t formerly known
May 30, 2018 @ 5:48 pm
I’m sure Ms Rexha is a successful artist in her own genre of music, but collaboration alone does not make Her a Country Music artist.I will admit I find the tune catchy, but I won’t ever refer to it as a “classic”.
May 31, 2018 @ 3:30 pm
Actually, she was strictly B list before her ground-breaking collaboration. And by ground-breaking I mean crime against humanity.
May 30, 2018 @ 10:35 am
Trigger,
Well said.
May 30, 2018 @ 10:55 am
One thing I remember from Tyler Coe’s podcast is that he listened to every single #1 country song from the 20th century, and many were songs he had never heard before. Just because something is #1, that doesn’t mean it will be remembered by history. Hopefully that’s the case here.
May 30, 2018 @ 4:38 pm
Yeah, but many of those songs were #1’s for 1 to 4 weeks at the most. That’s the normal cycle of a #1. You can count on one hand the amount of country legends in the Hall of Fame who had songs at #1 for 10 weeks. A good way to think about it is that each week, it’s like earning a new #1, even if it’s the same song. Bebe Rexha has basically earned 26 #1’s in a row at this point, and counting.
May 30, 2018 @ 11:08 am
I’m torn on whether to give a shit anymore. It takes energy to keep getting bothered by this. There is such awesome real country music still being made that is easy to find, etc, and I can just filter all this shit out. On the other hand it would be great if the good artists got more support (mostly financial) for what they do. So, in the end, I also wish there was something that could “be done.”
May 31, 2018 @ 3:37 pm
Anyone who cares about country music has to give a shit and Trigger has to keep writing about the catastrophic effects of carpetbagging. As far as I can tell his is the loudest and most prominent voice out there. And without him bemoaning it, who will? Certainly not the Bobby Bones’s who lie dormant in their coffins of political correctness; he wouldn’t publicly shame the CMA, Billboard, and out-of-genre artists who hump the leg of country radio just to make a buck.
So keep on keeping on, Trigger. Public backlash is the only weapon against these invaders and the only way the public will care enough to make some real noise is if the problem gets consistent press.
May 30, 2018 @ 11:11 am
Billboard is the real problem here. Nobody cares about the country-genre.
It’s an unhealthy alliance between the labels, radio & Billboard. The result is a mess of playlists & charts manipulation with hourly airplay & a debut inside the Top 20. But dropping to the end of the list one week later. Songs only played by Cumulus stations (Cumulus/NashNext/Nash Icon) & the majority of songs reaching the Top 10 also going to #1 with unbelievable audience numbers.
Bebe Rexha…well…a money making machine for people in the background. She will gone & replaced by the next clueless i-want-to-be-a-star-kiddie or casting-wonder.
The victim is country music, the artists who make real country music & the fans who love the genre.
May 30, 2018 @ 11:16 am
George strait and allen Jackson said it best with murder on music row
May 30, 2018 @ 12:36 pm
That song came out twenty years too early.
May 30, 2018 @ 2:28 pm
Good thing it came out then cause musicrow would have prevented it from being released in this day and age
May 30, 2018 @ 11:35 am
The problem is radio in general trying to impose this crap down our throats
Another reason so many people are listening to either Willies Roadhouse,WSM,or the Radio Free Country website.
May 30, 2018 @ 11:36 am
It’s too bad she’s traditionally attractive. That’s the only reason she’s ascended to this point.
May 31, 2018 @ 10:22 am
Any woman, even one ugly as sin, can be made “attractive” with makeup….
May 30, 2018 @ 11:42 am
Not just in the Bebe Rexha case, but in general, this lack of historical knowledge and the roots of your chosen profession is disturbing. In most cases it will lead to inferior output. It’s impossible to carry on a tradition or actually evolve something in a meaningful way unless you recognize the giants whose shoulders you are standing on.
I hope she at least knows that Florida and Georgia are states that share a border.
May 30, 2018 @ 2:31 pm
The Band Perry had tradition on their side when they debuted but somehow lost their way
June 2, 2018 @ 12:57 am
boy ….there’s an understatement .
June 2, 2018 @ 5:29 am
“I hope she at least knows that Florida and Georgia are states that share a border.”
She probably does NOT know that. She’s from Romania, and she doesn’t seem like the type that would know world geography very well.
June 2, 2018 @ 5:34 am
Wait, actually she’s American (born in Brooklyn), but her parents are Albanian. Not sure why I thought she was Romanian. Anyway, I stand by my strongly-held belief that she doesn’t know Florida and Georgia share a border, lol.
May 30, 2018 @ 12:33 pm
Well duh. She was doing songs with Nicki Minaj and One Direction members before “Meant to Be” was ever cut. She’s from a completely different world of music. This is why the prospects of the song being so huge are dangerous. The current class of country stars, not to mention the people writing these songs, producing them, and managing the people who sing them, only care about the paycheck and care very little about the roots of the genre. It seems the only reason someone involved in the modern country industry would do any research into the genre’s history would be to name-drop somebody in a song in a vain attempt to earn cred with the “old heads.” I heard Keith Whitley being referenced in a song that came out about two years ago and nearly puked.
May 30, 2018 @ 12:58 pm
Whats a Rexha? Isn’t it spelled Rexall?
May 30, 2018 @ 1:38 pm
On the flip side, who or what is a Bebe Rexha? Up until the latest release by Florida Georgia Line, I Never heard of her/it. Forget all the hype. Forget the craf. Forget paying your dues and being a 20-year overnight sensatio. It’s all about money and how many skulls full of mush can you rope I?
May 30, 2018 @ 1:54 pm
I wish, hope and pray this song will soon fall down a rabbit hole. I’m sick of it, her boobs about to fall out of her “uniform”…add to all this Country (ahem – CMT didn’t snip the “f” bomb out. Before any mention of “jealousy” comes up…. Rexha is in anage group of my 5 oldest grandson. The “f bomb” is understood by a 9 & 10 yr old. CMT is the morning fare to keep the cartoon battles down. There are a handful of songs I wish Tyler and BK had never done, but for me….this is the worstt. JMO
May 30, 2018 @ 3:04 pm
After nearly 40 years in small town country radio, I can say definitively that the corporate consolidation of local radio stations is to blame.
Music programming is no longer done at a local level. Staffing is such that the people who know the community have little to no input, even if they have a knowledge or interest in classic country.
Have your boss, or his, offer to sponsor a classic country weekend, or evening, show. If you generate revenue, you generate interest in their world.
May 30, 2018 @ 3:37 pm
I’ve never heard of her or that song and I might have heard one Florida Georgia Line song, but I can’t name it. They are all irrelevant in my world.
Thankfully, I have discovered new artists like Cody Jinks, Wade Bowen, Whitey Morgan, Tyler Childers, to some extent Sturgill Simpson, Aaron Watson, etc. There is still good country music being made and that is what I listen to, even if I have to work a little harder to find it.
May 30, 2018 @ 4:49 pm
Still not as surprising as Hank Jr. not ever hearing about Chris Stapleton.
May 30, 2018 @ 5:36 pm
And this is why I listen to 70’s country radio through My Pandora app. True traditional country music.
May 31, 2018 @ 7:25 am
Maybe this is actually an opportunity. Maybe there are radio stations that would label themselves as “Real Country” as a response to what’s going on and have the courage to exclude the songs that are obviously not really country. It’s all about having enough listeners. They can do it with enough support from country fans like the ones here and all over the country. We’d have to listen and support their advertisers in order for this to have a chance. At this point there should really be another genre called “Real Country” on the Billboard charts. It’s only fair to the real country artists and writers. Any success this effort has may be a wake-up call to mainstream country radio.
May 31, 2018 @ 7:33 am
t’s sad that garbage song are beating record. Rexha song and the FGL “cruise” and Sam Hunt “body like a backroad” …
I still remember that I had to suffer listening the song ” vacation ” from Thomas Rhett on a country radio when it was 100% pop song. What a terrible experience!…
It’s not true that all country fans want to hear this garbage! It would be nice if there would be a radio station (or sirius xm) willing to do the filtering:
1) real country station:
2) pop country station: [FGL, Sam Hunt, Thomas Rhett, 9enter the flavor of the month here), et al.]
May 31, 2018 @ 8:09 am
Real vs. pop. I like it.
May 31, 2018 @ 8:20 am
Who the heck cares??? What a joke! Yea I hear it everyday where I work with the young people, they have no clue of music history in general… doesn’t matter what genre! How sad I am and so dissatisfied with the so-called country music thrown at us everyday…Thank God I have my CDs to save me! I pop those in my player in my car when I’m rolling down the highway. I can then listen to REAL country at my fingertips!!
June 1, 2018 @ 6:08 am
Forget the fact she is not country….and she is not….the song is just effing annoying.
June 2, 2018 @ 12:15 pm
Things could be worse, I suppose. Country radio could be playing that Camilo Cabello feat. Kane Brown song to death.
November 6, 2019 @ 7:05 pm
Good evening,Trigger! I’m new to your site and will admit – I’ve never heard of most of these “artists” you regularly diss, but I have loved the passion you engage in taking them down. I (usually) don’t get the sense it’s personal for you; it seems you’re more PO-ed at the de-emphasis of radio (and program directors not married to a corporate computer), than the artists themselves, who may deserve a fair audition at AOR or Top 40 radio
My Q to U: can you link to any streaming playlists of classic pre 80s country that you would stand behind?