Luke Bryan Tries to Rewrite Bro-Country History on Rogan

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Luke Bryan made an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast in an episode published on Wednesday (10-23), and participated in a little revisionist history about his career and how it careened into Bro-Country, and specifically a moment when he was the target of a public backlash that started right here on Saving Country Music.

Though Luke Bryan certainly was not exclusively a Bro-Country artist, he was certainly a creature of that world and still is to some degree, which he admits at the beginning of the most relevant portion of the interview.

Bryan starts off by talking about how people criticized him for wearing tight jeans. “You wouldn’t imagine how much that pisses people off,” he says. And then he talks about how he used his 2011 song “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” to draw attention to himself.

“The only way to make it in music is you’ve got to stop people’s eyeballs on you. You’ve got to grab them vocally, visually, [and be] musically different,” Bryan says. “You’ve got to get them to stop for two seconds and say, ‘What is that fu-ker doin’ right there? And when I came out with ‘Country Girl (Shake It For Me),’ …I had to do it that way. In my opinion, I had to go, ‘This is my moment.'”

This is terrible advice to give to any up-and-coming country performer, and completely untrue. Granted, it might have been true for Luke Bryan in 2011 when he released “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” in lieu of doing something more original. But that wasn’t true for how George Strait did it, or Randy Travis did it, or any of the classic artists in country, or even more contemporary artists.

To say that the way to make it in music is to make a spectacle of yourself is a pop maxim, not a country one. Did Zach Bryan get where he is by shaking his ass? Or Tyler Childers, Luke Combs, or even Morgan Wallen? No. And though it worked for Luke, it also set him up for the career implosion he is currently experiencing, and the backlash that all Bro-Country acts experienced.

Luke Bryan goes on to say, “Then I started seeing the people who were making fun of Bro-Country, and I was like, ‘Well this is kind of fu-kin’ pissing me off.”

Luke Bryan then talks about when he was coming up playing college parties, and how the clubs he’d play would pump hip-hop music right after he got off stage. But that’s because Luke Bryan was playing douchebag clubs for douchebag frat boys, and attracted that type of audience to whatever bar he was performing in. Sure, maybe he was tapping into some appetite among young people at that time by mixing country and hip-hop. But as we saw, that trend was shallow and short-lived.

But where Luke Bryan really gets revisionist in his conversation with Joe Rogan is when it comes to the moment in 2015 when he sparked a viral moment among Outlaw country fans. When speaking with HITS Daily Double in an article posted on July 9th, 2015, Luke Bryan said,

“Well, yeah. I think that people who want Merle, Willie and Waylon just need to buy Merle, Willie and Waylon. I’ve never been a ‘Those were the good old days’ kind of guy. I’m not big on looking back on the past. I’m not an outlaw country singer. I don’t do cocaine and run around. So I’m not going to sing outlaw country. I like to hunt, fish, ride around on my farm, build a big bonfire and drink some beers and that’s what I sing about. It’s what I know. I don’t know about laying in the gutter, strung out on drugs. I don’t really want to do that.”

Then Luke Bryan made things worse by referring to himself in the 3rd person.

“There’s plenty of room for people to like Luke Bryan, Eric Church, Jason Aldean.

This prompted Saving Country Music to publish a spirited but fair rebuttal—including a devil’s advocate perspective—to Luke Bryan’s comments characterizing “Outlaws” as being artists “laying in the gutter, strung out on drugs.” This rebuttal, and in turn, Luke’s comments, then went mega viral as people got angry at how country music Outlaws were being characterized by Luke. Waylon’s daughter-in-law Kathy Pinkerman Jennings was also a big catalyst to that viral moment.

Speaking to Joe Rogan about the moment, Luke Bryan says,

“I made one fatal error. And at the time Joe, no one hated my ass. I believe that. Because I was coming to Billy Bob’s, playing … well, I had Texas. I had, I had the, I would go … I’d got to Bozeman, Montana and play ‘Country Girl (Shake It For Me).’ I’d go everywhere.”

But the idea that nobody hated Luke Bryan or his music before the 2015 “Outlaw” fracas is completely untrue. “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” came out in March of 2011, and Bryan’s controversial performance of it on the CMA Awards happened in November 2011. Luke Bryan was already heavily hated among traditional, independent, and Outlaw country fans at that time. Jody Rosen coined the “Bro-Country” phrase in August of 2013 amid the backlash.

The reason Luke Bryan’s Outlaw comments went so viral is because so many country fans were vehemently angry about what was happening in country music at the time, and specifically because of performers like Luke Bryan. Country fans having their heroes mischaracterized was galling, especially from the guy who sang “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” and other terrible Bro-Country songs.

Also in the Joe Rogan interview, Luke Bryan tries to say there was nothing wrong with his Outlaw comments except that he didn’t mention how he was referencing the Kris Kristofferson song “Sunday Morning Coming Down” popularized by Johnny Cash. Luke Bryan tells Joe Rogan,

“And I said, ‘I don’t know how to be an Outlaw … And where I f-cked up is I said I haven’t spent the night sleeping on the street, and I didn’t say ‘Like Johnny Cash’s song, ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down.’ Well that dude [meaning, Saving Country Music], took that article, and said, ‘Luke Bryan says Outlaw country people are basically drug addicts that sleep in the street … the way they manipulated that story, I lost that whole crowd right then.”

But again, this isn’t true. Sure, giving context to where his comments came from might have have given a bit more color to his characterization, but it wouldn’t have fundamentally changed the sentiment that country fans took such offense to. And for the record, it’s not the press that choose what quotes go viral. Yes, the press can and do manipulate quotes and use them out-of-context all the time. But in this case, it was the quotes themselves that sparked the anger.

Luke Bryan goes on to tell Joe Rogan that the Outlaw quote moment in 2015 was pivotal in his career, and that he had “motorcycle gangs” after him after the quotes. If there were motorcycle gangs after him, that’s uncool and uncalled for. But the reason 2015 was the peak of Luke Bryan’s career is because it was also the peak of Bro-Country. The idea that the Outlaw quote is when Luke Bryan lost traditional/independent/Outlaw country fans is ludicrous. Those fans were never with Luke Bryan.

In 2014, Sturgill Simpson released Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, and the backlash against Bro-Country began in earnest. In November of 2015, Chris Stapleton virtually swept the CMA Awards and had a landmark performance of “Tennessee Whiskey” with Justin Timberlake that completely transformed country as the genre actively attempted to distance itself from the Luke Bryan’s of the world.

Also on the Joe Rogan podcast, Luke talked about how unfairly he was portrayed in the press over his comments about Beyoncé and her supposed snubbing by the CMAs after he said that if she wanted to be nominated, she needed to have spent more time in Nashville and involve country music, similar to what Post Malone did.

In this instance, he was correct, and the media was opportunistic. He didn’t say anything out-of-place, and the media was looking for any opening to defend Beyoncé—whose Cowboy Carter album this week completely dropped out of the Billboard 200, speaking to the catastrophic cratering of the album that the media continues to under-cover.

The whole segment can be seen below:


And by the way, what is Luke Bryan doing on Joe Rogan’s podcast anyway? Sturgill Simpson’s apperances on Joe Rogan were one of the big catalysts for the country music revolution that sidelined Luke Bryan. Chris Stapleton, Shooter Jennings, Wheeler Walker Jr., and others appeared on the podcast as well, and Rogan has shouted out Colter Wall, Tyler Childers, and Ellis Bullard among others.

Now for some reason, Joe Rogan has opened the door to Jelly Roll multiple times, and now Luke Bryan when he should be having folks like Ellis Bullard or others on the podcast that could really benefit from the exposure. Joe Rogan is not a Luke Bryan fan, and overall, it was a poor interview for both Joe and Luke, who was all over the place in trying to make his points. The two primarily discussed hunting, and have mutual friends from that world.

In fairness to Luke Bryan, he was always the performer in the Bro-Country era who still had more substantial album cuts. Unlike Florida Georgia Line and Sam Hunt, Bryan seemed to sense the short-lived nature of Bro-Country, and tried to make sure he didn’t get exclusively pigeon-holed in that era. It honestly felt like Luke was one of the few performers who could survive the implosion of that era.

But ultimately, the biggest problem for Luke Bryan and his career is that he never really presented an original identity. He was kind of Bro-Country, after being kind of pop country, and before now trying to be kind of more traditional country. But when you try to be all things to all people, you end up meaning not much to anybody. And when you chase trends, you tend to become synonymous with them, and a victim of them when they implode.

Luke Bryan waited over four years to release his latest album Mind of a Country Boy, in part probably due to both Luke and his label feeling his career needed a pause and to re-calibrate after a rather precipitous fall from where he was in 2015. Just like all Luke Bryan albums, it has some good album cuts, but it still presents this undefined, kinda pop, kinda Bro, kinda country aspect of mostly forgettable songs that put him in a country music no man’s land, and that’s why it was the worst-selling album of his career.

During the height of the Bro-Country phase (2011-2015), we used to call it the asterisk era of country where we couldn’t imagine any of the contemporary artist ever getting into the Hall of Fame. But if there was one you thought might, it was Luke Bryan. He was a good person on a personal level, and more pragmatic as an artist compared to other Bro-Country performers.

These days and after Luke’s career has taken such a sharp downturn, you’re not sure where he’ll end up in country history. His singles struggle, he’s not really relevant to the mainstream like he was, and it’s questionable if this Joe Rogan interview will help much. Luke Bryan has had a good life, and a successful career compared to many. But he needs to figure out how to transition from being an ass-shaking entertainer to being an artist. Because artistry is where you don’t just succeed in the short-lived present, but where you can build a sustainable career well into the future.


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