No Lauren Watkins, the LAST Thing We Need is Bro-Country’s Return
Lauren Watkins. Girl. Love ya, really do. But this is barking up the wrong tree. About the last thing that planet Earth needs is the return of Bro-Country as a popular music form—and for so many reasons it’s really hard to know where to start listing them off like the beer, truck, backroad, tailgate, Daisy Dukes, and other American Southern iconography that Bro-Country would machine gun out until it became a nearly universally repudiated scourge on society.
For those of who might not know who Lauren Watkins is, she is a Big Loud-signed singer and songwriter, and a rare Nashville native in country music. Watkins had a breakout single with “Anybody But You,” and has since found a smart space in between contemporary and traditional country. Though she’s appeared on tour with fellow Big Loud artist Morgan Wallen, she’s also opened for Zach Top, and had Jake Worthington guest on her song “Fly On The Wall.”
But in a pre-Christmas post on Instagram, Lauren Watkins decided to make the very curious proclamation that what the world needs more of as we all retool our brains for 2026 is Florida Georgia Line-style Bro-Country.
“If nobody else is going to say it, then I will,” Watkins proclaims. “I miss Bro-Country. Sorry, I miss Bro-Country. What ever happened to it? Why is everybody too good for Bro-Country these days? There was something so electric about Florida Georgia Line singing about long tan legs and like big pickup trucks, like ugh! Where is that? Why are we like turning our nose up at Bro-Country? Who’s going to turn this $hit around?”
Looking through the comments, Lauren wasn’t just screaming into a void. Chase Rice was one of the writers on Florida Georgia Line’s mega hit “Cruise” that Watkins was referring to in her post. Rice responded ominously, “On It.” Recently, Chase Rice has been releasing albums that sound more like traditional country and singer/songwriter stuff.
Hardy tagged Ernest (two other Big Loud artists) saying, “Maybe we were wrong.” Hardy’s last album was titled Country! Country! and included a song with Ernest about how Bro-Country was dead. Meanwhile, Ernest is one of the more traditional-sounding performers in the mainstream.
All three of these guys played a significant roll in seeding the country music format with Bro-Country songs. And more recently, all three have played significant roles in mainstream country’s move away from Bro-Country, and towards more traditional-sounding country music.
So how seriously should we take Lauren Watkins’ pleas for Bro-Country’s return?
Country music has always been a cyclical art form, with commercial interests trying to steer the music away from its roots before traditionalists come back in and try to turn it back around. Nostalgia also plays a big role in what appeals to audiences at any given time. Usually nostalgia works in 25 to 30-year cycles. That’s the reason ’90s country is so hot right now.
But we knew even as Bro-Country was being roundly criticized in the 2010s, at some point somebody would get nostalgic for it. We just didn’t think it would happen while we’re still trying to repair the catastrophic damage Bro-Country wrought on country starting in 2012 with the release of Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise.”
It was said at the time though that if you simply cast off “Cruise” as complete trash, you risked not taking the appeal of the song seriously enough. “Cruise” was devilishly infectious, and this is what Lauren Watkins is referring to in her statement. She’s saying something that a lot of mainstream listeners feel, including, if not especially women who found songs like “Cruise” fun and strangely flattering as opposed to objectifying.
The biggest concern about a woman in country music complaining about the lack of Bro-Country and pleading for its return is that it’s the women of country were who were most adversely affected by Bro-Country’s reign. The era saw the virtual disappearance of women on country radio, and made it difficult to impossible for women to find any success in the mainstream. In many ways, that issue remains ongoing.
As the Lauren Watkins praise for “Cruise” illustrates though, female country music fans were a massive part of Bro-Country’s fan base—something certain advocates for women in country music either overlook or refuse to recognize.
All of this comes as there’s serious talk (or concern) that Florida Georgia Line is trying to rekindle the flame, perhaps for a future reunification of the notorious duo. After breaking up in 2022 amid public disagreements about politics and the pandemic, the two were photographed together at the CMA Awards in November, and Tyler Hubbard said on the Human School Podcast recently that the two had a hike planned together.
“It doesn’t have to be what it was, and it doesn’t have to equal FGL doing anything, but we need to repair… and spend some time together face-to-face. And just walk and talk and hang, and go fishing or get a guitar out,” Tyler Hubbard said. “I’m excited for that, because yeah, it feels like, at this point, enough time has gone by.”
It’s great that Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley can move forward and attempt to rekindle their friendship. But it’s not 2014 anymore. Even if Florida Georgia Line attempted a comeback, it’s questionable how effective it would be. Sure, their singles would chart on the radio, but what does that even mean anymore?
The radio format that was so critical to Bro-Country’s success just doesn’t hold the same weight as it once did. In fact, if you turn on country radio, it might sound to you like Bro-Country never died. With the way culture is so stratified these days, you can have seven #1 songs on country radio, and many music listeners who self-identify as country fans may have never even heard of you.
In many respects, we’re living in a new neotraditionalist era in country, with Zach Top’s popularity and the success of traditional songs like Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” still continuing on the roots-oriented wave that started after the height of Bro-Country. But on the other side, you have the absolutely dominate position of Morgan Wallen at the top of the popular genre—a place he got to in large part due to Florida Georgia Line opening the door for him via their collaborative single “Up Down.”
What direction will country music go in 2026? We’ll just have to see. But if it sees the resurgence of another era like Bro-Country, women in country music like Lauren Watkins may no longer even have a career, and they never would have if they came up during Bro-Country’s reign. So be careful what you wish for.
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December 27, 2025 @ 9:48 am
Women are a HUGE part of the bro-country fan base, especially the high school/college crowd. They are literally the entire demographic for the Jordan Davises and Sam Hunts of pop-country, and a surprisingly large percentage of the Luke Bryant crowd. Radio may not “matter” anymore, but it knows where its bread is buttered. Those women don’t normally want to hear other women singing about wanting a man, breaking up with a man, or even complaining about the man they have. They want to hear men singing about putting them on a pedestal, buying them wine and roses, taking them to bed. It would be ratings (and advertising) suicide for country radio as it exists today to allow traditional or honky-tonk country any more room on its playlists than it already does.
The late ’80s arrival of the New Traditionalists took place when the country radio audience was overwhelmingly older and male. It expanded country radio’s listener base in both age and gender. That’s not the situation we face in the 2020s. A New Traditionalist insurgence now would chase off the very demographic (young women) that advertisers drool over, while attracting a smaller number of older men whom Madison Avenue considers useless.
December 27, 2025 @ 10:10 am
Agree with the first part, respectfully disagree with the second.
I definitely think the “Class of ’89” was about attracting younger audiences to country. In fact when growing up, there was a local radio station where I lived that referred to Garth Brooks/Alan Jackson et al as “young country.”
A HUGE part of the Zach Top phenomenon is young girls who find him dreamy. As I highlighted through Single of the Year, Ella Langley’s got a mega hit with “Choosin’ Texas,” and country radio is definitely embracing it. These might be exceptions, but I think there are a lot of young people and young women who are connecting with neotraditional country because that’s what their parents listen to, and they grew up with it in the house.
December 27, 2025 @ 11:45 am
I need to correct a brain fart on my initial post. I meant to write “Zach Bryan” and somehow it came out “Luke Bryant,” who doesn’t even exist. Of course, Luke BRYAN’s appeal is also largely to the SEC sorority girl demo, too, but my comment was meant to apply to Zach Bryan.
Anyway, I hope you’re right about Top and Langley, but it’s going to take more than a couple of appealing No. 1s from them to change the direction of country radio significantly.
December 27, 2025 @ 2:16 pm
Meh. There’s been a loooooong tradition of Nashville execs and their talking heads/enablers (like Ralph Murphy in particular) repeating the trope about how women don’t want to hear women, or women only want to hear men talking like they’re their boyfriend, etc etc etc. Murphy did a pseudoscientific ‘I study the charts’ thing which then everybody repeated ad nauseum without any other evidence to back up their claims. It’s only country music where this is the case so I kinda doubt it’s actually gender-based, just somethhing where if the only options you have are male singers singing about xyz, we all start to think that’s the heart of the genre. The people in control of this at the top are still industry people (and now streaming algorithms that also reinforce a small number of artists and conventioal material)
December 27, 2025 @ 2:39 pm
I do agree that the “women don’t want to hear women” hypothesis tends to be incorrect, even if it tends to be more correct in mainstream country than in other genres. Women do want to hear women. But they also want to hear men too, while many men don’t care to hear women. That is what throws the ratios off.
I do think it’s important to take the perspective of someone like Lauren Watkins and try to understand the pathology behind it.
If you’re not willing to understand these perspectives, you’re never going to solve why women struggle so significantly in country. If you think it’s all the fault of a bunch of straight white men sitting in a board room somewhere on Music Row wanting to control women’s vaginas as opposed to a market-based factors and granular-level appeal, you will never create the solutions needed to solve this problem. That’s also why we’ve been complaining about this problem for over a decade now, and are still nowhere close to solving it.
December 27, 2025 @ 4:26 pm
It’s a silo kind of problem. If all you hear as ‘good country msuic’ is men whiining like Zach Bryan, you’ll assume that the only emotional country music you relate to is more of the same. Luckily those kinds of sound trends tend to peter out after a while.
Algorithms on streaming platforms are absolutely taking gender into account though- I can tell from tests I’ve done with a couple of accounts that it basically ignores stuff like “i listen to x percent women’ and wants to show me Zach Bryan and more Zach Bryan and could we interest you in Morgan Wallen evne though you’ve never once clicked on him?’/ This example is from 2 years ago so it’s outdated but it’s an actual example from what the youtube music algorithm showed me, and Spotify was worse. They by default mostly ignore independent artists other than the top names- they seem to put more weight onto what “everyone” is listening to than what you yourself listened to- and that reinforces the doom loop where everyone is listening to the same x number of top artists in indie or mainstream country, and not listening to women. If you go over to the folk music side it’s way different and there are more women making music more successfully there.
The thing is if this is all you’re hearing, it’s what you are going to like. In the past DJ’s did have more influence on the audience. I feel like if Trigger wasn’t posting as many independent women artists in this traditional-leaning hard country world, there would be even fewer of them and I am pretty sure it comes down to him and a TINY handful of bloggers that are helping this scene not be a complete sausage fest.
December 27, 2025 @ 4:34 pm
Plus on top of it all in the US there’s now a crazy obsession with masculinity=the exclusion of anything remotely female coded . That stuff is coming from a bunch of sources but it’s definitely part of how bro country was so successful at pushing out women so completely.
If you thikn this is just ‘normal’ I give to you rednecks in the 90s happily listening to country radio and not complaning about the occasional woman coming on to sing super saccharine ‘typically female topics’ music without major complaints. That’s “normal” in music , even though it was in no sense a paradise for the women artists who didn’t make it because the opportunities were still limited even then.
December 27, 2025 @ 4:42 pm
Yes, this is how statements like, “I just don’t like listening to country women” or “country fans just don’t like listening to women” become self-fulfilling prophecies. Then as less women get signed to labels, less singles and albums get released, it starts to become an inventory issue where there are just less opportunities to feature women because there’s less women making country, or releasing albums or singles.
December 27, 2025 @ 10:05 am
I’ve liked some of her music in the past. After watching her video I genuinely couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not.
Hey if she really means it she should put her career where her mouth is and go in that direction with her next album.
December 27, 2025 @ 10:11 am
I definitely think she was being serious.
December 29, 2025 @ 3:13 pm
I’ve never heard of her, so I had to go to Google. Turns out she’s married to songwriter/producer Will Bundy. Although he wrote quite a bit for Ella Langley, he’s also written for LOCASH, Justin Moore, Jon Pardi, Gavin Adcock(!)… the usual suspects. Maybe he’s got a lot of “Bro” songs left over and she’s trying to help him get them cut.
December 29, 2025 @ 6:35 pm
One of his Justin Moore co-writes is Moore’s current single, “Time’s Ticking,” which is a well-written, catchy mainstream song, even if it doesn’t exactly plow new ground with it’s “live life to the fullest” message. (Think Tim McGraw, “Live Like You Were Dying,” but with an infectious, uptempo melody.) Moore has done this kind of thing before, putting out “This Is My Dirt” at about the same time as Cody Johnson’s similarly themed “Dirt Cheap.” Bundy had nothing to do with that song, though.
December 27, 2025 @ 11:06 am
Look i know there’s a lot of disagreement in the world today on things and often times on this forum. However, can we all band together and say we don’t need a Bro Country 2.0 era? So many careers were side tracked and never repaired from chasing that trend (Here’s to you Tim McGraw and “Truck Yeah”). Then it gave us terrible collabs from mainstream rap/rock artists that the industry is still dealing with.
December 27, 2025 @ 2:18 pm
we do not, we do not, please god do not return mainstream country to that abomination.
I kinda hope the Spectrum Pulse youtube guy chimes in here. He did a fantastic video essay about bro country that I was blown away by a year or two ago. He’s in teh comments here sometimes.
December 27, 2025 @ 11:10 am
Meh, sometimes – and perhaps esp during the holidays – I also drink too much and post the dumbest shit on the internet.
Gonna give her the benefit of the doubt, still think she’s on my side… Fly on the wall is sweet, The Table is also pretty sharp.
December 27, 2025 @ 11:18 am
Lauren Watkins is not a bad artist at all. But that’s also what makes her proclamation more unnerving compared to coming from someone else. I didn’t take peppermint schnapps into consideration as part of the equation. Maybe you’re right.
December 27, 2025 @ 11:23 am
Yeah, “bro-country” was really “bra-country”. Always was but most did not see it at the time.
December 27, 2025 @ 11:41 am
Where is 80’s country today???? If we get a 25-30 year cycle, that means bro overpowered the return of that entire era. IMO that’s an ugly shame
December 27, 2025 @ 2:19 pm
keyboards have gotten better so hopefully we don’t need a return to that horrirble 80’s production sound that dominated the decade.
December 27, 2025 @ 12:31 pm
Watkins is just a baby. How old is she? Twenty, twenty-one? Her music roots, like most bro and current country artists, have the depth of a mud puddle. I’m sure she’s a really sweet girl, but her call for a return to bro-country is silly. And unlike James Ewell Brown, I don’t think she had been drinking before making this post. This is simply the mainstream mindset; create stuff that hits the groin instead of the heart.
December 28, 2025 @ 1:10 pm
She’s 26, according to Google, which would have made her about 13 when FGL hit it big in 2012. And to be completely fair to her, most people tend to have quit a lot of nostalgia for the pop culture of their teens and twenties, so I think that’s where this is coming from. Me, I was a teen in the 2000s, so I have a lot of nostalgia for music from that time period. A lot of it hasn’t aged well, but quite a lot of it has and was never that “bad” to begin with. I love classic country, but I’d imagine that once senescence begins taking my body and mind, I’ll still have a lot more happiness tied in with the music I grew up with over stuff I found later, even if it’s “better” or whatever.
Despite what all the Gen Xers and Boomers would have us think, there was plenty of shit that came out in the ’60s, ’70s, and (especially) ’80s, too. I’m sure the Greatest Generation and Silent Generation thought their kids had the roots about as deep as a puddle as well. Also, “hits the groin”? Girls didn’t go crazy about Elvis shaking his hips because it made them feel something in their heart.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
December 27, 2025 @ 12:45 pm
As a country music fan from Europe, all I can say is: The decline of country music’s popularity in Europe began with the shift in sound from traditional to pop-oriented stuff in the 80s. It reached its low point during the Bro-Country-era.
It is the invaluable merit of artists who play more traditional-orientated styles that Country music’s popularity increased massively in Europe over the last three years.
Examples:
For the first time in German history, the genre surpassed one billion streams in 2024.
Country music streaming in Germany rose by a remarkable 77% from 2023 to 2024.
Country music streaming increased by 70% in the first four months of 2024 alone, making it the sixth most consumed genre in the UK.
Total audio and video streams for country music in the UK increased by 40.7% in 2023 compared to 2022.
In 2024, country songs racked up 1.3 billion streams in the UK, a 63% increase from the same period in 2023.
Major artists like Zach Bryan Luke Combs (who has a more traditional, less pop-infused sound compared to other so called “mainstream artists”) have achieved international, all-genre chart success and sold out major European venues, including London’s and Hyde Park twice (Bryan) and Wembley Stadium three times (Combs). Opening acts for Zach Bryan’s phenomenal performance in Hyde Park included Willow Avalon, Ole 60, Noeline Hofmann, Waylon Wyatt, Turnpike Troubadours, Noeline Hofmann and Gabriella Rose. The total package of these artists contributed significantly to the ultimate country experience.
Luke Combs’ triple bill at Wembley Stadium will be opened by The Castellows and Ty Myers. It’s no coincidence that Combs will be bringing these traditionally oriented young artists to Europe. This may not interest many in America, but: Real, classic country, which is popular again today, addresses universal human themes such as love and hate, redemption and damnation, hope and despair, loyalty and betrayal. That’s why country music was popular beyond America. That’s why country is becoming increasingly popular.
Bro-Country with its banal lyrics about the beer, truck, backroad, tailgate, Daisy Dukes and so on simply doesn’t resonate here. Not because Europeans are more discerning music listeners than Americans (personally I think the opposite is true). But because we have shitty, shallow, superficial counterparts to bro-country in practically every country here. These styles are called different, have different languages and sound different, but are just as provincial, stupid and banal as bro-country. That means: There’s already enough shitty pop music here, and nothing else is bro-country. What there is hardly any here is real, honest, touching roots music. That’s why American music has had such appeal for many decades. With the shallowing of American music, of which Bro-Country is an example, this appeal diminished.
To speak with Benjamin Tod: I piss on Bro-Country.
December 27, 2025 @ 2:44 pm
A lot of people consider Bro-Country as a commercially successful era in country. But as you point out, right now is actually way more commercially successful because you have a much more diverse set of performers appealing to a wider audience. You have pop country voices like Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs. But you also have Zach Top and Zach Bryan.
The one criticism I have for something like Benjamin Tod’s proclamations against Bro-Country is that Bro-Country is not the demon we’re trying to vanquish right now. Gavin Adcock and Morgan Wallen aren’t Bro-Country. They’re Southern pop, sad boi country. Much of Gavin’s appeal is how country he sounds. It’s similar to Bro-Country, but different in significant ways.
December 27, 2025 @ 4:26 pm
Your assessment of the Benjamin Tod quote is of course correct, but this polemic quote was just too fitting here. Maybe Tod’s use of the term “Bro-Country” could be understood as a metaphor for all facile “country”-styles including the current sad boi stuff as you call it.
December 27, 2025 @ 9:00 pm
I think Morgan definitely has some songs that qualify as bro country. “Still Goin’ Down”, “Ain’t That Some”, “The Way I Talk”, “Up Down”. He has songs in pretty much every category of country.
December 27, 2025 @ 12:56 pm
Shifting topics but Tyler Hubbard’s voice is like nails on a chalkboard
dragged through static and amplified through blown speakers.
I can’t imagine sitting through that by choice.
December 27, 2025 @ 1:51 pm
If bro country had begun and stopped with Cruise and Dirt Road Anthem, then I wouldn’t mind it. The genre needs some fun fluff on occasion. The problem is when, almost immediately, every song sounded like Cruise, especially with lyrics, and it went on for years.
December 27, 2025 @ 2:47 pm
Bingo. In a vacuum, “Cruise” would be a vapid, but harmless pop country song. It was the wide proliferation and adoption of Bro-Country until it became a parody of itself, and artists like Sam Hunt and Walker Hays took it to a hyper level that the backlash ensued. It absolutely push everything NOT Bro-Country completely off the map, including anything from women, or traditionalists. That’s when it became a scourge.
December 27, 2025 @ 2:33 pm
Teenage girls love terrible music. That’s just a fact. That bleeds over into Twenty something females Dudes chase the gals into the clubs where the absolute worst music in the world is being played. I am not wrong. All of us that had sisters or currently have daughters have lived the pain. I know I few of you here will say I’m wrong because you had the 1 of a thousand sister/ daughter that like good music. The rest know it’s true. Girls LOVE bad music.
December 27, 2025 @ 2:48 pm
So do some guys. The guys that used to work in the warehouse next to mine would be blasting bro country and the Bobby Bones show all day long, until they moved out. All the dudes were white, blue collar, late 20’s to mid 30’s. Not a one of em would have known Merle Hagard song.
December 27, 2025 @ 2:54 pm
In this ever fracturing pastige of algo driven sub cultures into infinity, what the world really needs more than anything is something to all hate together. It’s really beautiful in a sense. Like nickelback. Everybody hated them. It was irrational and stupid but it was a social ritual that held everyone together. That’s in short supply these days.
December 27, 2025 @ 5:59 pm
Great stuff. It was astounding how the hate for Bro-Country united folks across culture. It’s became the favorite whipping boy of sports commentators. Everyone was saying, “What the hell happened to country?” And this opened an avenue for the country music revolution.
December 27, 2025 @ 3:50 pm
Literally the ONE genre that AI is qualified to write for…
December 27, 2025 @ 3:53 pm
I think she actually misses a pre-Covid world when life seemed “lighter”. You go girl…right over to some bubble gum pop music.
December 27, 2025 @ 5:51 pm
At this point… why not? We have a rapper with plug in his name and guy with a marshmallow on his head getting chart toppers.
Of course, I’m being cynical as usual. It’s unlikely we’ll see the days of some Johnny Cash soundalike come sweeping back in to top the charts.
December 27, 2025 @ 8:35 pm
Don’t know her, but she’s clearly a joke. Proof you should never trust any “Southerner”, especially a supposed “Country” singer, with not even a hint of a drawl. It was dumb, they were dumb, and it somehow sounded dumb “baby you a song” (my ears will never get over having to hear that poor excuse for a song). The Billboard reconfiguration that destroyed a 5 decade+ old top 10 made up of legends and good/great songs for those fools was blasphemous and I’ll never get over it. Complete garbage and not remotely Country
December 28, 2025 @ 2:42 am
…wishing for a bro-country comeback of some sorts – you gotta love a young woman wishing for modest things, particularly around christmas time.
on a side note: ain’t it a little hasty to shift straight into crucification gear?
December 28, 2025 @ 4:31 am
Seems desparate. Like a comedian whose shtick has gone stale blaming society for tastes changing…
December 28, 2025 @ 6:19 am
Bro[-c0untry has had its day and not all of it was bad. Some of it was poor. Bro-country will not disappear altogether. Even if it does make an unlikely comeback, there is a lot of really good music around. Country music seems to go in circles but always seems to return to the more traditional sounds.
December 28, 2025 @ 6:30 am
Lauren needs to apologize for this mess. THE worst of the year. Cringe. 🥴
December 28, 2025 @ 7:27 am
Let’s address the elephant in the room–a second wave of Bro Country means a second wave of the severe overcorrection known as Boyfriend Country, which was
significantly worse
than Bro Country.
The only thing worse than a frat bro frat-broing about a woman is a neutered cuck deifying a woman. It’s gross.
We will pass on both, Miss Watkins.
December 28, 2025 @ 11:38 am
What are some examples of boyfriend country? I stopped paying attention to radio years ago and this is the first Ive heard this term.
December 28, 2025 @ 1:00 pm
Dan + Shay
December 28, 2025 @ 1:13 pm
Oh. I dont even consider them to be country. Theyre soft rock like michael bolton.
December 28, 2025 @ 4:48 pm
Brett Young, then. Lots of Kane Brown songs fit that description. As does Mitchell Tenpenny at his simpering worst.
December 28, 2025 @ 1:20 pm
The aforementioned Dan + Shay, second wave Brett Young (a really disappointing career turn after his first 2 albums were quite good despite some iffy radio songs), basically anything with a high-pitched, testicularly-deficiant male voice going on and on about how perfect the object of his affection is.
December 29, 2025 @ 1:45 pm
I had to Google it, because I had no idea who sang it, but Can’t Have Mine (Find You A Girl) by Dylan Scott is the perfect example. The absolute worst case of simping imaginable. That song is like nails on a chalkboard to me.
December 31, 2025 @ 6:22 am
I looked up the lyrics.
What a mess of contradictions.
December 28, 2025 @ 7:54 pm
To be brutally honest……………I don’t necessarily feel so-called “bro-country” has ever went away entirely.
To be clear it hasn’t been even been one-fifth as culturally relevant as it was during the mid-2010s…………..but when you look at the country airplay charts week after week this past year: Nate Smith has had measurable success as of late whose sound is definitely modeled after bro-country, George Birge’s first two singles as a lead artist were smothered in bro country’s DNA (admittedly his current single “It Won’t Be Long” is a notable step into much more mature material), Parmalee’s recent release smacks as a turn back towards that sound after pandering to the “boyfriend country” trend for a while there, Thomas Rhett’s latest album was easily his most bro-country reminiscent album since “Tangled Up”…………..and then of course you have Morgan Wallen (as well as his doppelgänger Tucker Wetmore) who the former’s albums continue to be produced by Joey Moi who, of course, were Florida Georgia Line’s producer for their first four albums.
So I actually feel while bro-country will never bounce back to its heights between 2013 and 2015…………..it never went away in totality and with everything being cyclical and the fact bro-country served as the soundtrack for many people’s summers a decade ago and (ironically) ultimately served as the gateway to countless young listeners to vastly more substantive, actual country music: I honestly won’t be surprised if it has a sort of moderate resurgence in these next few years especially with many feeling nostalgic and pining for simpler times.
And I don’t even think bro-country in totality HAS to be awful. I think if you took out all of the objectification of women that permeated much of its first wave (and even more egregiously keeping women off of the radio), you added more descriptive quality to the lyrics where you have some shred of narrative if not telling a story, maybe looked to the likes of Muscadine Bloodline for instrumentation in how to make the music itself genuinely country while also maintaining the larger-than-life energy and finally you clamped down on the vocal effects and white bread hip-hop beats…………….it can actually work and be fairly enjoyable for what it is.
But yeah: please NO more tracks along the lines of “That’s My Kinda Night”, “Sun Daze”, “Ready Set Go”, “Boys ‘Round Here”, etc.
December 30, 2025 @ 6:11 pm
You’re absolutely correct. “Bro Country” never truly went away, at least in terms of the production side of things. “Bro Country” was certainly its own aesthetic trend, but it also significantly impacted the way country songs were written, composed, and produced, so much so that the format basically became the Nashville standard. There’s absolutely a direct line between the Bro Country era and Morgan Wallen. And back when “Fancy Like” was tearing up both the country charts and the mainstream Hot 100 in 2021 I received a lot of flak at that time on Reddit when I made a post saying the overwhelming success of that song proved “Bro Country” never truly died. It’s weird thinking back on that, haha.
December 29, 2025 @ 10:49 am
Women loved the handsome (white) cowboys of “Bro-Country,” relegating female and plainer male artists to almost non-existent status.Hopefully,Ms. Watkins doesn’t desire that return.
December 30, 2025 @ 8:36 am
You forgot Dixie cups 🤣
December 31, 2025 @ 6:26 am
She misses Bro-Country because it panders to women. Bro-Country’s secret sauce was being the lyrical equivalent of a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
January 2, 2026 @ 7:55 pm
I would take bro country any day over what came after it circa 2015. The Sam Hunt/Dan+Shay/boyfriend country era of the late 2010s through early 2020s was torture. Yeah bro country was repetitive, but I’d take songs like “My Kinda Party” and “Kick it in the Sticks” over whatever pop hybrid “Body like a Backroad” was.