This year, the Super Bowl will have two halftime performances, which in truth means that it will have no true halftime performance because neither will command the universal audience it needs to bring people together.
Whatever we’re calling this post Bro-Country era in popular country music, the bespectacled Hardy has a heavy hand in it, both as a primary song contributor to Morgan Wallen and others, as well as a performing career that continues to swell in popularity.
Vince Gill really is the closest thing that country music has to the five-tool baseball player. He can do it all. As a solo artist, he’s a Country Music Hall of Famer and Grand Ole Opry stalwart. He can throw a high harmony on any song and make it shine, or turn in a guitar solo that is good or better than any session player.
If we’re being honest, country music continues to improve across the board, including in the mainstream as we continue to get farther and farther away from the Bro-Country era. But there are still some stragglers and terrible songs out there that are worth exposing to the sunlight and watching them whither.
Well now, it appears that Nashville has a new toy. His name is Jelly Roll, and a pseudo “country” song of his called “Son of a Sinner” has been slowly creeping up the country radio charts, causing the usual suspects who love to pontificate about paradigm shifts in country.
Larping as a ode to hard working rural folks, “Rolex® On A Redneck” is really just a laundry list of product endorsements from Gilbert for stuff actual farmers would never be caught dead with. Dusty Bumpkins on a sorghum patch outside of OshKosh isn’t sporting a Rolex.
‘Tis the season to set ’em up, and tee off on the worst “country” songs released in the last calendar year, and boy, were there some doozies in 2021. It still feels like country music in the mainstream continues to improve. But that doesn’t mean some stinkers still don’t slip in.
A washed-up jingoist, a normcore corporate songwriting dork with astigmatism, and a roided-out stove-headed tough guy in motorcycle garb walk into a bar … stop me if you’ve heard this one. Yeah, I’m mad as hell about this new Brantley Gilbert single.
Comedian John Crist is taking the lyrics of some of country music’s worst songs to task by turning literal interpretations of them into video skits. If you ever wondered how implausible the premise of “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy,” or “Dirt Road Anthem” is, he’s got you covered.
One sign that mainstream country music continues to improve is the decrease in “country” songs that were worthy of rants in 2019 compared to previous years. However there were a few exceptions in 2019, and songs worthy of taking out back to the woodshed. Our full-throated opposition to these monstrosities misappropriated as “country.”
As easily predicted, Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus won the 2019 CMA Award for Musical Event of the Year for their collaboration on the genre-bending summer smash “Old Town Road.” In a strange plot twist to “Old Town Road” winning a CMA Award, so does industrial artist Trent Reznor. He now has a CMA Awards, while many country legends don’t.
It wasn’t just that it was bad country. It’s that it was just bad music, and the assessment of this was almost universal. There stands Brantley Gilbert with his stupid brass knuckles microphone and cheesy Affliction T-shirt machismo attitude, and his bandmates with their mohawks and dreadheads miming to a backing track
For the pot holiday 4/20, the Godfather of Bro-Country Brantley Gilbert reminds us that our prayers to country music Jesus to inflict pestilence upon his singing voice, or at least permanently impair him with chronic laryngitis to render him irrevocably unable to perform have gone wholly unanswered.
Many folks were caught off guard when the curious tour lineup of the Wet Cigarette of Music Kid Rock, Bro-Country Godfather Brantley Gilbert, and foul-mouthed comedic country artist Wheeler Walker Jr. was revealed last week, dubbed the “Red Blooded Rock N Roll Redneck Extravaganza Tour.”
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.
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.
Brantley Gilbert’s music may not be for you, but it’s hard to argue it’s not 100% him. He’s a roided-out, tatted-up, tribal Tap-Out truck-nutted horn-flashing Jesus-praising great American meat head who makes no apologies for himself and has built an entire army of fans that are just as hard headed and proud, and will follow Brantley over a bridge if asked.
Everywhere we turn, there are signs that the tide is turning in country music for the better. Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson are turning the tables on the awards shows, a new generation of traditionalists like William Michael Morgan and Margo Price are finding surprising traction. But it’s not all rosy.
Granted, Kinda Don’t Care is just kinda bad when you listen to it in totality. It’s not some horrifically terrible album when you compare it to some other efforts coming out of the mainstream at the moment. But Justin Moore does what all musical artists should refuse to do no matter what the cost—cross your core fans.
Can someone start up a Go Fund Me campaign to help Brantley Gilbert surgically remove the marbles out of his damn mouth? By golly I can’t understand a word this dude says. Brantley’s about the best case I’ve ever seen for someone’s self-absorbed, too-cool-for-school attitude translating into a debilitating speech impediment.
This year the event will be held for the second year in a row at the Austin 360 Amphitheater on the grounds of the Circuit of the America’s Formula 1 raceway just outside of Austin, and will feature an impressive list of talent, from Picnic mainstays like Johnny Bush, Ray Wylie Hubbard, and David Allan Coe, to newcomers such as Margo Price and Shakey Graves.
There’s a ton of great records from Hank starting the the late 70’s all the way up to the early 90’s that country fans will be pulling off of shelves for years to come when they’re looking for some good country music with a rock and roll kick, and if I had a vote I would induct Hank Williams Jr. into the Country Music Hall of Fame in the Modern Era category yesterday. But It’s About Time adds nothing to Hank Jr.’s legacy.
The original lineup of the once massive (and soon to be again) hard rock band Guns N’ Roses is apparently back on speaking terms, and has just been announced as one of the headliners of California’s Coachella Festival in April, with a potential stadium tour brewing according to sources sleeping with the band.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, over the last 24 hours or so, this “Brantley Gilbert Makes $10.5 Million Donation to Toys For Tots” headline has been circulating like a bad venereal disease passed around after the drunken office Christmas party, spreading all across the complicit landscape of country music media without anyone questioning the accuracy or legitimacy of the claim.