The Worst “Country” Songs of 2021

Down with Pop Country 88 Comments

‘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 since the height of Bro-Country in 2013/2014, country music in the mainstream continues to improve. But that doesn’t mean some stinkers still don’t slip in.

And don’t go crying “Hey, wHy Don’T you FoCUs On the gOOd STufF !?!” If you want, go check out the Single of the Year, Album of the Year, and Song of the Year nominees if you want to know where the good stuff’s at.

WARNING: Language

Trace Adkins feat. Luke Bryan and Pitbull – “Where The Country Girls At”

Boy, we thought we’d rounded the corner on terrible Trace Adkins songs just like we’d squashed the pandemic with vaccines, only to have this vomitous monstrosity foisted upon us like a new, virulent COVID strain especially adept at circumventing immunization, killing all of our grandmothers, and dooming us to wearing face diapers for eternity.

Like a crack team of Wuhan virologists looking to game nature to concoct the most diabolical superbug possible, they took an already terrible Trace Adkins song, added a bit of Luke Bryan for bad measure (as if he’s got anything that could boost this effort), and then of all things, dredged up the nuclear ass whip that is “Mr. Worldwide.” That’s right, freaking PITBULL makes an appearance, as if they were actively attempting to shoehorn in the worst of all possible elements into this “song.”

There were more people clamoring for Bill Cosby to be let out of prison than for this triumvirate of musical evil to conjoin their powers of collective suckitude into audio form to then be extruded out of the ass end of Music Row to mercilessly skull fuck our ears incessantly. (read full rant)

Florida Georgia Line – “New Truck”

You can palpably feel the IQ points fleeing your gray matter while in audience with this audio monstrosity. It is not scientifically possible to engineer a conflagration of audio signals that is more indolent, and damaging to the psyche and intellect than this abomination. You would swear it’s parody if you didn’t know any better. Free of hyperbole, one can legitimately argue there are songs that are carefully orchestrated and creatively composed by intelligent minds to mock modern pop country that don’t mock and illustrate pop country’s inequities as much as “New Truck” does entirely by accident.

“New Truck” is so bad, you almost have to marvel at it’s endurance and capability to best all competition from the entirety of popular music, including previous and valiant champions drafted from the Florida Georgia Line catalog that we previously believed could never be bested on the field of battle. You almost want to slow clap after the conclusion of this song, stricken with awe by how “New Truck” somehow finds previously-uncharted depths of creative depravity to utterly define a new geological low in American popular culture in all of its most dubious incarnations.

This song is such an insult, they might as well have saved the production time, and simply recorded a short, audio missive telling us all to go fuck our mothers. Instead, they figured out how to fill 2 minutes and 22 seconds with the most vapid and repetitive mush-mouthed culturally-appropriating white boy pseudo rapping dreck punctuated by outright objectophilia that would not even be fit for wiping your dog’s diarrhea’d rear end with.

If you love your new truck so much Florida Georgia Line, why don’t you marry it? (read full rant)

Brantley Gilbert feat. Hardy and Toby Keith – “The Worst Country Song of All Time”

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. You almost want to give Brantley Gilbert, Toby Keith, and Hardy a modicum of credit here for being creative with this attempt to turn the tables on critics, while simultaneously juxtaposing the same supposed badass stuff every stupid Bro-Country song crows about with antonyms. I’m sure there were plenty of high-fives going around when this thing was composed, like these geniuses had cracked some code.

But let’s face it, inverted context or not, ultimately “The Worst Country Song of All Time” is still just a dumb Bro-Country song that leans on lists of crap as opposed to a story, backed by unimaginative music, and a tokenary banjo. Including a saxophone as an attempt for humor is accidentally the most country element of the song. Merle Haggard carried a saxophone player with him on the road for decades, and so did Waylon Jennings on his final tour. Have any of these losers ever heard of Bob Wills?

This song is only smart in the way opposite day was a hoot to you when you were in 2nd Grade. Brantley’s years removed from being country music’s Golden Boy, his muscle has now turned to chub, and he’s still out here trying to shove Bro-Country down our throats, stupid angle notwithstanding. No thanks. (read full rant)

Walker Hayes – “Fancy Like”

In the immortal words of Ralphie from A Christmas Story: “A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!”

“Fancy Like” didn’t set out to be a commercial for Applebee’s—America’s lamest corporate fern bar—but it was such a deleterious disaster, it ended up as one anyway. In fact, most of the American population believes that what it’s supposed to be, and are gobsmacked to hear it received a Grammy nomination, and is one of the most popular “country” songs of the year.

Saving Country Music instituted a moratorium against even talking about this song to the chagrin of folks salivating for a rant. The song is just so colossally bad, it doesn’t even deserve to be dignified with sarcasm. But of course, if you’re naming off the worst songs of the year, it most certainly has to be mentioned.

Billy Currington – Intuition (The Whole Damn Album)

Look, if you had a head full of pubic hair, had never graduated from the C-level of mainstream country stars, were best known by some for being the guy indicted on charges of “abuse of an elder person by inflicting mental anguish” and “making terroristic threats” to some poor old dude stemming from a dispute over a damn boat in Georgia, perhaps you may throw a Hail Mary like this too and hope for a late career miracle.

But unfortunately for ol’ Billy Currington, this is a prayer that won’t be answered. It’ll be swatted down in the end zone by the defensive back, deflating Currington’s 4th Quarter comeback dreams quicker than your dangle when your mom walks in on you.

My Lord is this is bad. But it’s one of these instances where it’s so terrible, it’s actually hilarious. I heard about this monstrosity, cued it up on the music streaming service of choice, and started laughing so hard milk shot out of my nose. And I wasn’t even drinking milk at the time. (read full rant)

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