It’s a tradition as tried and true as grandma’s pumpkin pie. Every year on Thanksgiving Day, a football team has to make the worst possible pick for a halftime performer from the dregs of pop country, and embarrass country music on a national stage like your drunk uncle going on a racist tirade in front of your fiance.
This year off of their shameful 40-3 loss against the Dallas Cowboys, the Minnesota Vikings have chosen Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line to be the halftime performer for the NFL’s primetime Thanksgiving Day game.
The only thing more low rent than booking Florida Georgia Line for your halftime show is booking half of Florida Georgia Line for your halftime show. But of course the Vikings had no other choice if they wanted to book Florida Georgia Line since the duo officially broke up earlier this year amid plummeting interest in their tired Bro-Country shtick.
Minnesota Vikings fans took to social media to blow raspberries at the decision of course, because it’s not 2013 anymore, and most people have awoken to just how horrible Bro-Country is, while a whole slew of fans were left befuddled because barely anybody knew the specific names for the Florida Georgia Line dudes anyway. “Is he Florida, or Georgia?” was a common refrain. Tyler Hubbard is Georgia, incidentally.
Truth is, Tyler Hubbard’s solo stuff probably isn’t as terrible as Florida Georgia Line was, but when you’re at rock bottom, it’s not hard to improve. Still, couldn’t they find a better performer than the leftovers of country music’s Bro phase? Here in 2022, you have a bunch of newer country artists that are way more popular than one half of Florida Georgia Line. A look at the charts, and you can see that even more independent artists like Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers surpass the popularity of Tyler Hubbard.
Don’t be surprised if in the coming years, we don’t see artists like Tyler Childers, Zach Bryan, the Turnpike Troubadours, Billy Strings, Cody Jinks, and others playing these kinds of performances. After all, they’re all now graduating to the area level of popularity, while Tyler Hubbard is out there pulling opening duty for Keith Urban.
It’s a new day in country music, and institutions like the NFL should take notice. It’s time to start giving artists from the more independent side of country music a fair shot at these opportunities. After all, don’t you think fans might dig something they may not know about more than something they already know sucks?