Category: country music

The Three Worst “Country” Songs Of 2021

Which brings us to 2022.

Overall, it’s been a pretty good year for country music. The pendulum has definitely swung back towards more traditional country, Zach Bryan dropped approx. 482 new songs, and the music coming out of Appalachia is some of the best country music we’ve heard in a long, long time.

But enough about the good. That’s for another article.

Let’s talk about the bad – because there was plenty of bad too.

Now of course this year brought us songs like that nails-on-a-chalkboard remix of George Strait’s “Carrying Your Love With Me” from TikTok rapper David Morris. But we kept our list to only singles that actually made an appearance on the mainstream charts this year, because otherwise we’d be getting into more obscure shit that nobody heard anyway.

So without further ado, here’s the worst of the worst from 2022:

Honorable Mention: “Ain’t Enough Cowboy” – Jason Aldean

This song was just an album cut, but it still got attention for being so f*cking terrible, so I felt like I had to mention it. Jason Aldean for some reason decided to go full T-Pain with the autotune, while singing a song about how he doesn’t have enough “cowboy” in him to keep himself from running back to a bad relationship.

Pro-tip here for Jason: We can all tell there “ain’t enough cowboy” in you. Cowboys don’t use this much autotune.

And now on to the “top” three:

3. “Y’all Life” – Walker Hayes

Walker Hayes won the fan-voted worst song last year with (of course) “Fancy Like” after the entire world was bombarded with that damn Applebee’s song.

But this year he moves onto our list with “Y’all Life.”

Now at this point it seems like Walker’s found his sound – and by that I mean all of his songs sound pretty similar – but the lyrics for “Y’all Life” are just all-time terrible.

“Turn that bass up, shawty show ’em how
Y’all we raise up, and y’all, we goin’ down, down, baby
Your street in my Bronco
I’ma talk to ya real slow
Said where the crawdads crawl
Said living that y’all life”

Dafuq does that even mean? Is this supposed to be some ode to living in the country? While simultaneously ripping off Nelly’s “Country Grammar?”

Whatever it’s supposed to mean, it’s just all around tough to listen to.

Walker’s a great guy, but it seems like at this point he’s found what works for him… and found a recurring spot on our list of the worst songs of the year.

2. “Party Mode” – Dustin Lynch

We’ve said it a million times…bring back the “Cowboys and Angels” Dustin Lynch.

Unfortunately that ship has long since sailed, and Dustin has taken a different path – one that’s led us to songs like “Party Mode,” which sounds like it was straight out of 2014.

But what really did it for me was his interview from the Tennessean where Dustin says that they spent “weeks” working on the lyrics to this one…

“We reworked and tweaked the lyrics and melody on that one for a few weeks and got it to the point where- we had a signature riff, and the hooks sounded like a hit to us.”

So what was the end result of those weeks of work? Let’s go to the lyrics…

“Party mode, party mode, party mode
That’s how it goes, how it goes, how it goes
Neon lights, honky-tonks ’til they close
Party mode, party mode, party mode”

Time well spent. A masterpiece that would rival some of the poetry of guys like Tyler Childers and John Prine.

And all of those weeks of work paid off, because it landed the song a spot on our list of the worst songs of 2022.

1. “Rolex On A Redneck” – Brantley Gilbert ft. Jason Aldean

The worst song of the year unquestionably has to be “Rolex On a Redneck” by Brantley Gilbert and Jason Aldean. Not only does it have the trap beats and “hick hop” sound that I thought we had left back in the bro-country era, but my God, the lyrics are just cringeworthy.

It’s supposed to be a blue collar anthem about how if you work hard you can buy nice things like… Rolexes and Yeti coolers. But then you get ridiculous lines about “giving the good Lord his 10%” and if you do “it’ll do what it does,” which apparently means if you give money to your church you’ll be able to afford a Rolex.

That’s some Joel Osteen-type gospel right there…

And the chorus isn’t much better:

“It can put a Rolex on a redneck
It can put some inches on your big block Chevy
It can put a Yeti on your back deck, slap-full of long necks
Camo on your brand new Benelli
Yeah, it can put some pearl on your snap, some gator on your boots
Girl on your lap ’cause your paper’s to the roof
This turnin’ dirt life might not put a milli on a paycheck, but
It can put on a Rollie on a redneck”

Yikes.

The song was actually written by some pretty talented songwriters: Guys like Randy Montana, Hardy, and Taylor Phillips, who also wrote “Hurricane” with Luke Combs.

But when you start writing lines about how all it takes is “paper to the roof” to get girls on your lap, that’s enough to land even the best songwriters on our list of the worst songs of the year.

So there you have it. But if you need a palate cleanser after that, we’ve also got our annual Best Albums coming soon.

Because thankfully, the rest of 2022 wasn’t as bad as these songs.

Margo Price is one of country music’s great survivors. Stubborn as a wine stain, she’s gone so far as to pawn her engagement ring to pay for recording sessions (she got it back). Jack White’s Third Man Records signed her following the release of 2016’s Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, by which point she’d already dealt with the loss of her newborn son and spent time in jail after a few night of hard drinking.

She has a Dolly Parton lilt, a sweetness to temper the fire in her songwriting. “Soon I settled down with a married man/ We had a couple babies, started living off the land,” she laments on “Hands of Time”. “But my firstborn died and I cried out to God/ Is there anybody out there looking down on me at all?”

Nashville continues to overlook her, lassoed as it is by bitter gender stereotypes and a fear of the outspoken. It’s grist for the mill for Price, whose latest collection of songs, Strays, is out in January 2023. She also released a memoir, ‘Maybe We’ll Make It’, in October this year. She lives outside of Nashville with her husband and bandmate, Jeremy Ivey, and their two childen, Judah and Ramona.

I just got back from doing a hike with my dogs. I have two dogs – one of them is really old and so I have to lift her into my truck – two cats and two kids. We had some chickens for a while and then the coyotes had their way with them and so I gave the survivors to my neighbour. We had a rooster named Dolly Parton, but Dolly was tragically murdered [too]. It’s hard to take care of the chickens when you’re touring all the time. We just finished a tour and it was really incredible, and I was doing a book tour as well. So, yeah, I’ve been on the road pretty non-stop since October, and so I’m now just kind of able to settle down a little bit.

My new album Strays is out on 13 January. We had a really great time in the studio – we worked with Jonathan Wilson and went to Topanga Canyon, California, to record. It was just me and my band in the room playing live, but I really wanted to spread our wings and be able to venture a little bit out of our comfort zone, and not be limited to just making country albums. So this is definitely more of a psychedelic rock album, but when you take away all the instrumentation, what you still have at the end of the day is solid songwriting. I’m just trying to create a body of work that is meaningful to me. Sometimes I kind of take left turns and have not done things the easy way. It’s kept me creatively fulfilled and that is what I really want to continue to do. Because I think that it just doesn’t translate if people are on autopilot.

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At times I feel that I’ve gone as far as I can in country music. As we know, there are gatekeepers and all sorts of unwritten rules and things that I wish I could change, but I’ll always have a love for country music. At this point in my career, though, I just really wanted to spread my wings and try to shatter some of the preconceived notions that people have of me, because my band and I we’ve studied all different kinds of music, we’ve played all different kinds of music. It’s about finally being able to share that we’re not just a country band.

[Me and my family] live outside of Nashville a bit, but still close enough to be there every day, in a little town kind of northwest of the city. We have about five acres. It’s a pretty country area with no neighbours and lots of farms, which is good and bad because we don’t have any good restaurants or anything, but also there are no chains. For Christmas, I’m going to visit my family up north in Illinois – it’s an eight-hour drive – to go see my surviving grandmother and my dad, my mom and probably a bunch of aunts and uncles and cousins as well. Both my mother and my father have five each in their family so there are lots and lots of cousins and lots of aunts and uncles. I have two sisters, one of them lives in California and the other lives in Illinois. I’m really excited to go see my nieces – I always buy them way too many presents and spoil them.

My daughter is three and my son is 12. I took them to this place in Nashville where we go almost every year – the Opryland Hotel – and they have fake snow and sledding and ice skating and all sorts of stuff, basically I pretend to be a tourist in my own town. I went sledding with the kids and I got to go for free because my daughter is so young I had to hold her, which was great, and we got hot cocoa too. Where I’m from in the Midwest it’s much colder around this time, but it hasn’t been snowing there like it used to. It used to snow from November all the way to February or March. It’s probably something to do with the Earth’s temperature [going up due to climate change]. Here in Nashville it will snow a couple times in winter. No one has proper sleds or anything there but we’d get trash can lids and go sledding in the street.

When I was a kid we lived out in the country, so we did a lot of sledding back then. We always got our own Christmas tree – we would go out and my dad would have his axe and we would go chop one down and bring it back home. Then there’d be lots of hot cocoa with marshmallows. We grew up in a drafty farm house – it was always really, really cold and me and my sisters would sleep together in one bed. I remember counting seven blankets on the bed because it was absolutely freezing!

We would do really big family Christmas with all of my cousins and my mom’s family. On my dad’s side, they would all be smoking cigarettes indoors and partying a bit. On my mom’s side it was a little more wholesome, they still partied a bit. My grandfather was second in the world at table tennis, so we would get the ping pong table out and have a big tournament.”

I was just laughing at something I stumbled across on the internet, a parody of somebody doing John Lennon making a Christmas song, and he’s like, “Children are dying, a war is going on…” then it clipped to Paul. I was definitely was feeling more like the John in that situation when I wrote my new song “Lydia”, which has a line about Christmas lights but it’s a very dark song. I tend to gravitate towards the Christmas songs that are a bit more sad. I love Tom Waits’s “Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis”, and this old country song, “Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)”, and John Prine’s “Christmas in Prison”.

This is a good time to reflect. I’m very nostalgic, definitely, but I’ve never been really good on resolutions because I think you can set yourself up for failure or disappointment. I definitely ended up reevaluating my relationship with alcohol, though. It will be two years on 8 January [that I stopped drinking]. I also finally quit smoking cigarettes which was a big goal of mine for a long time.

The world [still] feels very divided. We’re at that place where it feels like we should be further than we are. I do think there’s hope and I think that people are starting to educate themselves more around issues like abortion rights and women’s healthcare in general. We have a long way to go, and of course it can be uncomfortable. I hope that people can calmly stop about issues that matter and stop arguing with each other and see that we are all being screwed by the government in many ways.

I think that now more than ever people are really aware of the problems that we face. Of course some people just believe that climate change is a whole facade, they aren’t able to see the bigger picture. You know, as John Lennon said back decades and decades ago, “Apathy isn’t it.” We have to continue to stand up for what we believe in and make positive change for our children and for the future.

‘Strays’ is out 13 January

With several YSL members entering into plea deals to avoid jail time in the label’s ongoing RICO case, Young Thug’s lawyer discussed the trial in a recent interview with 11Alive.

The YSL RICO trial—which involves Thug and Gunna, who were indicted on racketeering charges back in May—is scheduled to begin on Jan. 5, 2023.

Thug has been charged with conspiracy to violate the RICO Act and participation in criminal street gang activity, while Gunna—who was detained two days after Thug—faces a charge of conspiring to violate RICO.

In his interview with 11Alive, Thug’s attorney Brian Steel was asked about prosecutors attempt to use the lyrics of Thug and Gunna as evidence to prove they are guilty. 

“I don’t believe that unless the lyric has a direct relation to the supposed crime on trial and there’s evidence to support that, the fact that somebody has created words that are in a song or in a book or in a movie, they should not be judged by their work performance because that’s storytelling,” Steel shared.

“So, the problem I really have with the lyrics from rap music throughout our country and right here in Fulton County is we don’t do that with other types of entertainment or artistry. And that’s really my problem because to me, rap music has been birthed by the struggle of the inner city, poverty stricken, oftentimes people of color. Why are we targeting that group rather than a writer who talks about a killing or drug dealing? Or how about the white songwriters?”

When asked why rap, as a genre, always “feels like it’s on trial,” Steel reiterated his earlier points.

“It seems like it’s racist,” he explained. “Because I don’t know why other forms of violent lyrics in country music or in rock-and-roll don’t seem to get this type of attention.”

As for representing Thug, Steel maintained that he’s “had the pleasure of defending Mr. Williams [Young Thug] for approximately a decade.”

“I’m concerned with a human being who’s wrongly charged,” he said. “And I’ve had the pleasure of defending Mr. Williams for approximately a decade, maybe a little more. So to me, I know his family, I’ve defended him in courtrooms multiple times. I knew right away that he’d been targeted for ten years by the prosecution. So, my feeling was exactly what I said, that this is a wrong prosecution and I will defend him.”

Twenty-eight years ago today, on Dec. 17, 1994, Joe Diffie received an early Christmas present: It was on that date that his single “Pickup Man,” from his Third Rock From the Sun album, landed at the top of the charts, where it stayed for four consecutive weeks.

“Pickup Man,” written by Howard Perdew and Kerry Kurt Phillips, defends a man’s penchant for his pickup truck with cleverly crafted lines such as, “You can set my truck on fire and roll it down a hill / And I still wouldn’t trade it for a Coupe de Ville / I got an eight-foot bed that never has to be made / You know, if it weren’t for trucks we wouldn’t have tailgates / I met all my wives in traffic jams / There’s just something women like about a pickup man.” The song was the second one from Third Rock From the Sun to reach No. 1; Diffie’s previous single, the album’s title track, also landed in the top spot.

Although Diffie notched five No. 1 hits throughout his illustrious career, “Pickup Man” remains his most successful to date, and his only song to stay at No. 1 for so long. The tunesmith included “Pickup Man” on his 1998 Greatest Hits album, as well as his 2002 16 Biggest Hits record and 2011’s Playlist: The Very Best of Joe Diffie.

This story was originally written by Gayle Thompson, and revised by Annie Zaleski. 

Well, I got my first truck when I was three / Drove a hundred thousand miles on my knees / Hauled marbles and rocks and thought twice before / I hauled a Barbie Doll bed for the girl next door / She tried to pay me with a kiss and I began to understand / There’s something women like about a pickup man

When I turned sixteen, I saved a few hundred bucks / My first car was a pickup truck / I was cruising the town and the first girl I seen / Was Bobbie Jo Gentry, the homecoming queen / She flagged me down and climbed up in the cab / And said, “I never knew you were a pickup man”

You can set my truck on fire and roll it down a hill / And I still wouldn’t trade it for a Coupe De Ville / I got an eight-foot bed that never has to be made / You know, if it weren’t for trucks we wouldn’t have tailgates / I met all my wives in traffic jams / There’s just something women like about a pickup man

Most Friday nights I can be found / In the bed of my truck on an old chaise lounge / Backed into my spot at the drive-in show / You know a cargo light gives off a romantic glow / I never have to wait in line at the popcorn stand / Cause there’s something women like about a pickup man

You can set my truck on fire and roll it down a hill / And I still wouldn’t trade it for a Coupe De Ville / I got an eight-foot bed that never has to be made / You know, if it weren’t for trucks we wouldn’t have tailgates / I met all my wives in traffic jams / There’s just something women like about a pickup man

A bucket of rust or a brand new machine / Once around the block and you’ll know what I mean

You can set my truck on fire and roll it down a hill / And I still wouldn’t trade it for a Coupe De Ville / I got an eight-foot bed that never has to be made / You know, if it weren’t for trucks we wouldn’t have tailgates / I met all my wives in traffic jams / There’s just something women like about a pickup man / Yeah, there’s something women like about a pickup man

Happy Friday.

The Whiskey Riff New Music Friday Playlist is back this week after a one-week break for our Christmas Songs That Don’t Suck Playlist.

This week on the playlist, we have new tunes from Ernest, Luke Combs, Yellowstone star Luke Grimes, Maggie Antone, Pony Bradshaw, Danno Simpson, Rich O’Toole, Kameron Marlowe, Adam Church with Kasey Tyndall, Jon Stork, Larry Fleet with Mike Ryan, Rob Baird, Gabe Lee with King Margo and Zoe Cummins, Nicholas Jamerson with Magnolia Boulevard, Channing Wilson, Ashley Cooke, Jelly Roll, and Michael Shannon with Jessica Chastain, the stars of Showtimes hit series, George & Tammy.

Turn it up, tell your friends, and as always, make sure to subscribe to the official Whiskey Riff Channel for more great country music playlists.

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The ACountry team is in the middle of our Shania Twain kick, and it has us craving her next release! The Legendary Twain has announced that her latest album ‘Queen of Me’ will hit the airwaves on February 3, 2023 – with an accompanying world tour. This is Twain’s sixth full-length album and the first since 2017. 

If you’re a ‘Twainiac’ like us, you can rest assured that Shania Twain will come to a city near you. With 49 city stops slotted for next year, Twain will kick off her tour in Spokane, Washington on April 28th and end it across the pond on September 26th in Birmingham, UK. Grab your tickets to this once-in-a-lifetime event here. Watch the video for her leading single from this upcoming album ‘Waking Up Dreaming’ if you can’t wait until next year to get a taste of her next era. Pre-order or Pre-save her full album today so you won’t miss the drop on February 3rd!

We understand if you can’t wait until next year to see this fantastic performer do something fun, especially after her incredibly successful Vegas Residency, keep an eye out for her as Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration! You can catch it on December 15th on ABC or stream it on Disney+ on December 16th. Are you as excited as us to see Twain live again? You can catch us at one of the shows next year in Texas, ready to rock and roll! Tweet us your opinions about her lead single or on her full global tour here, follow us on Facebook for country music news here, and keep up with us on Instagram here.

TORONTO, Dec. 15, 2022 /CNW/ – St Albert-bred, Nashville-based country music artist Aaron Goodvin brings his tour to Ontario in February 2023! Goodvin has had quite the career trajectory. He has topped the charts, had several top 10s, received multiple CCMA and JUNO Awards, and has been named CCMAs Songwriter of the Year. In addition to being an electrifying live performer, Aaron Goodvin’s music resonates with fans worldwide. Opening the shows for Goodvin is Hailey Benedict. A rising talent in the Canadian Country music industry, this dynamic singer is also a prolific songwriter, captivating audiences with her heartfelt original music.

Tour Dates:

February 9, 2023 – Regent Theatre, Picton, ON
February 10, 2023 – Orillia Opera House, Orillia, ON
February 11, 2023 – Flato Academy Theatre, Lindsay, ON
February 16, 2023 – Meaford Hall, Meaford, ON
February 18, 2023 – Wingham Town Hall Theatre, Wingham, ON

About Aaron Goodvin: It’s no small thing when a notorious straight shooter like Aaron Goodvin says, without exaggeration, that his current EP Lucky Stars contains “the best stuff I have come up with since… ever. I write a lot of songs. A lot of songs. And these are my best seven.” The EP has already produced Goodvin’s second career number one in Canada with “Boy Like Me” and the Top 10 follow up single, the title track “Lucky Stars.” “You Ain’t” featuring Meghan Patrick is the latest release and is already garnering strong reaction from fans and radio.

The Alberta-bred, Nashville-based country music star’s previous two albums have, in no particular order, topped the charts, produced a number one single and several top 10s, scored multiple CCMA and JUNO Award wins and nominations — notably winning 2018 CCMA Songwriter of the Year.

Oh yes, and yielded the bona fide anthem “Lonely Drum,” a double-platinum, global juggernaut that continues to pull ecstatic fans into its orbit, including radio host Bobby Bones, who championed the track on his internationally syndicated show.

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And now, there’s the exhilarating Lucky Stars. Co-produced by Grammy Award–nominated Matt McClure with Goodvin alongside an esteemed lineup of collaborators, the new EP is that rarest of things: familiar yet completely new. And very, very ambitious.

Tickets go on sale December 16^th at 10AM. To purchase tickets and for more information visit: www.aarongoodvin.com

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Two years after announcing they would be leasing office space in Wedgewood-Houston’s Nashville Warehouse Company building, the Academy of Country Music (ACM) finally hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony at their new, 9,773-square-foot, third-floor office space in the 140,000-square-foot, five-story building on 4th Avenue South.

Notable guests at the event deemed by many in attendance as “Hollwood-meets-Nashville” included ACM CEO Damon Whiteside, Nashville Mayor John Cooper, Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation President Deana Ivey, space developers AJ Capital’s CEO and Founder Ben Weprin, ACM Board Officers, plus the reigning New Female and Male Artist ACM Award winners, Lainey Wilson and Parker McCollum.

CEO Whiteside highlighted that for the first time in the ACM’s six-decade history, the Los Angeles-born organization would have its base in Music City. He emphasized that country music’s global and streaming spread in the past two decades has, in many ways, lessened the organization’s initial goals of promoting country artists and industry initiatives solely focused on the genre’s west coast expansion.

Bringing a taste of the ACM’s “bar room instead of boardroom” roots as a “renegade and progressive” organization is core to what he feels the organization will bring to and will emanate from its new downtown Nashville home.

Los Angeles native Whiteside’s been the ACM’s CEO since 2019 (he previously spent time at the Country Music Association as Chief Marketing Officer). Overall, he has over two decades of career experience in the music and entertainment industries. A Nashville resident since 2013, he noted, exclusive to The Tennessean, that he feels the city’s growth on the national and global scene is intrinsically linked to country music artists having a “strong, united community” that has made the city a destination hub to celebrate a superstar-making pop industry.

The ACM will use its offices to maintain its involvement in its yearly ACM Honors program at the Ryman Auditorium, which was broadcast in 2022 on Fox for the first time. Plus, ACM Lifting Lives, a program that, via health-related initiatives, financial support and music camps for talented individuals with developmental disabilities, benefits the country music community at large, is expected to get a boost from now direct local aid.

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Plus, from a corporate standpoint, greater engagement with brands like Amazon (already a broadcast partner for the ACM Awards) will be possible as ACM “integrates into [Nashville’s] fabric,” notes Whiteside.

Growth insofar as forthcoming diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives via the ACM’s “LEVel Up” professional development program aim to make country music “open and equal to everybody” are high on Whiteside’s list of achievements to accomplish now that the 5,000-plus member organization is more active on the ground in Nashville.

“We’re here to move the needle as a member of the community,” Whiteside stated.

Mayor Cooper added in statements during a brief press conference that the ACM’s arrival in Nashville was the genesis of a “seamless transition” to the organization’s “next greatest chapter” in Wedgewood-Houston, a fast-developing area also home to entertainment promotion group Live Nation’s Nashville offices, a location of global members-only artist and creative space Soho House that Cooper referred to as “one of the great neighborhoods in America.”

Notably, for private real estate firm AJ Capital, the ACM offices expand their Nashville music industry holdings and investments to the EXIT/IN, the renovation of North Nashville’s legendary Club Baron, previously-mentioned Soho House Nashville and Live Nation having space in the same Nashville Warehouse Company building.

The group could also add a 4,500-person venue — for which they have already filed plans — in the same neighborhood.

ACM Best New Artists McCollum and Wilson are likely — among many — to benefit from the inclusion of a small live performance stage, social media content creation office and two working boardrooms in the new ACM headquarters. In a city where signed and unsigned artists struggle to do the work required to succeed or elevate their craft, having an ACM membership serves multiple purposes — including access to professional grade services.

Moreover, it is on the back of artists’ work that the genre has grown so significantly so quickly. The ACM’s downtown Nashville relocation is attached to the impressiveness of this development.

McCollum highlighted how he won his 2022 Best New Male Artist award in Las Vegas in front of people watching on Amazon Prime in 235 countries worldwide, then headlined the Houston Rodeo (in front of 80,000 people) and then returned to Nashville — a worldwide country and pop musical hub, in the same week.

For Wilson, eight months have elapsed since she won her ACM Nest New Female Artist Award on Amazon Prime and became a streaming television star on Paramount Network’s “Yellowstone.”

She feels that “everything really started rolling” when she achieved her ACM honor.

Moreover, as someone who has spent 95 percent of her days away from Nashville in the past 365, she highlights Nashville’s growing country music footprint hitting “every corner of town” as “cool.”

“Over the past ten years — from the hole-in-the-wall bars to Broadway — everything’s been impacted by the growth,” Wilson continues. She jokes that her story of moving to Nashville in 2011 in a camper trailer that she parked in a backyard would be implausible as the city’s economic growth continues to expand.

For Wilson, spaces like the ACM’s new headquarters will allow artists to engage more deeply in community development, fostering broader support for rising stars.

“Anywhere we go in the world, it will help to feel like we’re all on the same team.”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Academy of Country Music cuts ribbon on new Nashville headquarters