Last weekend, Luke Bryan came to Minneapolis. “Hey, Stephen, who the hell is Luke Bryan?” you might ask. Others of you might ask, “Hey, Stephen, how in the hell do you NOT know Luke Bryan?” That’s an intriguing question, because Mr. Bryan recently played a show in Minneapolis at the 50,000+ seat TCF Bank Stadium. The show was sold-out months in advance. Two weeks prior, the Rolling Stones played the same venue to another capacity crowd. Now, some might call my bluff, but I feel that even if you hate the Rolling Stones and/or you’ve never heard a single song of theirs, you would not have been able to get through life without knowing about the existence of Mick, Keith, Charlie, & co. They are a ubiquitous cultural touchstone—so much so that a quarter of the crowd at the Stones show might not have even been fans of the band, but attended the concert simply to bear witness to the spectacle of one of the most important bands of all time. But Luke Bryan? Literally every person in that stadium had to know who he was. Nobody would go to something that obscure on accident, right? But Luke Bryan is NOT obscure. Am I a total ignoramus who should be fully aware of Luke Bryan? Am I not a participant of contemporary culture, because of my oversight in knowledge of one of the biggest stars in the music industry?
|
|
It’s hard to figure out how somebody as popular as Luke Bryan seemed to fly under my zeitgeist radar. It reminds me of an experience I had while teaching 101 Intro to Mass Media in the fall of 2013. It was the first day of class and—as per my perennial ice-breaking tradition—I asked the students in the room to take turns introducing themselves and tell us about their favorite media experience of the past summer (a movie they saw, a TV series they maybe binged-watched, a concert they attended, etc.). I distinctly remember one student proudly proclaiming she had seen “The Florida Georgia Line.” I was taken aback by the experience she shared, since I wasn’t aware of how visiting the borderline of two states could be such a cool media experience, so I blurted out, “Well, that’s interesting, since everything can be considered a media text. Is there an actual checkpoint at the state line with a gift shop or something?” She retorted, “No (*Inner Dialogue: ‘You Dummy!’*)! Florida Georgia Line is a country group.” Sure enough, I was faced with a situation where the teacher became the student. Turns out, Florida Georgia Line were insanely popular in both country and pop circles for their collaboration with Nelly, “Cruise.”
Now, Florida Georgia Line and Luke Bryan, as I learned, are part of this “bro country” movement. Nashville purists seem to despise this male-dominated sub-genre: the artists sing almost exclusively about trucks, beer, rap artists (!), tight-jeans-wearing-women, partying in cornfields, etc. But, many country musicians have been singing about those same things since the halcyon days of Garth Brooks’s explosion onto the music scene over a quarter-of-a-century ago. But other than a limited vocabulary and lack of strong musical ideas, bro country occasionally rap (!), use Autotune and, dear god, incorporate elements of EDM and alternative rock (with electric guitars). In other words, they sound exactly like all of the most disposable pop music that has ever existed, but they use the Nashville industry as a crutch to push their mediocre music.
Regardless, in my determination not to be a complete ignoramus, I delved into Luke Bryan’s catalog. After hours of research, I am convinced that there is little to no variation in his work. I poured over these songs and I could not individually pick any of them out of a line-up. I’ll admit to being familiar with his song “Country Girl (Shake it for Me),” having heard it played through suburban jukeboxes. The song is essentially a lyrical laundry list of what Bryan thinks makes a woman attractive and what she should shake ‘it” for (mostly for him, but he does recommend shaking for “critters and the squirrels”). There’s also the requisite reference to his truck and a rather bizarre couplet, which blatantly projects one of Bryan’s more bizarre fetishes:
So come on over here and get in my arms
Spin me around this big ole barn
Tangle me up like grandma's yarn, yeah, yeah, yeah
Perhaps more egregious is Bryan’s 2013 song “That’s My Kind of Night.” Misogynistic quips aside (Scoot your little hot self over here/Girl, hand me another beer, yeah!), Bryan references listening to “a lil’ Kanye and T-Pain” while partying in a cornfield. Bryan’s hip-hop inspired cadence is there, too, and it all seems like a joke. The music video matches the lyrical content, in that it’s impossibly ridiculous and void of any sort of tongue-in-cheek irony. However, it was a HUGE crossover hit, which is no joke:
Now, Bryan’s music is a really easy target for criticism and for cultural elitists to laugh at. Country music itself, be it bro country or regular, good ol’ boy storytellin’ Nashville country, is a genre that seems to consistently incorporate elements of pop music into its sound, except country music always seems to be about 10-20 years behind the most popular trends. Case in point, the aforementioned “Cruise” by Florida Georgia Line that features Nelly. While the St. Lunatic has remained mostly relevant, he has never been as hot as he was in the early- to mid-‘00s. Now, trying to figure out why country music appeals to certain audiences who perhaps weren’t ready for hip-hop superstars during their initial go-round would require a lengthy ethnographic study. But even by a quick study of the works of Bryan, popular country music also seems a bit behind in cultural issues as well. The thought of thousands of young women dancing to Bryan singing “That’s My Kind of Night” is a bit troubling, but pop music in general has a long history of being sexist (in Bryan's defense, he didn’t write the lyrics to “Blurred Lines"). Imagine if Bryan could’ve used the massive platform he was on to say something about the massacre in South Carolina that happened mere days before his TCF Bank Stadium gig? I guess that would’ve ruined the “fun.”
But in the end, I still have no answers as to how I didn’t know who Luke Bryan was before two weeks ago, and that is a bit frustrating. While I don’t actively listen to commercial radio, I still am keenly aware of what’s hot. I still have yet to hear “Uptown Funk” from beginning to end, but it’s definitely ingrained in my consciousness. Why is that not the same for any hit country music song? If they are as popular and ubiquitous as all other popular music texts, why is it so easy to ignore? And who the hell is Jason Aldean? I guess I am an ignorant jerk, after all.
For more articles, videos, and weekly podcasts, check out OptimismVaccine.com
