“No longer a part of a niche culture, it seems country music has become so prevalent that city dwellers and suburbanites alike are donning denim and plaid and heading out to country music festivals across the nation.” – Danielle Ohl

“It’s ’bout that time o’ year again,” muses Luke Bryan, country star and notorious tight jeans-wearer, to start his hit song, “Suntan City.”

Indeed, my friends, it is that time. It’s the time of year when the days get longer, the air gets hotter, the crickets chirp, the fireflies glisten and for some reason, everyone forgets they didn’t grow up on a farm in Georgia.

Country music: the genre almost synonymous with the changing season and warming weather. During the summer, it seems some peach- and pecan-flavored dopamine rushes up to intoxicate even the most musically sane brain. No longer a part of a niche culture, it seems country music has become so prevalent that city dwellers and suburbanites alike are donning denim and plaid and heading out to country music festivals across the nation.

It’s tempting to throw on something mindless and romantic when cruising down an open highway devoid of school-related stress. I, too, have been a victim of this musical temptation. The problem, however, is that no matter how thick the festival fog, I still feel a twinge of discomfort every time I hear the twang of a country song.

I’ve come to realize one thing: No matter the season, country music is inherently terrible.

Jason Aldean, whose single “The Only Way I Know” is about hard work and southern work ethic, spent much of his youth working on his musical abilities. While Aldean is from Georgia, he spent his days picking at a guitar, not tilling the fields as his song suggests. Eric Church, who is featured in the song, similarly passed his hours in school by playing gigs at a local bar before earning a degree in marketing, and then moved to Nashville to pursue a music career. Even country giant Tim McGraw went to college on a baseball scholarship before dropping out and pursuing music.

Undoubtedly, these artists lived small-town lives with Southern morals, but just like any other genre, their claims are exaggerated. There’s a time and place for country music, but it has little to offer beyond the background to a bonfire bash — something all summer soldiers seem to forget.

THREE FATAL FLAWS

1. The subject matter

Perhaps a bit of applause is in order for a genre that has successfully idealized beer, but that’s as far as the praise goes. Songs are almost identical. We get it, country music: Some guy has a truck; he put alcohol in that truck, drove that truck through dirt to get to some safe haven/party/girl, and there was probably a creek around somewhere. Maybe he listened to George Strait or Bruce Springsteen on the radio. He did something patriotic. Beer was involved. He hit on a girl. They had sex in the grass/truck/river because beds don’t exist in country music. Someone brought out moonshine. Did I mention beer? There was beer.

And that’s all there was. 

2. The “creep” factor

To say country music is the only genre that involves uncomfortable advances toward women is grossly inaccurate. There is, however, something unsavory about adding these kinds of lyrics to the already established Pygmalion-like obsession with trucks and any type of fermented liquid. In Blake Shelton’s “Boys ’Round Here,” he croons: “Hey now girl, hop inside/ Me and you gonna take a little ride to the river.” Shelton explains later in the song just exactly what he and his newly-acquainted female friend do at the river. Outside the context of this song, however, his advance would result in confusion at best and police intervention at worst.

3. The front

Most professional musicians work on maintaining a certain image. Unlike other genres, country attempts to establish a very believable “good ol’ boy” aura. The artists sing of homemade liquor, beat-up old possessions and hard work. Above all, they attempt to establish southern roots. While other genres make outlandish claims, country music’s are overly simple.