Florida Georgia Line - Can't Say I Ain't Country

The Guardian 40

(Big Machine)

American duo Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard’s fourth album kicks off with a skit and a song that both reject any suggestion that the pair are not really country. “You can say I’m a redneck, you can say you don’t like my truck,” they sing, “but you can’t say I’m not country.” It’s an unusually defensive way of beginning what will almost certainly be another massive-selling record, but perhaps such accusations have got under their skin. They’re leading lights of so-called “bro country”, a hugely successful yet maligned sub-genre in which songs about partying, drinking and romancing, with elements of rock and hip-hop production, are sung by brawny, gym-honed, tattooed men in trucks. Bro country acts have been spoofed by Maddie Marlow and Tae Dye and FGL themselves dubbed it “douchebag music”, which didn’t stop the duo’s Nelly-remixed Cruise becoming the biggest-selling digital country single ever.