"Bro-Country" and the Niche It Occupies
If you live in America, there’s a high probability that you have had the misfortune of passing through radio stations and coming across a country station that was playing a loud, gaudy song about trucks, painted on jeans, and beer. I think it’s fair to say that, at this point, this type of country music has become a huge part of the country music image. In the manner that is chic to pen insulting genre names, “bro-country" was born just as “brostep” and “brocore” before it. The songs are simple and repetitive (internally and between songs), the southern accents are thick, the product placement is obvious. “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?” indeed. Hank III might, though.
For the sake of this post, the type of music I’m referring to is the type made by Florida Georgia Line, Blake Shelton, and even “country rap” like The Lacs. This is something that is oppressively widespread now and the term “bro-country” wasn’t coined until 2013, but it’s clear that it wasn’t born in a vacuum.
Hearing this description of the genre, one might wonder why anyone would bother listening to this music. To figure this out, one must ask: what does this music offer that other music does not? What did older country music offer and is it being offered elsewhere?
Popular rock music in the past 20 years or so hasn’t encompassed a lot of different social uses. The post-Nirvana, post-grunge pop rock landscape was gritty and severe. Eventually that gave way to a tackier, but more sensitive, landscape: Creed, Nickleback, Three Days Grace. Nu-metal and its disciples brought the angst up a lot and the reaction to that music since then has left the rock songs popular enough to get into the pop music stations looking shy, hip, and expressive: think MGMT or even Foster the People.
But there hasn’t been much in the way of popular rock music geared toward light-heartedness and partying (unless you want to count Andrew WK). Classic and 80’s rock had this in spades. To this day, those genres are white people party music. It’s big and over-the-top and cheesy but not necessary obsessed with sounding serious. It looks silly and it is and that is the purpose that it serves.
By most metrics, these bro-country songs are rock songs in that same vein. They often are loud, arena-style guitar-driven songs with guitar solos in them. They are closer to the archetype of classic rock than they are to Waylon and Willie and the boys. Sure, popular hip-hop music deals a lot with partying, but its clear from the lyrics that they are at an entirely different kind of party. Bro-country parties romanticize the pastoral (though Blake Shelton does end up in the club in the video I linked) as well as aspects of the American middle class. Still, the borrowing from hip-hop is clear and never hidden. Hell, Nelly is in that Florida Georgia Line I linked to.
Country music has always had a party-song aspect to it, but bro-country artists have taken the impending monogenre and used it to distill the purest form of the prototypical redneck party anthem. And, like the purest form of anything, it’s going to be very similar every batch and taste incredibly strong, which is okay if that is the taste you are looking for.
