There’s no denying that Luke Bryan has become a bit of a punching bag in country music today. Between his tight jeans, his affinity for twerking on stage and some questionable song choices over the better part of the last decade, the “Play It Again” singer has become the poster boy for what’s wrong with modern country music for many country purists.
Typically being labeled as one of the co-creators of “bro country” back in the early 2010s along with Florida Georgia Line, Cole Swindell and Jason Aldean (though he finds the term “ridiculous”), Bryan has carried the title as one of the prominent artists in the subgenre.
Yesterday, Bryan appeared on the latest episode of The Joe Rogan Experience and talked about everything from hunting, to sports betting, to his music.
Towards the end of the episode, the pair begin discussing the music industry and how hard it is to stand out in the genre. Bryan recalled how he thought that his infamous performance of “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” at the 2013 ACM Awards was one of the only ways he could make people stop and pay attention to his music:
“Your only way to make it in music is, you’ve got to stop people’s eyeballs on you. You got to grab them vocally, visually, musically different. You got to get them to stop for two seconds to go, ‘What is that f*cker doing right there?’ And when I came out with ‘Country Girl (Shake It For Me)’ on the CMAs shaking my a**, I had to do it that way. In my opinion, I had to go, ‘This is my moment,’ to show ‘Country Girl (Shake It For Me)’, and I’m the guy who dances and don’t give a damn… It was amazing.”
Bryan then went on to note that he began picking up the “bro country” label after the performance. After asking Rogan if he knew the term, the UFC commentator and podcaster replied, “I did because of you.”
On the “bro country” topic, Bryan said, “I heard it, and I’m like, ‘Well, bro country.’ Then I start seeing the people making fun of ‘bro country,’ and I’m like, ‘This is kind of f*cking p*ssing me off.’ And then me and some other artists start getting looped into this ‘bro country’ phase.”
The “Do I” singer finished by noting that when he was cutting his teeth and playing college towns in Georgia, he would frequently play Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash songs before the bars would switch to rap, something that the crowds had no problem with, “Nobody’s got a f*cking problem with this. We’re all together in this good time. So when I did ‘Country Girl (Shake It For Me),’ that made that tie [between the genres].”
Watch the clip here: