He may be on to something here…
Hardy made an appearance on the Ten Year Town podcast with Troy Cartwright last year and at one point the pair got on the topic of the bro country era from the early 2010’s. Of course, Hardy had an interesting take on how he saw that time period for the genre:
“Bro country was like a professional wrestler era, and every song, every single was their theme song walking out… and everybody was fit and good looking, and like, that was your thing.”
Following this, Hardy shared what some might call a hot take regarding the end of the bro era.
“The moment to me that it changed was when Chris Stapleton sang on stage with Justin Timberlake… He was the first dude that was popping off and had a completely different sound.
If you’re not familiar, Stapleton’s big breakout came at the 2015 CMA Awards. Chris had been a well known songwriter in Nashville for years, but his solo work hadn’t taken off, in part due to him not fitting the look of these “bro artists.” At the award show Stapleton teamed up with Justin Timberlake to perform a cover of David Allan Coe’s “Tennessee Whiskey.”
The rest, as they say, is history. Stapleton’s career took off, powered by the overnight success of his studio recording of the same song, which is now 17x certified platinum. Today he is still one of the premier hit makers in country music.
To Hardy’s point, the CMA performance does coincide with a marked shift in the genre. The early 2010s saw the likes of Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line dominate country radio with up beat tracks that took a lot of inspiration from pop music of the day.
The latter half of the decade saw a shift in the overall sound of country music. Gone were the good time anthems and pop production (unless you were Sam Hunt, Brett Young or Dan + Shay). It no longer mattered if you had the runway model good looks as long as you had the sound to back it up, and one man embodied that perfectly: Luke Combs.
Many have cited Luke, not Chris, as the turning point of the genre, and Hardy acknowledged that on the podcast.
“In my opinion, and I love Luke Combs, everybody says it’s Luke but I swear to god I think it was Stapleton before Luke.”
Later on he elaborated on this idea, saying he felt Chris opened the door for this concept and that Luke took it a step further:
“It immediately broke the mold of what you have to look like. And then two or three years Later Combs came out. And then it just busted wide open with a bunch of normal a** looking dudes.”
Regardless of who deserves the credit for bringing about the change we’ve seen in country music over the last decade, the effects have been evident. Good looks still help (just ask Riley Green and Morgan Wallen), but normal looking guys now have a chance. Or, as Hardy so eloquently puts it:
“All of us were like, ‘F*ck yeah, I can get a record deal now.”
Check out the podcast clip here:
And check out the original CMA performance of Justin and Chris: