It ain’t a secret that 2016 was a God awful year for country music.
We’re talking about a year where “H.O.L.Y” by Florida Georgia Line, “Move” by Luke Bryan, and “T-Shirt” by Thomas Rhett were sitting atop the country charts.
It was pretty bad, but also kind of marked the beginning of the pendulum swinging back a little bit towards traditional country music. Luke Combs and Carly Pearce would go on to get their first #1 singles the following year.
It also seemed like a time when every artist was trying to dip their toes into country music, as it was a good quick cash grab, and it gave them a chance to potentially rejuvenate their music career. We saw Backstreet Boys and Bebe Rexha jump into country music with Florida Georgia Line and this one…
No other than Aerosmith frontman, Steven Tyler.
That’s right, many may not remember, but the guy dropped a full on country rock album back in 2016, called We’re All Somebody From Somewhere (Oh, no shit?), as his first solo project.
Looking like Captain Jack Sparrow in a cowboy hat, Tyler thought he’d take his talents to Nashville.
We’re talking about a load of overproduced, lyrically shallow songs… the icing on the cake when it came to the state of country music in the 2010s.
His lead single from the album, “Red, White & You,” just might have the most cringy line in country music history:
“When I look in your eyes, all I wanna do is bang bang, baby like the Fourth of July.”
Even Tyler’s former Aerosmith bandmate, Joe Perry, was nauseated at his effort to “go country.”
He told USA Today:
“Hey, if I didn’t know him when I heard the song (‘Red, White & You’) I’d go, ‘It’s okay, next.’ I’m not going to say anything else about that.
Steven is in Nashville doing whatever he’s doing. He’s got a fucking rhinestone cowboy hat going ‘Yippee ki yay.’ I don’t know what else to say about that.”
Hey, I’m not against artists trying out a new genre, and some of these experimentations have turned out quite well.
But for my guy Steven Tyler… he needs to keep living in the “Dream On” and “Walk This Way” territory that made him great. The hyper vanilla bro country ain’t it…
WARNING: Listen at your own risk:
“Red, White & You”
