Come again?
There’s no doubt by now you’ve heard Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” It’s clearly going to be one of the songs of the summer alongside Morgan Wallen and Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help.”
And I’ll be honest, I don’t hate it.
I was in high school when J-Kwon’s “Tipsy” was a hit, so Shaboozey’s interpolation of that song is not only nostalgic but it’s also pretty damn catchy.
Now, is it a country song? Debatable. Is it a traditional country song? Hell no.
But Shaboozey doesn’t see it that way.
During a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Shaboozey broke down his hit song and explained everything that went into reimagining a song from two decades ago. And while discussing the song, he dropped this little nugget:
“First thing was definitely the idea of flipping a 2000s song into a traditional country song.”
Now, like I said, I don’t hate the song at all. It’s catchy, it’s fun, so I haven’t really even said much about it because for what it is, it’s not bad.
And I definitely don’t want this to come across as a shot at Shaboozey as a person. Being in this job, you hear stories about artists all the time, and I’ve never heard anything bad about Shaboozey. Quite the opposite actually, everything I’ve heard about him is that he’s a great guy. So that’s not my point at all.
But “A Bar Song” is definitely NOT a traditional country song. Hell, it’s arguable whether it’s country at all.
And it doesn’t have to be country to be a good song. I guess it says a lot about country that everybody is trying to fit into the country genre, but not everything needs to be a country song to be a hit. “A Bar Song” would be right at home as a pop song: In fact, it’s already inside the top 5 of the all-genre Billboard Hot 100.
At a point when country music is already watered down enough with people like Yung Gravy trying to get a piece of the country pie, it feels like there should be at least SOME guardrails when it comes to what is and isn’t country.
Where Shaboozey’s hit song fits within those guardrails is obviously debatable. But what’s not debatable is that it’s not a traditional country song.
It’s also not debatable that it’s really damn catchy.
