He ain’t wrong.
Wheeler Walker Jr. stopped by the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast recently and gave his usual uncensored thoughts on everything from awards shows to getting kicked out of the Country Music Hall of Fame to whether he’d rather have a threesome with Dan + Shay or Florida Georgia Line (because we ask the questions everybody else is too afraid to ask).
And of course Wheeler also had some thoughts on bro country.
Country music obviously went through some dark times back in the 2010s, when we were in the pits of bro country hell with songs like “Cruise” and “Country Girl Shake It For Me” topping the charts.
Luckily it seems like things have gotten better in the past few years and we’ve started getting away from the whole “bro country” phase.
But Wheeler Walker Jr. thinks that “bro country” isn’t going away – it’s just mutating like COVID into a different strain:
“I feel like bro country is kinda like COVID. It’s kinda like, it’s over and then there’s some fucking new mutation that kinda comes out. It’s like, I hear every week it’s over, then ‘Where the fuck is this fucking bullshit?'”
Wheeler also said that at this point we’re judging music on a sliding scale, where even the shitty stuff sounds pretty good because there’s just so much REALLY shitty music that’s been released over the past few years:
“I hate to say it, but my problem nowadays is everything’s on a sliding scale. Luke Combs sounds like fucking Waylon compared to Sam Hunt.
But I don’t dislike the guy. I just think the bar’s so fucking low that it’s like, ‘Oh man, he’s got a guitar player. They actually play their instruments. Yay!'”
Hey, he’s got a point. As bad as things got there for a few years, anything even remotely country sounds good by comparison.
Check out the full interview with Wheeler on Whiskey Riff Raff to hear his thoughts on the state of country music and much more:
