There’s really not much I could add to this…
…but when I heard about it, I did have this thought:
“That New York City Chick-fil-A isn’t being patronized by folks making special trips from Tupelo or Montgomery, bubba.”
In its own way, that’s the funniest bit about this whole thing.
But I guess such a reaction is to be expected from a publication who did a feature on the most celebrated Americana music artist of our time…and made its focus his trip to a fucking New York art museum instead of his actual music.
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Songwriter Shane McAnally, on Florida Georgia Line:
Still, it’s this snobbery that comes sometimes with country music where people go, “They’re too this or too that.”
It’s not snobbery. It’s called “maintaining some definition of the genre.” And the fact that Shane McAnally refuses to understand that is just further evidence that he is part of the problem in Nashville, his involvement with Kacey Musgraves and Midland be damned.
Also, I would bet good money that McAnally has no problem with Music Row or “country” radio thinking certain artists are “too country.” He is a raging hypocrite.
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I have always liked Randy Travis, but I was never a big fan of “Better Class of Losers” — less so in recent years, for the bit “they buy their coffee beans already ground.” I never thought about it before, but after I started making coffee using other methods than drip, I was like, “the hell’s wrong with grinding your own coffee? It’s not like you can get a proper French press grind off the shelf!”
(And yes, I know. I sound like some sort of SWPL monster. But a bean grinder doesn’t cost that much money, nor does a French press…)
Where does music come in here, you ask?
Well, on his 1992 sophomore album Longnecks & Short Stories, Mark Chesnutt recorded a song with the title “Uptown Downtown (Misery’s All the Same)”…
…but the actual title of that song was, you guessed it, “Better Class of Losers” (originally recorded by Ray Price under that title), and it was a far, far superior song.
Live from the Alamo City 