Baby You a Song: Bro-Country’s 30 Biggest Bangers

Luke Bryan’s 2011 Tailgates and Tanlines smash “Country Girl (Shake It for Me)” is one of the oldest songs on this list, making it a Bro-Father of the bro-country sub-genre. The song is a master class in the ways of the country brothario. There are trucks, boots, tractors, and honky-tonks, all employed in service of wooing a “country girl” into, you guessed it, “shaking it.” For atmosphere, Bryan invokes romantic bro hotspots like catfish-filled creeks and “underneath the pines” and takes the natural imagery a step further by imploring the object of his affection to “shake it for the birds” and “shake it for the bees.” Poetry? Questionable. A bro-country classic? No doubt. B.M.

Here is a scalding hot take: Billy Currington only records killer jams and could be a giant superstar if he was even half as obsessive about empire building as some of his peers. His reluctance to hog the spotlight even ensures that a problematic bro-country ringer like “Hey Girl” will be tolerable. Looked at from a certain angle, this could be a depiction of the harassment many women experience just by existing in the world. Currington thankfully plays it with such sly charm that it doesn’t come off as creepy, admitting to her, “You’re lookin’ so fine, got me all tongue-tied/And the only line I can think to say is, ‘Hey girl.'” “People Are Crazy” it ain’t, but the soulful-as-ever Currington proves once again that he’s still got a few tricks up his sleeve. J.F.

Following up the mega-hit “Cruise” is a near impossible task, but damn if Florida Georgia Line didn’t rise (and shine) to the occasion. “Get Your Shine On,” while not as overtly hooky as their debut single, was impossible to fend off. Credit the tropical vibe added to Joey Moi’s wall-of-sound production, the dazed-and-confused pre-chorus (“Turn your party lights onnn”), and even the song’s Mexico-set music video. Although maligned for introducing the line “slide that little sugar shaker over here” into the country lexicon, “Get Your Shine On” was radio gold as it celebrated freewheeling fun and home-brewed intoxication (homemade jar; Kentucky clear). FGL’s proclivities would eventually go green: listen to 2014’s stoner jam “Sun Daze.” J.H.

The promise of a memorable eve hangeth heavy in the dark of sky, where thy squire Dustin of Tullahoma awaits in his tall chariot. “When I get you climbing up in the cab of this truck,” he opines, “yeah, you know it’s on.” O’ lady, know that “on” doth include a “hot little playlist,” a warmth of skin obscured by a “high beam,” and, not least, a virgin display of “two lanes you’ve never seen.” Cry havoc, and let slip the hell of night! J.H.

Jerrod Niemann’s “Drink to That All Night” was so far ahead of its time when it came out in 2013, it feels like the rest of country music is just now catching up. An oddly compelling synthesis of country and EDM from a guy who’d made his name by playing around with traditions, “Drink to That All Night” is as sleek as a German sports car (wearing mud tires, naturally) and built with the same precision engineering. Niemann embraces his inner T-Pain and makes the alien sound of a vocoder part of the aesthetic, singing the phrase “ATL” like he’s BFFs with Big Boi while a four-on-the-floor beat thumps underneath a steady churn of mandolin and burbling synth. He’s looking for oblivion and finds it on this dance floor: “‘Bout to tie one on, talkin’ gone, gone, gone/Turnin’ all the wrongs into right.” Now that country’s moved on from bro-country to other stylistic territory, its more progressive mad scientists are injecting the DNA of “Drink to That All Night” into their own freaky genre collisions. J.F.

Sensitive dude Lee Brice borrowed a couple of tried-and-true tricks for his amiable summer concert-season spin on the bro anthem: one, amp up the corn factor with piped-in crowd noise and, two, build it around the same chord progression that’s powered everything from “The Joker” and “I Love Rock n’ Roll” to Weezer’s “Beverly Hills.” This also might be a contender for the most uses of the word “party” in a song by anyone not named Andrew WK, with Brice offering his central thesis thusly: “There ain’t no party like the pre-party and after the party, the after-party, at the parking lot party.” Marshall Tucker Band’s hits are played, beers are consumed (Brice claims an impressive 14 of them for himself), and it’s unclear if they even make it inside to see the show. But, hell, who wants to stand in line for a $14 Bud Light when you’ve got a cooler full of it right here? J.F.

Florida Georgia Line producer Joey Moi is the undisputed architect of bro country, and this is his unsung masterpiece. Recorded by Canadian country star (and former leader of alt-rock band Default) Dallas Smith, “Tippin’ Point” utilizes every one of Moi’s tricks in just under three minutes. There’s an explosive drop-in intro, compressed rolling banjo, and ghostly sub-choruses: listen as “fill it up to the top,” lurking below the surface, sets up the staccato “tip-tip-tippin’ point” refrain. Written by FGL’s Brian Kelly and Tyler Hubbard, and the Cadillac Three’s Jaren Johnston, the lyrics are paint-by-numbers bro — and include the grandly ludicrous “it’s hot as hell the way you shake that tailgate.” But, hot damn, that undeniable chorus. J.H.

At the height of bro-country, Justin Moore offered his own tempered take in pastoral pleasure-seeking with “Lettin’ the Night Roll.” Moore’s entry in the canon featured water towers, Kenwood car stereos, and an opening guitar riff so infectious it would become nearly synonymous with consolidated country radio for a several year period midway through the decade. (The only riff that did a better job at capturing the essence of this decade in country radio? Dean Summerwind’s “Parked Out by the Lake” parody). In late 2013/early 2014, even pious country-music conservatives like Moore felt compelled to offer up their own version of the sexualized pick-up truck fantasy, which in the Arkansas singer’s case meant, “You looked so damn good climbing up in my Chevy.” J.B.

Country’s finest contemporary balladeer got in on the action in 2013, singing one about how those unneeded shots of tequila can suddenly make an ordinary night shift gears. The lyrics almost read like ad copy for Bacardi Limited, name-checking both its signature rum and its subsidiary premium tequila brand, Patron, which is rhymed with — in order — “hang on,” “all night long,” “so wrong” “one more song” and finally, the evergreen sartorial detail, “jeans you painted on.” Weirdly, it all kind of works, ratcheting itself up into a shit-kicking storm of fiddle and electric guitar that suits Young’s limber country croon. Play it anytime you feel like shirking all of your annoying adult responsibilities and/or waking up with a mean hangover. J.F.

TR’s warm-weather sing-along was too close for copyright comfort to “Low Rider” by War, so all of the Long Beach funk band’s members got a songwriting credit. Add to that the six other songwriter-producers, including Rhett, and you have 14 names technically responsible for penning a song with lines like “I got my toes up in the sand/cold one in my hand.” Brilliant! And oh-so-bro-country. But, hey, “Vacation” is catchy AF, so accept the bloat and just book your ticket. J.H.

Since releasing this debut single in 2013, the Georgia native has written (“You Should Be Here”) and recorded (“Break Up in the End”) some of contemporary country music’s most mature and hard-hitting ballads. “Chillin’ It,” however, is proudly breezy. Mindless even. Its premise: taking your lover for a lazy drive, with your “shades on, top back, rolling with the music jacked.” The charm of “Chillin’ It” lies in its sneaky sweetness. Swindell may have something more on his mind one day, but right now, he’s simply happy with her by his side. “You so fine, I wouldn’t mind if this is all we did,” he sings, letting his guard down to admit that it’s “hard looking left, when my world is on my right.” J.H.

Troubadours have spent years and precious mental energy working to come up with definitions for what country is and what it sounds like, without arriving at any real consensus. Writers Vicky McGehee, Wendell Mobley, and Neil Thrasher took upon themselves the noble quest to define how it actually feels, and big-voiced Randy Houser got to deliver the message in 2012. In their estimation, those who’ve been deprived of country’s delicate caress have never: “rolled in the hay,” “thrown it in four-wheel,” “felt the mud up between your toes,” and, of course, “watched the sun go down from the bed of a pickup truck.” Sure, makes sense. But Houser, one of the finest vocalists working in country, sells it through sheer will and the power of suggestion with all those repeated phrases (“hair down, hair down”) in the chorus. If nothing else, what this type of country feels like is radio gold. J.F.

Released just a few years before bro-country’s crest, Aldean’s signature song feels miles away from the cornfield bonfires that his peers would soon be romanticizing. But this Colt Ford and Brantley Gilbert cult-favorite turned country blockbuster would end up serving as a primary sonic predecessor for artists like Florida Georgia Line and Cole Swindell: Aldean’s Bubba Sparxxx-conjuring muttered rap verse established a genre-blurring model for years to come, as did the release of a remix with Ludacris two years before Nelly rapped his way to the top of the country charts on “Cruise.” It remains the most interesting single ever released by the typically down-the-center Aldean. “The basis of the song is the exact same thing I talk about in a lot of my songs,” Aldean said. “It’s just a different way of delivering it.” J.B.

Even though singer Jaren Johnston penned his share of bro-country hits for other artists, it’s a bit of a stretch to label the Cadillac Three “bro-country”: the trio skews more closely to fuzzy country-rock than “Country Girl (Shake It for Me).” But Johnston’s lyrics for “The South” — one of the band’s signatures — are undeniably bro-tastic. You’ve got “Tennessee whiskey,” “sweet magnolia, dive bars and diners,” “boots and buckles, red clay and sand,” all delivered in his raspy twang over crunchy, cranked-up guitars. The Cadillac Three still owe more to Lynyrd Skynyrd than Luke Bryan, but they’re a welcome addition to a sub-genre that was always in need of a little variety. B.M.

The Voice alum Morgan Wallen launched what’s shaping up to be a pretty solid country career with this woozy slab of country-rock, aided by a guest appearance from bro all-stars Florida Georgia Line. Its main guitar pattern momentarily mimics the dissonant one from Weezer’s “Undone (The Sweater Song)” before the characteristically heavy drums kick in alongside a dive-bombing series of lead licks. The real delight here is in the way this essentially post-bro concoction updates the formula with quirky details like “the bobber’s in the pond” and “Still rolling around with a burned CD, ‘Free Bird’ five minutes deep.” In its relentless bounce are embedded hints about the small-town weekend’s central mindset — a pledge to cut loose and make it all work by using what you’ve got. And if you don’t know what “BFE” means, it’s best not to ask in polite company. J.F.

Contrary to its title, Brantley Gilbert’s “Bottoms Up” does not appear to be a song about sex. But whatever the case may be, the Georgia native behind Jason Aldean’s smashes “My Kinda Party” and “Dirt Road Anthem” put a brooding, nihilistic spin on the bro-country party trope with this 2013 single, mixing a murky drum loop with a watery electric guitar riff that could have been lifted straight out of some lost Tonic song. “Tonight it’s bottoms up, up/Throw it on down/Rock this quiet little country town, get up/Drop a tailgate on ya truck,” Gilbert snarls in each chorus, which daringly rhymes “cup” and “up.” The usual weekend hedonism of bro-country anthems has a dark side that peeks through here: we aren’t partying because it’s actually fun; we’re partying because we don’t know what else to do and, anyway, what’s the point of doing anything else in this barren wasteland. Absolutely mesmerizing. J.F.

Before Luke Combs’ “Hurricane” broke through to the country charts without a label, there was Chris Janson, who put “Buy Me Boat” on the radio independently until Warner Nashville was smart enough to catch on and sign him. Janson’s a unique dude — country music’s “most open redneck,” if you will, the kind of guy who likes hunting and gemstone therapy — and “Buy Me a Boat” is redneck as hell, if your breed of redneck is an eagle n’ flag shirt purchased from the local truckstop. Janson’s got the energy to pull off a song like this and enough twangy quirk (namedropping Warren Buffett, as you do) to make it mindless fun. Bonus points for the unique angle of positioning a boat as the object of his aspirational affection, and not another girl in cutoffs. M.M.

“House Party,” off Sam Hunt’s 2014 debut album Montevallo, is less about the titular bash than a hook-laden ode to late-night hook-ups. “Whatever you got on, girl, stay in it/You don’t have to leave the house to have a good time,” the Alabama speak-singer promised. An ebullient jam, it cemented Hunt’s place as one of bro-country’s foremost hitmakers — albeit reluctantly. “I haven’t endorsed that term for my music at all,” he told Rolling Stone in 2014, “and I don’t consider myself a bro.” Indeed, the “House Party” sound was more cerebral, favoring lilting strums and a dance beat over Cro-Magnon power chords and bashing drums. It was also impossible to resist and foreshadowed the playlist pop of Hunt’s recent hits like new single “Kinfolks” and the juggernaut “Body Like a Back Road.” B.M.

On title alone, “Somethin’ Bout a Truck” could be a bro-country song made up by The Onion (“Trucks! Girls! More trucks! Plus, cornfields!), and in the hands of anyone else, it might turn out to be as basic hitch as it sounds. But Kip Moore’s far smarter than that, using all the country clichés and all the depth of his raspy drawl to write a tune that’s not really about a truck at all (OK, it’s just a little bit about a truck). Moore’s career has never comfortably fit into the mainstream boxes — in his soul he’s far more emo singer-songwriter than bro. “Somethin’ ‘Bout a Truck” is Moore’s “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em — and then do whatever the hell you want” moment. M.M.

Frankie Ballard, with his bluesy guitar chops and Elvis hair swoosh, always seemed just a few notches cooler than any of the run-of-the-mill, conveyor-belt dudes who wouldn’t be caught dead with anything but a trucker hat on their head, let alone that much pomade. That’s the charm of “Sunshine & Whiskey,” a track that’s so darn cutesy it feels like it’s being sung through the cupid’s arrow Instagram filter, something that could only exist in the era before Trump’s America: “don’t wanna get DWK, driving while kissing, they’ll put you away!” Aw! The fact that “driving while kissing” would mostly just land you into a telephone pole, not jail, aside, “Sunshine & Whiskey” is like the song version of two kids doing “homework” upstairs: mom can think it’s innocent…but mom’s wrong. M.M.

The fact that Little Big Town eventually went on to release some of country music’s finest and most profound songs of the decade — “Girl Crush” and “The Daughters” among them — makes this infectious ode to floatin,’ drinkin’ and doin’ it all the more enjoyable. You need a pool noodle just to stay afloat in the sexual innuendos alone — there’s “motorboatin,'” of course, but what exactly do they really mean by “wood panelin’ with a water slide”? It’s the tongue-in-cheek swamp-chic vibes of “Pontoon” that keep things from sinking into mud, though. And pondering how country radio let Little Big Town purr “mmmmotorboatin‘” on the airwaves? A joy in and of itself. M.M.

In the summer of 2012, there was perhaps no more prescient sign of what was to come than Tim McGraw half-rapping the lines “I got Lil Wayne bumpin’ on my iPod/Thumpin’ on the subs in the back of my crew cab.” Released in between the tail end of 2010-2012’s sexless truck song mania and the eroticized truck-party posturing that was soon to come, today “Truck Yeah” sounds like a deranged caricature of both. Recited over a sludgy hair-metal riff, McGraw’s laundry list of truck-bro signifiers (cold brews, mud slinging, redneck DNA) would earn him his highest-ever solo chart debut. Four years later, the song’s co-writer Chris Janson took “Truck Yeah” to unimaginably dystopian places when he performed it as “Trump Yeah” at the 2016 RNC. But back in 2012, it sounded like a brash truck track so over-the-top that it almost, just almost, felt like it was in on the joke. J.B.

It was the understatement of the decade: “The mix in our drink’s a little stronger than you think,” Tyler Hubbard sang in this peak-bro soliloquy. A few lines later, he proves his point during the four-fireball-shots-deep chorus, where FGL wrap words like “roll” and “radio” in a rollercoaster melody so slurred that just singing them feels like consuming a fifth of the duo’s Old Camp whiskey. On “This Is How We Roll,” the Faulkner and Fitzgerald of bro-country join forces on this “little Hank, little Drake” ode to binge drinking and 37-inch Nitto tires (Luke Bryan chimed in for the bridge.) When FGL released their tragically forgotten Jason Derulo remix during the song’s summer 2014 high point, they let the R&B star sing the quiet part loud: “Accent’s got a little twang, little thing,” he crooned. “Always makes the ladies scream/ My name louder/reverse cowgirl.” J.B.

“Tan-legged Juliet” meets “redneck Romeo” in Jason Aldean’s backwoods party courtship. Brantley Gilbert wrote and recorded “My Kinda Party” in 2009, delivering it as a bare-bones, mostly acoustic number that’s in stark contrast to his highly produced later hits  (see this list’s slick “Bottoms Up”). Aldean’s version goes right for the jugular, with producer Michael Knox adding muscular drums and crunchy stacked guitars. “[It has] the aggressive rock sounding stuff that I love,” Aldean told Rolling Stone in 2016. And the singer sold all the buzzwords, from “bonfire” and “moonshine” to “tailgates” and “Georgia clay” — both Gilbert and Aldean are Peach State boys. The end result is irresistible, and served as the no-brainer title track to Aldean’s equally magnetic 2010 album, still his best LP yet. J.H.

A full year before “Cruise,” this bro-country urtext gave the then-30-year-old Florida beach bum his first Number One. The song’s compressed banjo and floor-tom drum samples would become production staples of the era, and the song’s caricatured portrayal of Southern femininity (“her ruby red lips were sipping on sweet tea”) and Peter Pan frat-party refrain (“never gonna grow up/never gonna slow down”) would end up being rewritten many dozens of times over the next several years. But before the imitators had infiltrated the airwaves, Owen sold his beer-by-the-river fantasy more convincingly (and pleasantly) than most anyone else: “When I heard [it], I was like, ‘Man, that’s pretty much me,’” Owen said in 2011. “I mean…the only reason I’ve got shoes on is because they make me.” J.B.

How do you make a bro-country song better? Add the Pistol Annies! While country radio would disagree, Blake Shelton’s Annies-assisted “Boys ‘Round Here” is bona fide proof that female voices can turn a boring song into something complex and memorable. On the 2013 Based on a True Story cut, Shelton opens by offering a laundry list of country bro clichés, like honky-tonks, stomping boots, ice cold beer, and trucks. While the song could still benefit from more of the Annies (they’re mostly relegated to harmony vocals), the sonic interplay between their voices and Shelton’s gives the song much-needed sonic depth and even lends a little credence to the idea that the “girls ‘round here” really might “like that y’all and Southern drawl.” B.M.

If “Cruise” opened up the bro-country floodgates, then Luke Bryan summed up the trend’s philosophy and ethos most succinctly when, one year later, he shouted: “Girl hand me another beer, yeah!” Bryan’s Flint River fairytale, “That’s My Kind of Night” solidified the genre as the oppressive force it was quickly becoming by the fall of 2013, prompting Zac Brown to call it “the worst song I’ve ever heard.” But what’s most remarkable about the Double Platinum behemoth is just how strange it was: the descending hard-rock riff, the strangest country come-on in years (“catch us up a little catfish dinner”), and Bryan’s supremely specific “I listen to country and also to rap” shout-out: “A little Conway, a little T-Pain.” “Was it a rocket science piece of music? No,” Bryan told Rolling Stone in 2015. “Was it, ‘I like it. I love it. I want some more of it?’ Yeah.” J.B.

There’s so much to love about “Girl in a Country Song,” Maddie & Tae’s introductory single wherein they owned the bros: from the music video that flipped the narrative and put dudes in cutoff shorts, to priceless one-liners like “sure I’ll slide on over, but you’re gonna get slapped.” The best part, though? In an era when the Luke Bryans and the FGLs of the world were drifting further and further away from sounds that felt distinctly country, here’s Maddie & Tae skewering the trend while bringing mandolins and fiddles to the party. They’re girls alright, and in an actual country-ass song. M.M.

For its title alone, Dierks Bentley’s 2014 Riser hit “Drunk on a Plane” deserves a spot in the Bro-Country Hall of Fame. Who hasn’t, after all, gotten a little tipsy at cruising altitude? While the song trades in many familiar tropes — for example, the country Everygirl is swapped out for a sexy stewardess — the conceit is a novel one; at the very least, it’s refreshing to leave the trucks on the back road in favor of a high-flying 737. Bentley manages to inject a bit of self-deprecating humor into the tune, too, when he admits to being “passed out in the baggage claim,” making for a song that grounds a bit of reality into a bro’d-out fantasy. B.M.

If there is a Platonic ideal of a bro-country song, it is Florida Georgia Line’s breakout hit “Cruise.” It is, after all, the song that led critic Jody Rosen to coin the term “bro country” in a 2013 story for New York Magazine, inadvertently — and to Rosen’s chagrin — cementing the term into future popular discourse around commercial country music. So, what is it about “Cruise” and its Nelly-featuring remix that so epitomizes the bro-country ethos? For starters, the lyrics cover all the bro bases: driving in jacked-up trucks with the windows rolled down; nameless, faceless, long-legged ladies in bikini tops; back roads and farm towns; and, of course, plenty of alcohol. Then there’s the melody, which is infectious enough to have even the staunchest of country purists humming along, if reluctantly. “Cruise” is the song that launched a thousand ships with lift-kits to country radio. Better to hop onboard and sing along than get caught in its frothy wake. B.M.