![]() L.A.’s TikTok creators earn thousands of dollars a month. What will they do if Trump’s ban takes effect? ![]() But it’s the conversation we’re having more and more.Ĭompany Town TikTok creators flocked to L.A. It’s a delicate conversation, and do I think we may take a little longer in country to have it? Probably. I watched Darius ’s interview on race, and I have sat up at night after hearing from African American audience members who say they’ve felt uncomfortable at my shows through the years. But has country gotten better at allowing in actual Black voices? You oughta be able to say a lot of stuff, and if one thing is misconstrued, you oughta be able to say, “I didn’t mean it that way,” apologize and move on.īecause of the way you grew up, you’ve naturally brought elements of Black music into country. I had a lot of people ask me, “Well, does that mean you want to plant a flag and support the gay and lesbian community?” I’m like, “I’m not saying I’m gonna go fly that flag - but I’m not saying I’m not either.”Īs you get a higher profile, you do watch your words carefully. It touched on “Love who you love,” and that can be taken a lot of ways. Look at “ Most People Are Good,” a song I had a couple years ago. I’m always gonna walk a smart line, but I’m not scared. But the stereotype where everybody’s like, “Oh, write a song about guns and America and the troops and veterans, and it’ll be a hit” - I don’t view the country audience like that.ĭo you feel free to speak your mind about contentious issues? Here’s what I know about the country audience: When you lay the right song on them, they all get it the same way. Do you see more diversity of thought than is often recognized? Ideologically, the country audience can be perceived by outsiders as a monolith. I’m always wondering, “What’s a fun little sound people haven’t heard me do?” Or when I listen to the Weeknd, that sounds like Duran Duran to me - totally an ’80s synthesizer. I’m obviously not a cowboy, but it makes me wonder how I could do a really retro-sounding cowboy song that isn’t just drums, bass, guitar and steel guitar. I’m really into “Yellowstone,” and the music in “Yellowstone,” it’s Texas music, cowboy music. What would be unexpected from Luke Bryan now? But I was driving home from downtown Nashville yesterday and I heard Kane Brown on pop radio with Swae Lee and Khalid. And you know what? There’ll always be people who say I ruined country music. So does “ That’s My Kind of Night.” It’s almost like a touch of a hip-hop song with a guy with a real country voice singing it.īut I didn’t know I was gonna open up another avenue. So “Country Girl (Shake It for Me)” kind of does all that. And the second I got offstage, the DJ would play the biggest hip-hop songs in the world, and everybody wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots and Wranglers with dip rings, they were all out there grinding and humping one another. I would go play college bars, honky-tonks - a thousand people dancing, partying their ass off, spraying beer. But somebody still had to make the music.Īnd “Country Girl (Shake It for Me)” was born strictly for that reason. I think my generation, as far as being a country kid, was one of the first to have these forms of music really start integrating. ![]() Let me paint the picture: I’m a small-town kid, and somehow I listened to Alan Jackson, N.W.A, the Beastie Boys, Garth Brooks and Heavy D & the Boyz. Another silver lining of an age with no shows: “I’ve gotten to sleep next to my wife a hell of a lot this year - though I’m not sure my wife is enjoying that.”ĭo you think of yourself as someone who shaped modern country music? “We had a big time,” he said of the trip, still looking a little sunburned, as he sipped a beer. With those plans called off because of the pandemic, he recently used his tour bus for a fly-fishing trip with his two sons and his nephew, whom Bryan and his wife began raising after the deaths of the singer’s sister and brother-in-law. Like countless other musicians, Bryan was supposed to take his latest work on the road in 2020, hitting arenas and amphitheaters as well as the open-air spaces he’s played for years on what he calls his Farm Tour. “I was like, ‘God, man, you sound like a ding-dong.’ ” “I remember being in college and alumni coming and going, ‘Y’all don’t party like we used to party,’” he said. 1 singles, including the new album’s blithely unburdened “ One Margarita,” and been named the Country Music Association’s entertainer of the year twice - Bryan insists he’s still interested in change. And despite all those accolades - he’s scored more than two dozen No. ![]() Now the street is a lot wider,” he said, with room for the adventurous likes of Sam Hunt and Lil Nas X. “Thirty years ago, when you listened to Randy Travis and all that, everybody was walking down the same street. ![]()
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