Florida Georgia Line Tests Positive for Sucking on “I Love My Country”

Ladies and gentlemen, the world has been besieged by an unfathomable scourge sweeping over the nations, infecting our most vulnerable, forcing people to shelter in place, shuttering businesses and freezing the free practice of commerce like we’ve never seen before, unleashing other untold disruptions and horrors to life on this fair planet on an unprecedented scale. This scourge, this infection, this terror beyond comparison and imagination that is ravaging our entire way of life has a name well known to many, that immediately incites shrieks of panic; that has become dubiously popularized through a diabolical history of spreading dread and dismay. This name that we speak of, this indefatigable scourge, this apex of frightening alarm is of course none other than the efforts of …the Coronavirus.

You thought I was about to compare the music of Florida Georgia Line to COVID-19, didn’t you. Didn’t you? Even that seems out-of-bounds in these dark days. But this terrible duo’s new song “I Love My Country” is so colossally disappointing, it’s work breaking the quarantine on snark and negative commentary to offer fair warning to the shut-in denizens of Planet Earth to avoid contact with any person or surface that’s infected with this mess.

Our worst fears when seeing that the name of Florida Georgia Line’s new song was “I Love My Country” is that we were in store for some jingoistic anthem slathering it on thick about how much they support the troops and the good ol’ stars and stripes, exploiting people’s patriotism circa Toby Keith 2003. Or, we’d get some ultra-sappy “Kumbaya” moment about how we should all come together—-a redneck version of “We Are The World” ripe for eye-rolling, parody, and ridicule.

Oh, if we could have only been so lucky. Instead, Florida Georgia Line took a long hard read of the room, reflected deeply upon the scope and gravity of these exceptional moments we’re currently living in, and released a spectacularly stupid and shallow Bro-Country list song that sounds like all the other dumb shit they’ve recorded over their embarrassing career. What, are we living through 2013 all over again?

“I Love My Country” tests positive for sucking ass. Instead of stoking national pride, “I Love My Country” induces vomiting in the way it tries to pass itself off as a country song, even having the audacity to mention fiddle and steel guitar in the lyrics, yet good luck finding hide or hair of these things in the mix. Instead what you get is the same Nickelback-inspired rock guitar that’s sullied this duo’s entire career, discretionary and distracting electronic drum beats, suburban rap, and the same token banjo every bullshit Southern pop song employs in a worthless attempt to claim affiliation or affinity for county music.

“I Love My Country” is patriotic in the same way Florida Georgia Line’s song “H.O.L.Y” was religious, meaning not in any way whatsoever. It’s a bait and switch.

But “I Love My Country” doesn’t just sound familiar for Florida Georgia Line. When listening, it evokes fetid nightmares of another odious mainstream “country” star in Kane Brown. Screw me if the chorus of “I Love My Country” sounds near exactly the same to Kane Brown’s “Short Skirt Weather” down to the chords, the tempo, and the overall arrangement. When you deserve to get cease and desisted from the Kane Brown camp that’s got more legal liabilities and skeletons in the closet that an Jeffrey Epstein-connected mogul, you know you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel of ideas.

You wouldn’t wish contracting the Coronavirus on your worst enemy. But Florida Georgia Line fans are just the kind of fools who would spend the better part of a pandemic getting hammered on a beach with their dumbass friends, and then bring the crud back to Mee Maw and buy up all the toilet paper in their town’s Dollar General.

I love my country too, whether it’s the stuff pumping out of my speakers, or this beautiful nation where so many are making untold sacrifices trying to hold the fabric of society together through this unprecedented pandemic. But everyone should practice responsible social distancing from this monstrosity, and it should be quarantined from the public well after the curve has been flattened.

Two Guns Down

….and tell me this chorus isn’t exactly the same.

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