The fact that “Vice” has now gone platinum is not entirely surprising as a lead single from a mainstream country star, but what is surprising is the song never cracked the Top 10 on country radio during its ascent. “Vice” stalled out at #11 before being moved to recurrent.
Well, it’s happened. As predicted by Saving Country Music and certain others, Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Backroad” is now officially the longest-charting #1 single on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in the chart’s nearly 60-year-old history, logging a total of 25 straight weeks at #1.
Artists with the true love of country music in their hearts, they don’t make country music for money or fame. They make it for life. They make it because they have no other choice. They make it whether they succeed, or it costs incredible sacrifice to keep doing it. It isn’t an option, it’s an obligation to themselves, and the music.
Some might think this will sound like a broken record or a tired topic, that all the Chris Stapleton praise and plaudits for his remarkable sales numbers have run their course. But the argument can be made that we’re still not making a big enough about what Chris Stapleton is accomplishing in country music right now.
“Country shows man. Everybody gets way too drunk.” This is one of many things that can be overheard in the disturbing video of a brawl that erupted after the Sam Hunt show in Tinley Park, IL (Chicago area) Saturday night, July 8th.
At the moment there are exactly zero women in country radio’s Top 20, and a whopping total of 4 in the entire Top 50 for an abysmal 8% representation. In fact this 4 out of 50 ratio has been pretty consistent now for the entirety of the “Body Like A Backroad” reign at #1.
‘Country music’ most certainly has a definition because it means something to millions of people. They identify with it. It’s their culture. It’s what gives them meaning and fulfillment. And if lost, and even worse, impugned and dragged through the mud as being irrelevant, uncool, or unwilling to evolve, it leaves them empty feeling and hollow.
Sam Hunt’s smash single “Body Like a Backroad” has already made history, and is set to make more. By now logging 20 weeks at #1, “Body Like a Backroad” and Sam Hunt break a 55-year-old record on the 59-year-old Billboard Hot Country Songs chart previously held by Leroy Van Dyke’s “Walk On By.”
Oh man are these some stinkers. Not only does an elite and highly-trained group of mainstream country artists seem to be like devoted experts at defining new lows for the genre, in 2017 the amount of non-country-ness of some of these “country” songs is so off the charts, it’s like they’re purposely challenging each other.
Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Backroad” has now topped the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for 17 straight weeks. Meanwhile, “Body Like a Backroad” continues to pick up crossover spins. Unfortunately for Miranda Lambert, her current single “Tin Man” is headed in the opposite direction.
As we continue to ponder what country radio might look like after the impending implosion of iHeartMedia and corporate radio as we know it, some very interesting developments emerged on the country radio charts this week.
“Body Like a Backroad.” It looks to shatter even the incredible and previously-thought insurmountable records of Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise.” Right now we sit in an eerily-similar position as we did in May of 2013. “Body Like A Backroad” is absolutely dominating every single song chart that country music has.
As Sam Hunt’s new godawful and indisputably non-country single “Body Like a Backroad” rockets up the charts and looks to make him an established major music superstar, the sychophants are coming out of the woodwork to glam on to his success and hope perhaps some of that attention will rub off on them.
Stupid list thing going around the innernets these days asking music folks to list off then bands they’ve seen live, but one is a lie. As a similar exercise to get your country music brain muscles firing and to test your true acumen on the genre, let’s see if you can navigate this difficult intellectual exercise.
The truth is we have no idea why Bill O’Reilly was fired from the most prominent seat in cable news commentary. The allegations against him could all be false claims from money-grubbing hussies looking to take advantage of his celebrity. But in country music, the way women are looked upon, and the way they’re spoken to is spelled out right there in the songs.
So Sam Hunt’s latest single “Body Like A Backroad” is really taking off, and could be a major crossover success in pop? Well superb, I say. Then make like Taylor Swift and get the hell out of country Sam Hunt, you carpetbagging, interloping, country music misnomer, that’s making millions off of gullible country music fans.
Despite years of controversy of whether Sam Hunt belongs in the country music realm, Saving Country Music runs down some of the reasons that Sam Hunt does perhaps belong in country music as opposed to the pop or EDM world.
WARNING: LANGUAGE — To release a song called “Body Like a Backroad” in the year of our Lord 2017, after we suffered through five years of embarrassment as a genre at the hands of the Bro-Country scourge, it goes so far beyond aggressively cliché, it’s just downright grotesque.
Country music is not just a commodity or even a form artistic expression. It is an integral part of people’s lives and has been the foundation for their cultural identities for generations. It’s what binds them to their homes and ancestry, and is interwoven into the very fabric of who they are as people.
Like an incorrigible habit that only works to expand the gut, shave years off of life, spends your money, and puts distance between yourself and the realization of your goals and dreams, country music should make a resolution to drop Sam Hunt and his big bag of nothing like the smelly, disgusting, cancerous, unhealthy habit he is.
