Discovering mainstream truths and seven-time chart-topping veteran country music performer Brantley Gilbert creates a polarizing moment.
On the one hand, he’s a proud gun-toting Georgia redneck covered in tattoos who “don’t give a damn about a lot of things,” he told The Tennessean on the Music Row soundstage. , is also the lead vocalist on the 2021 collaboration with HARDY and Toby Keith entitled “Worst Country Song Ever.”
He’s a performer as well, selling as many singles as rock artists Creed and Nickelback have sold in the last quarter-century, alongside fellow Georgian Jason Aldean.
Between these notions is a recovering alcoholic husband and father of two who always feel the need to abandon faith in album titles.
“I have a die-hard fan base and I prefer things that are based on what they consistently agree on,” Gilbert said of the decision. He continues with intellectual points that identify his demographic.
“Low-middle-class earning music fans end up working until the sun goes down or work is over. The rest of the tough days.”
“I have 60 minutes of hits, but Nickelback has twice as many hits as I do. So it’s a three-hour experience,” Gilbert said of his 2023 debut with the 2000s rock icon. Talking about summer concerts:
Among those hits include his recent Vince Gill and Blake Shelton collaboration “Heaven by Then.”
The song is a ‘bucket list’ moment for Gilbert and will be featured on his sixth studio album, ‘So Help Me God’, out in 2022.
He describes Gil’s guitar playing and voice as the long idolized “gift” and “if God gave the voices of angels to the people of Earth” respectively. As for Shelton, he counts his hits “Austin” and “All Red” as “real” songs he has long admired.
His aforementioned Hardy and Toby Keith duet “Worst Country Song Ever” also appears on “So Help Me God”. .
The song in question begins with the line:
“I hate beer and honky-tonk women/I don’t eat deer and I can’t stand fishing/And I don’t like ‘family traditions’, ‘Folsom Prison’ or ‘Walk the・I don’t know the word “line”.
“You should have listened to the lines that weren’t cut. What a ridiculous amount of time we made [that song]It was created while America was going through a lot of division. So I tried to lighten the mood and make everyone realize that we’re not that different from each other,” Gilbert added.
Gilbert’s fifteen years in Music City have taken the roughest edges of outlaw country, gangsta style, trap-ready hip-hop, and mainstreamed alternative rock into the most aggressively homogenized presentations of pop country. I’ve seen him as one of the chief creatives responsible for leading the way. Manhood since the 1990s when the toothy, grinning man in the Resistol hat reigned supreme.
In 2010, Gilbert first achieved mainstream fame in Nashville, alongside Colt Ford, as one of the co-creators of Aldean’s breakout rap-style country ballad “Dirt Road Anthem.” A decade later, he’s revived his sound in crossovers in various ways that Gilbert created.
“There are, and will continue to be, artists around the world creating music featuring melting pots of genres that have yet to enter the mainstream, such as Jelly Roll, Struggle Jennings, Yelawolf, Adam Calhoun, Tom Macdonald and Demun Jones. Be.”
“I think we all have PhDs,” Gilbert continued when asked what made moments like Jelly Roll’s recent hit “Son of a Sinner” possible. . “In my opinion, it’s important to create accessible songs that make you feel something, not what the song sounds like.” He says that songs that create synergy are best.
Georgia-born artists like Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, Tyler Hubbard and Cole Swindell (who spawned nearly 100 Billboard hits in 20 years) create music that resonates with country music When asked to delve into what makes it possible, in most mainstream demographics, he straightened himself up in his chair, hardened himself, and made a long-standing record of unparalleled country music acclaim. It looks like you’re about to reveal a secret recipe.
“College towns are packed with college bars like the ones in the country of Georgia. People aren’t even hungry to succeed beyond that market,” says Gilbert. He has worked in schools such as Georgia Southern University, various statewide campuses of the University of Georgia, the University of North Georgia, the University of West Georgia, and Valdosta State University, from small rooms filled to five times capacity to large rooms. It explains that you will play in the room. Pop and Traditional He’s a marketplace that rewards engaging, party-ready original music in addition to his impeccable knowledge of country music.
“To play enough times [in that circuit] We had to be as good as we were tough to make enough money to grow a grassroots following,” says Gilbert.
He describes what grinding his artistic teeth in that environment taught him and what he holds to the present:
“I don’t claim to be Carrie Underwood, but I still run my butt all over the place.”
When asked how he feels about both his creative motivations and the early stages of his legacy, he offers a note that perhaps points well to country music’s evolving future.
“It’s because the lines between genres are blurring. [the music industry] To be a circus in the best possible way. People are trying to control it now. Because in today’s society, we are obsessed with identifying and labeling everything. But when fans hear something to dig, they dig it. Who can tell me what the label is? Hits are big records that tell a story, regardless of genre or label. “