Maddie & Tae [NBC]
While “bro country” standouts like Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean and Cole Swindell were quick to praise Maggie Rose’s supportive “Girl in Your Truck Song,” few have addressed Maddie and Tae’s far more disruptive–and far more oppositional–“Girl in a Country Song.”
Even though Maddie and Tae’s song has been rapidly climbing the charts and been garnering endless attention from the press, it has gone largely unaddressed by the singers whose lyrics it mocks.
Singer-songwriters Maddie Marlow and Tae Dye, for their part, have avoided confrontation or controversy when speaking about the song. Instead of positioning “Girl” as a “diss track” and themselves as anti-bro country, the young artists maintain that they love contemporary country songs and wrote their tune “all in good fun.”
Still, given the song’s lyrics, one cannot blame the media for touting the song as a blow to the critically panned “bro country” subgenre. One, therefore, would not be out of line for wondering what acts like Florida Georgia Line and Thomas Rhett think about a songs that mocks the lyrics of their respective hits “Get Your Shine On” and “Get Me Some of That.”
One (sort of) got his answer last week, when FGL member Brian Kelley commented on the song’s theme.
During an interview with the Chicago Tribune’s Allison Stewart, Kelley initially maintained that he was “not really familiar” with Maddie and Tae’s track.
To illuminate the matter for Kelley, Stewart provided a description of the song: “They sing it from the point of view of the girl in the cut-off jeans, who never gets to talk.”
The Florida Georgia Line member then remarked, “All I’m gonna say about that is, I don’t know one girl who doesn’t want to be a girl in a country song. That’s all I’m gonna say to you. That’s it.”
After consuming internet dialogue for a week, the remarks finally elicited the most relevant response possible: one from Maddie and Tae.
The duo cordially addressed Kelley’s remarks during an interview with Broadway of the “Electric Barnyard” radio show.
“We love them and their music, but, you see, he’s a dude. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be a woman…or to be the girl in these songs,” they explain in the interview (embedded below).
They are quick, however, to offer a disclaimer: “And we never intended to upset anybody, so that was definitely not our intention. And we can’t really speak for anyone else, we just know that that’s definitely not something we would want to do.”
As for Florida Georgia Line, Maddie and Tae declare, “They’re sweethearts – they’re great.”
Both Florida Georgia Line and Maddie and Tae perform under the Big Machine Label Group umbrella.