"Pop" Country Gone Haywire: Lee Brice's "Country Nowadays" is the height of entitled, privileged whining

There are moments where country music just nails the mood and strikes the right tone, I have examples of how great the genre can be on my best of 2026 playlist already (See Carter Faith and William Beckmann's collab from earlier this year and Emily Scott Robinson's beautiful new album "Appalachia" but every so often the genre hits a turd like in 2017 with "Body Like a Backroad" by Sam Hunt which unfortunately became a staple of the genre that year and this year it's Lee Brice's "Country Nowadays"

Firstly, let's do a little background on Lee Brice, he originally worked behind the scenes as a songwriter for Jason Aldean and even co wrote Garth Brooks song "More than a Memory" amd from there was signed to Curb Records in 2007 and has since released several albums and even collaborated with Carly Pearce on "Hope You're Happy Now".so yes, you can absolutely say that Brice was apart of the instigation of the worst period for mainstream country in years where all the male artists wanted to do was drink beer off the back of tailgates and leer at women although Brice was on the decidedly more tasteful side of the nonsense, he did have one or two songs I liked. '

All that brings me to his new song enttled "Country Nowadays" that he performed at the "alternate" Superbowl half time show much to the amusement of the internet, there already several Youtube Poops mocking this song and honestly I am not sure they go far enough to underline just how extraordinarily privileged this song comes across so I am going to breakdown the fundamentals of this song's lyrics (I am not going to discuss the actual music because I am not giving this song a click)

"I just wanna catch my fish, drive my truck, drink my beer
And not wake up to all this stuff I don't want to hear
Like the same kind of gun I hunt with, just killed another man
When the only thing mine ever shot was a deer from my deer stand"\

You can go catch your fish, drive your truck and drink beer, Lee, NOBODY is stopping you. Also if you don't want to wake up to the news of another school shooting in America, you can just not turn the TV on in the morning and avoid social media but the real reason you don't want to wake up to the news of another school shooting or another innocent person being murdered is that you don't want your thoughts on gun ownership and putting bullets through an animal challenged by people who actually want gun reform.

"I just want to grow my corn, feed my dogs, wear my boots

Not turn the TV on, sit and watch the evenin' news
And be told if I tell my own daughter that little boys ain't little girls
I'll be up the creek in hot water in this "cancel your ass" world"

Trans people simply existing do not stop Lee from growing vegetables and feeding his dog nor are anyone else's private parts or lack there of anyone's concern and shouldn't be in the news anyway...who cares if somebody wants a penis instead of a vagina..how does their decision affect Lee Brice or Fox News?.

As for complaining about "cancel culture" since when was Lee ever cancelled? Again, two of his biggest hits have been fairly  recent with "One of them Girls" and the collab with Carly Pearce that I mentioned earlier. Also if cancel culture was actually a fucking thing, Chris Brown wouldn't still be gaining hits and relevance on the charts to this fucking day. It looks pretty myopic and incredibly privileged for somebody like Lee Brice who has had a modicum of success on the charts to be whining about cancel culture.

" It ain't easy being country in this country nowadaysThe direction the fingers point when everything goes up in flames
Sayin' I'm some right-wing devil 'cause I was small town, Jеsus raised
It ain't easy being country in this country nowadays"

Oh wow, whining it's hard to be country nowadays when the genre is actually having the biggest boom in terms of success on the Hot 100 and around the world, there's actually never been a better time to be an artist making real country music eg: Ella Langley, Luke Combs etc not that Lee would know what actual drums are that aren't borrowed from a drum machine are. 

As for the religious implications here, can I suggest Lee go spend some more time with his bible and learn how to be humble because this entitled privileged whining in song form does not imply that he understands what God and Jesus meant by modesty and humility...yes, modesty is not just dress standards for women, they apply in terms of behaviour for everyone.

"I just wanna cut my grass, watch my gamе, say my prayers
Not get a picture of a flag up in flames as people cheer
Yeah, the same one my grandaddy fought for being stepped on like it's trash
And I'm a downright hateful monster if I back the blue and badge"

Okay, I do agree flag burning is not a good thing and it's something that peaceful protest should not resort to but again...nobody is stopping Lee Brice from praying, watching football or mowing his overgrown lawn that probably has more weeds than any actual realisation from Lee Brice that this privileged whining is just not going to cut it, he is free to do all that shit he names in this song but the real world is going to keep being the real fucking world..is Lee Brice even cognisant of the fact that ICE have murdered innocent people, that his president Donald Trump is in the Epstein files and as a result Trump is threatening to start a WAR with Iran...where's the song talking about the actual real shit that is happening, Lee?

As for support the police, he is free support whoever he wants just as long he is aware that people are allowed to disagree. We all face consequences for things we say and do, we are not free from the consequences of our free speech like so many entitled and privileged people seem to believe they are.

Final part of this shit show of a song is this:

"All I do is mind my business, live my life the best I can
Try to be a real good husband, a real good daddy, a real good man
But because I have my morals and a small town point of view
You assume that you don't like me means that I don't like you, too"

Minding his own business when he was complaining about trans people earlier in his own song? I would suggest none of that was minding his own business. Now I am not going to judge him as a husband or as a parent however morals do come into question when you sign up to perform as part of what is fairly blatantly a Donald Trump and Republican suppprting grift like Turning Point USA while Trump is still in the Epstein Files and may possibly  be deeply involved, eyeing bombing other countries and pushing US democracy to the brink of extinction, Lee may well have bigger issues to worry about that trans kids and school shootings in the news on his small town home TV. 

This isn't escapism from Lee Brice, this is just privileged shitlord material that doesn't have the good sense to have some balance and acknowledge that there are real problems in the US and the world that need to be dealt with such as the pedophiles in positions of power (which is wild Lee doesn't acknowledge that given he has kids) and when we have this sort of worthless art in country, it actually hurts the genre and those artists in country trying to speak truth to power.

Fuck this song.