Single Review: 'That's My Kind of Night' – Luke Bryan
11 years ago Liv Carter 2
Songwriters: Dallas Davidson, Chris DeStefano, Ashley Gorley
Under normal circumstances, I like it when artists exceed my expectations. I honestly didn’t think Luke Bryan would ever release something worse than ‘Country Girl (Shake it for Me),’ a song I unapologetically refer to as “a sexist piece of trash.” With new single, ‘That’s My Kind of Night,’ he shows that I was entirely too generous.
In this composition – I seriously struggle to call this a song – he takes on the persona of yet another redneck dudebro who tries to impress a woman with his “big tires” and a “diamond plate tailgate.” Well, I refer to the female character being addressed here as a woman, but these lyrics don’t even manage to do that. Her only role is to scoot her “little hot self over here” and to respond to his requests – “Girl hand me another beer, yeah!” Seriously?
The case could easily be made that this is a hip-hop song that has no business referencing Conway Twitty, but I am not even going to enter that debate, because that is the least of this single’s faults. In any case, Bryan utterly fails to convince with his attempt at hip-hop delivery in the verses. As an aside – I have always thought it confounding why all these artists, who constantly remind us just how damn country they are and that they ain’t city folk, feel the need to so heavily identify with, and be accepted by, urban culture…
I do not expect subtlety from Luke Bryan. His stage performance has long ago crossed the line from merely cheesy into downright meretricious. But is it really so much to ask that he, and his team, and the songwriters stick to material in which women are treated as independent individuals? Songs like this, as well as most of FGL’s debut album and countless others, exist in a culture where getting a woman drunk is considered an appropriate and acceptable way to get lucky. No. Stop. That’s never OK. And don’t get me started on the perpetuation of the idea that sex is something that men must try to “win” from women.
Stop. It. Now.
If you also wish to see this change, speak up. After all, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Only when enough people demand it, will we be able to kick this sort of misogynist muppetry off the radio.
You know that tired old joke about what you get when you play a country song backwards? Well, instead of the wife, the house, and the dog, what Luke Bryan might get back if he plays this song backwards is dignity, credibility, and artistic integrity.
Liv Carter
She holds several certificates from Berklee College of Music, and a certificate in Positive Psychology from UC Berkeley.
Her main influences are coffee, cats, and Alexander Hamilton.
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