As college football returns to television sets and folks’ Saturday plans for the foreseeable future, the soundtrack to game day follows immediately. Typically soaked in the usual Americana riffs of pop and country, it’s tough not to know what someone means when they ask for fall music.
Conner Smith’s “I Hate Alabama,” his breakout single that originally dropped five years ago, achieves a similar feat, but in a unique way. Not only does it serve as a perfectly thematic country song for any Crimson Tide haters out there, but it also left a much larger impact on the music industry than some would realize.
It’s one of the first songs to blow up on TikTok and give birth to a full-fledged country artist. Up until the single’s release under Valory Music, Smith had written and produced it with the help of longtime friend Hunter Phelps. He later teased it on TikTok before releasing a full music video, which garnered over 1 million views in the first 24 hours.
The song’s widespread popularity helped land Smith a special place in many college football fans’ hearts, especially those who could relate to the heartbreak and emotions of its lyrics. Smith would go on to make it a staple of his concert setlist and include it on his 2024 debut album, Smoky Mountains.
Smith managed to pull off two things with the song’s release: prove that even country artists could make it big on TikTok, and that college football fans love a song that directly references them.
Shortly after “I Hate Alabama” went mainstream and everyone had heard it, the country music space began to give way to a fresh crop of Big Noon Saturday-ready tracks. Folks like Megan Moroney found success in similar thematic elements in songs like “Tennessee Orange,” which took a much more positive spin on young love than Smith’s track. Bigger artists like Morgan Wallen even followed suit with songs like “Tennessee Fan,” while Luke Combs went out and straight-up recorded the new SEC anthem, “South on Ya.”
With his infusion of confident, swagger-laced vocals and clean, modern production, it’s not hard to see why Smith’s sound resonated with every music consumer demographic. It also helped pave the way for artists like Bailey Zimmerman and Tucker Wetmore to share their creations on TikTok and garner the attention they have. While Conner didn’t create the blueprint for growing an audience as an artist, he certainly proved that one way young men could do it was through TikTok, all while sticking to a consistent sound that didn’t quite match what you heard on the radio.
“I Hate Alabama” is sort of the perfect encapsulation of that. At the time, many songs didn’t try to delve into double entendres or unique wordplay to stand out. Instead, it seemed that more and more artists wanted pop-centric, electric drums in the background to blend in with the Top 40. For country music fans who like the sound of authentic country music instruments, that’s a tough change to accept.
But Conner Smith proved you could stay rooted in a somewhat more traditional soundscape while being tongue-in-cheek enough about the subject matter to connect directly with younger crowds. It may have fallen off a lot of people’s radars lately, but “I Hate Alabama” deserves more credit than it’s been given.
