Graham Barham sees Florida Georgia Line as his personal gospel. Having grown up listening to country music through the musical stylings of FGL, Sam Hunt, and others like them, Barham has seemingly devoted his life to the one true Bro Country God, claiming to practice their teachings and donate 10% of his yearly earnings to support the Church and all of its causes. Except he doesn’t actually listen to any of its rules or guidelines; he only donates if he has a five-dollar bill in his pocket and only goes to Mass on Easter and Christmas.
By making constant comparisons to bigger acts that enjoyed major success in the early 2010s at the height of the bro-country phenomenon, it almost seems like Barham is trying to convince himself to release CLUB COUNTRY, in hopes that no one will hear the difference between his music and the frat-friendly country butt-rock of yesteryear. But like any bad student who stole the answers to the test only to find out they were fakes, Barham fails to reach the status he desperately tries to copy and winds up with a slaughterfest of EDM and trap beats that take anything hip-hop adjacent from Hunt or FGL and make it 50x worse.
CLUB COUNTRY is the album not designed for everybody, but for anybody. At least that’s what Barham himself wants you to think. Hidden within these 16 tracks is something for anyone with a remote interest in his experimental style, although that does assume a few things: you think EDM can qualify as country music, you want more country artists to be braggadocious when they make party music, and anyone who doesn’t immediately turn up the volume when the album plays must not like to have fun at all.
There’s a sense of ignorance one must have to really enjoy CLUB COUNTRY. On top of questionable lyrical choices, Barham’s disdain and disregard for his so-called haters are intertwined throughout the project. It reveals itself more often than you’d think, as he continuously reminds you he doesn’t think or care about them at all. He’s just here to… do… something.
That something often does align with the verses of the Holy Bro Country Bible. Party on a Friday night? You bet. Drinking too much when you break up with someone? That’s also here. Cruise like it’s 2012 and we’re FGL and we’re drunk as hell in the booth? Uh, sure.
But the buck stops here for Barham’s journey through the world of bro country. You’ll find tiny hints throughout the project that he intends to replicate his idols, but there’s an abundant lack of willingness actually to do so. Instead, he’d rather play the role of the school bully, who was always misunderstood and needed to become a douchebag with a grill to get noticed after high school.
Enter the soundscapes of CLUB COUNTRY. Across each song, your ears are greeted with a loud, oftentimes over-layered beat with an occasional banjo or guitar in the background to, y’know, remind you this is a country album. The juxtaposition here is that while that concept has been done before on country-leaning albums, Barham seems to want to take things to a completely different universe and make ignorant “club” music, all while hiding behind the guise of just another kid who grew up in the country.
There are whiffs, sometimes even full-blown scents, of tracks you could consider thoughtfully produced and written. “MATTER OF TIME” might be the closest thing you’ll get to a real song on the record, with a somewhat enjoyable pop-leaning drumbeat and a catchy guitar riff. There’s also the intro track “COUNTRY MUSIC,” which tries to convince you that “making country music” means making love. It’s a very strange metaphor, but it does kick off the album on a raucously catchy note.
There’s something to be said about how catchy this album can be, too. Give it a spin, and you’re bound to have at least one of the hooks stuck in your head. “BAD AND SHE KNOWS IT,” “DIXIE CHICKS,” and the TikTok-famous “OIL MONEY” all boast cleverly constructed choruses that will give even the biggest Graham Barham foe something to hum on their way to work in the morning.
As for everything else, it’s a mixed bag of Barham’s desire to sound swagalicious, different, edgy, and captivating. The problem? Most of it comes off as inauthentic, attention-hungry, and a cross-genre mashup that seemingly worked better in Barham’s head than on the record. The complex layers and vocal effects applied to each track dilute its effectiveness in telling a story or expressing an emotion. Unless you’re preconditioned to listen to nonstop, chaotic EDM dance tracks, CLUB COUNTRY is going to send some audible shocks to your eardrums.
“SHOOT YOU STRAIGHT,” “WHISKEY RAIN,” and “SO LONG SATURDAY NIGHT” are prime examples of this. From the blaring synths in the background to the extreme pitch corrections to make Barham sound like a Wonder Bread version of Future, this album is designed to be loud and in your face. Throughout the rest of the tracklist, you’re constantly reminded that writing and song structure were never intended to be front and center. You are supposed to turn up, and if you don’t, you hate music entirely.
The album reaches a boiling point at “MCCONAUGHEY,” a musical equivalent to finding a skid mark in your Fruit of the Looms and thinking “eh, that’s alright, alright, alright.” It’s in this song that Barham’s negligence and bad-boy attitude reach the point of no return: make a bad song, think it’s good, and ship it because your middle finger couldn’t be any higher up walking out of the recording studio. The low self-esteem that seeps from the track’s lyrics makes Barham seem more like a rebirth of frat-friendly country music than someone who struggles to feel accepted and won’t seek a therapist.
Barham wants to brag and flaunt his riches just as much as every person who flashes their grille in promotional videos leading up to their first album. He seems to think that if he’s obnoxious enough, he will appease his fans. If he ignores country tradition and invokes some bro-country spirit, David Guetta throwaways, and poor songwriting for weak themes of alcoholism and sex, he can become the ultimate country renegade.
Instead, CLUB COUNTRY proves that Barham doesn’t seem to care about carrying a single tradition with him, even replicating his bro-country idols. He’d rather make sloppy, EDM-injected Stagecoach filler music. Maybe there’s a market for that, but it’s not going to get him the street cred he so desperately wants.
