If I asked you to name the first “bro-country” band that popped into your head, your immediate answer would probably be Florida Georgia Line, at least I know that when I asked myself the question that’s what I came up with. The song I’ll be discussing today as a prime example of this will be probably their most chart-topping single, Cruise.  

The first verse of the song starts “Yea when I first saw that bikini top on her, she’s poppin’ right out of the South Georgia water. Thought, “Oh, good lord, she had them long tanned legs!”, couldn’t help myself so I walked up and said…”. Like I mentioned in my previous post, “bro-country” is known for sexualizing women and characterizing them entirely based off of their bodies, and just off of this first verse, every box has been checked off.  

Now onto the chorus, “Baby you a song, you make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise. Down a back road, blowin’ stop signs through the middle every little farm town with you. In this brand new Chevy with a lift kit, would look a hell of a lot better with you up in it. So baby you a song, you make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise”. The chorus isn’t particularly misogynistic, but if all they can see a girl as is a “song” and as a pair of legs and a bikini top, there’s a serious problem. 

Onto the second verse which goes, “she was sippin’ on Southern and singin’ Marshall Tucker. We were falling in love in the sweetheart of summer. She hopped right up into the cab of my truck and said, ‘fire it up, let’s go get this thing stuck’”. This verse is just an example of typical “bro-country” sans the misogyny of the typical verse. A perfect representation of what I mean is the picture below this paragraph that represents what makes up the typical country song, and boy does Cruise meet practically every single requirement.

Then the verse plays again and onto the next verse. “When that summer sun fell to its knees, I looked at her and she looked at me and I turned on those KC lights and drove all night ‘cause it felt so right, her and I, man we felt so right.”, while no, there isn’t anything outwardly bad or creepy about this verse either, it should be noted that for the rest of the song, there is not a single reason as to why our singer loves this girl so much, or why she makes him want to “cruise” other than the reason we get in the opening lyrics of her “long tanned legs”, which in itself is “creepy” too I suppose.  

The bridge shows a similar trend with him only saying “girl you sure got the beat in my chest bumpin’, hell, I can’t get you out of my head”, probably because he can’t stop thinking about her bikini top, seeing as how that’s the only other thing he’s seemed to notice about this girl. 

The chorus repeats itself another three times before the song ends, and I have to be honest, this song was not as terrible as the one I analyzed in my last post, but it definitely gave the girl in the song much less of a “personality”, which is a pretty common trend that I’ve seen over and over again in a lot of the country music I’ve listened to. In Cruise, it was pretty obvious what this girl was to the singer, and it should be pretty clear to you as well seeing how many times I’ve reiterated it; this girl was simply legs and a bikini top. This particular interpretation of mine does make the song misogynistic since he is sexually objectifying her and that is essentially the basis for their entire relationship, and you can disagree with me but there are no lyrics in the song that would prove otherwise.  

Image 1 Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/14/Cruise_Florida_Georgia_Line.jpg 

Image 2 Source: https://athicketofmusings.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/bro-country.jpg