This week I want to look at one of my all-time favorite summer songs, Speakers, Bleachers and Preachers by Brandon Lay. Every time I tuned into Wild Country 99.9, this was always the song that was playing, and I have to be honest, it took a while for it to grow on me, but now, as I said, it’s one of my favorites, but that’s not the point of this blog, the point is for me to tear it apart.

The first verse goes, “You had a blue jean jacket, burnt CD, said, ‘you want to go somewhere fast with me?’. I picked you up, yeah, we turned it up”. So far this song sounds very reminiscent of a better time, and I’m already proud of the fact that the girl (I’m assuming the “you” Lay is singing about is a girl, but I may just be too quick to judge) has more than just “bodily” characteristics. I’m already questioning why this song was labeled as “bro-country” when I looked it up, but maybe looking into the next couple verses will give us more insight into that.

The next verse goes as follows, “You had a broke-heart necklace, postgame smile, J-Town front-page news for a while. Then we broke up, but I still turned it up”. Ok wow, this is the first “bro-country” song that doesn’t make me want to rip my ears out and abandon all my hope for men. Brandon Lay described his EX-GIRLFRIEND in more detail than most singers describe their current girlfriends, AND he didn’t insult her after they broke up. I’m baffled and impressed.

Now for the pre-chorus, “Cheerleading skirts in backseats, free throws and church marquees, Kingsley countdown radio. Wouldn’t know nothing if it weren’t for all those…”, essentially there isn’t much here just objects alluding to the title of the song. Lay is just building up to the chorus here (as is the point of a pre-chorus I suppose) and also giving the listener more of an idea of what he is reminiscing back to in this song.

The chorus goes “Long nights and glory days, between the Alpines, and old King James. Yeah the better they look, the sweeter that kiss. The shots you don’t take, the shots you gon’ miss. The faster the car, more money to burn, you laugh, you love, you live. There’s a lot to learn, from speakers and bleachers and preachers. The story of my youth. From speakers and bleachers and preachers, still got a lot of growing up to do”. The more closely I look at this song’s lyrics, the more and more I truly enjoy this song because there’s really nothing wrong with it up to this point. Lay seems to have just made a song about his childhood and how he misses high school football games and just being a kid where consequences didn’t really matter to much because he still had “a lot of growing up to do”. This is why I’m still confused as to why this song was nestled away into the “bro-country” subgenre of country music. I really don’t want this song to do a 180 on me because so far I don’t feel guilty about listening to it and I’d like it to stay that way. So with that, I’ll move on, precariously, to the third verse.

The third verse goes “Kroger parking lot, battle scars, Black and Mild on the dash under the stars, If Daddy asks they ain’t mine. 82 degrees on the bank sign, and hey-ey, summer jams. Any Chesney song gonna make her dance. When the sun goes down, I think about her now, and all those…”. I really just genuinely love this song because it also brings me back to when I lived in TN and hanging out with friends there. This verse refers to him smoking cigars, the “Black and Mild on the dash”, and how he would hide them from his dad and that is the only bad thing that has happened in this song.

The chorus plays again and then the bridge goes “Subs from my system rattle in my rearview. Used to listen, with my cousin, I miss him, he’s gone now. It was the national anthem, and a knee-down prayer we were acting like we weren’t like every other small town”. I’m genuinely confused why this song is considered “bro-country” because we’re at the end of the song and nothing gross or sleazy has happened for it to even remotely qualify for that category. Like the bridge, he misses his cousin and he plays his music too loud. That is not anywhere near the same level of bad as saying that a girl is an object and only describing her legs. I don’t know what went wrong when this song was “organized” into its genre.

Image 1 Source: https://www.amazon.com/Speakers-Bleachers-Preachers-Brandon-Lay/dp/B07L6R1Y6Q

Image 2 Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LWtZw7fUQA