10 Controversial Country Songs (2024)

• George Strait and Alan Jackson, "Murder on Music Row" (2000)

  This song was first the title track to Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time’s 1999 album, and written by Cordle and Larry Shell. Strait and Jackson’s version released in 2000, and became a rallying cry for music listeners who railed against the infiltration of pop-country and the decline of traditional country sounds.

  The song noted that legendary country artists including George Jones and Merle Haggard couldn’t earn radio hits in the current country climate, adding, “But someone killed country music, cut out its heart and soul/ They got away with murder down on Music Row.”

  The song barely cracked the top 40 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in 2000, but earned the Country Music Association’s vocal event of the year honor. Six years later, Dierks Bentley and Jones recorded a version of the song.

• Kitty Wells, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" (1952)

  In 1952, Wells recorded “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” for Decca Records, as a rebuttal to Hank Thompson’s “Wild Side of Life,” which released earlier that year. Whereas Thompson’s song depicts a woman who leaves her husband for “the places where wine and liquor flow,” later stating “I might have known you’d never make a wife.” Meanwhile, Wells rebukes the notion in song, singing, “From the start, most every heart that’s ever broken/ Was because there always was a man to blame.”

  The New York Times reported that the NBC radio network initially banned the song, deeming it too suggestive, while the Grand Ole Opry initially didn’t allow her to perform the song, although quickly relented due to audience demand.

• Little Big Town, "Girl Crush" (2014)

  The opening line of Little Big Town’s song — “I’ve got a girl crush” — led some listeners to mistakenly believe that this song of romantic jealousy also had a lesbian theme. However, Billboard contacted a dozen prominent radio programmers at the time, and found that most programmers had received few, if any, complaints about the song. One programmer at the time did note that the quartet’s label, Capitol Nashville, was running commercials on the station, “with LBT ‘explaining’ the song.”

  The mild controversy didn’t stop the song’s impactful success. In 2015, “Girl Crush” peaked at No. 3 on the Country Airplay chart, and spent 13 weeks cemented atop Hot Country Songs.

• Tim McGraw, "Red Ragtop" (2002)

  Tim McGraw is no stranger to controversy, after his debut single, “Indian Outlaw,” garnered controversy for its lyrical content back in 1994.

  This 2002 McGraw single, with its veiled references to abortion, stirred controversy. Written by Jason White, the song chronicles a relationship between a young couple that results in the woman getting pregnant. The song’s second verse details the couple’s response, with the key lines, “We decided not to have a child/ So we did what we did and we tried to forget/ And we swore up and down there would be no regrets in the morning light.”

  At the time, most radio stations were supportive, while some radio stations initially pulled the song, in order to avoid ruffling feathers with listeners. According to a 2002 Billboard story, WSM-FM (Live 95) Nashville pulled the song after a handful of spins because of listener complaints about the lyrics. Then-program director Kevin O’Neal, told Billboard he “was just being safe,” but ultimately reversed that decision. “I think the song is reality,” he said. “We’re not in the censor business.” Meanwhile, Jeff Garrison (then with KMLE/Phoenix) said that “country songs have always been about real life. ‘Red Rag Top’ is another great song about life.”

  The song reached the top five on the Country Airplay chart in 2002.

• Kacey Musgraves, "Follow Your Arrow" (2013)

  This song, which Musgraves wrote with openly gay songwriters Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark, celebrates living life on one’s own terms. The song famously included the then-controversial instruction to “Kiss lots of boys or kiss lots of girls/ If that’s something you’re into.”

  “This is not only pushing the envelope, it’s where the envelope gets mailed to,” Mike O’Malley, a programming consultant with Albright & O’Malley & Brenner, told Billboard at the time.

  During Musgraves’ performance of the song on the 2013 CMA Awards, another line about rolling a joint was censored. However, Musgraves — and the song — triumphed the following year, when “Follow Your Arrow” was named song of the year at the CMA Awards.

  “Follow Your Arrow” reached No. 43 on the Country Airplay chart, but rose to No. 10 on the Hot Country Songs chart, which incorporates sales and streams as well as radio airplay.

• Brad Paisley, "Accidental Racist" (2013)

  Brad Paisley and LL Cool J teamed up to record this 2013 song, written by Paisley, LL Cool J and Lee Thomas Miller. The song was a clumsy, unsuccessful attempt to encourage unity and to rectify long-held racial tensions and discriminations.

  Billboard surveyed the song at the time, offering a breakdown of the song’s most cringe-inducing lines, such as “If you don’t judge my gold chains/ I’ll forget the iron chains.”

  Billboard‘s Jason Lipshutz wrote about the verse, “Probably the most downright offensive line in ‘Accidental Racist,’ the couplet suggests that, if LL Cool J’s gold jewelry can be overlooked, so can all of slavery. Maybe… ‘forget’ is the wrong verb to use in this line? Does anyone really want to ‘forget’ the horrors of slavery instead of learn from them? There was never a chance of saving this line, but more than any other in the song, this one smacks of utter laziness.”

  The song ended up getting the parody treatment on an episode of Saturday Night Live.

• Tammy Wynette, "Stand By Your Man" (1968)

  Tammy Wynette and Billy Sherrill wrote what would become one of Wynette’s signature songs — a song that Wynette would later say in numerous press interviews that they spent 20 minutes writing and a lifetime defending. The song released in 1968, nearing the end of a decade when more women were entering the paid workforce, and the second wave feminism movement was surging in the U.S., as women fought for equal pay, for abortion rights and for an end to gender discrimination.

  The song’s lyrics about a woman standing by her man, even though “You’ll have the bad times/ And he’ll have the good times/ Doing things that you don’t understand,” became an enduring lightning rod for a wave of criticism from feminists — though the knowing vocal tone Wynette employed in a key line in the song, “After all, he’s just a man,” also opened up the song’s interpretation beyond the notion of a woman simply submitting to all of her husband’s indiscretions.

  Still, the song also became a three-week No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Singles chart, and earned Wynette a Grammy award for best country vocal performance, female, while the song also earned a Grammy nomination for best country song.

  During a 60 Minutes interview in 1992, Hillary Clinton famously took a swipe at the song when questioned about her husband, then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, and his alleged decade of infidelities. “I’m not sitting here–some little woman standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette,” Clinton responded. The comments riled Wynette, though the two would later reconcile via a private phone call.

  The song’s enduring legacy saw it become part of the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, while the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2010.

• Garth Brooks, "The Thunder Rolls" (1991)

  Like other artists on this list, Garth Brooks is no stranger to having his songs stir up some controversy, such as his 1992 song “We Shall Be Free,’ which espoused freedom and acceptance for varying points of view on topics including love, religion and more.

  Brooks drew criticism for his 1991 song “The Thunder Rolls,” as well as for its video. Written by Brooks and Pat Alger, “The Thunder Rolls” details the deadly aftermath when a husband returns home late on a stormy evening, and his wife recognizes the scent of a perfume she doesn’t wear. According to Patsi Bale Cox’s book The Garth Factor, Brooks and Alger originally pitched the song to Tanya Tucker, but the song didn’t make the album.

  The song’s third verse depicts the wife pulling a gun on her husband, while the dramatic music video was a mini-movie centered on spousal abuse — in which the wife finally retaliates. At the time, some video networks banned the video, though that didn’t stop the song from getting radio spins. The song spent two weeks atop Billboard‘s Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart, and won video of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards.

  Brooks told Cox in The Garth Factor, “It’s a good song that got overshadowed by a controversy. It was unfair to the song, and that hurts. I never wanted something like that to draw attention to a song of mine.”

• Jason Aldean, "Try That in a Small Town" (2023)

  Aldean’s 2023 radio single, written by Kelley Lovelace, Neil Thrasher, Kurt Allison and Tully Kennedy, faced intense backlash after the music video for the song released, which featured footage of riots, American flags burning, and a robbery at a convenience store. The song’s lyrics themselves were criticized by online commenters as racist, anti-BLM and pro-gun.

  Soon after the video’s release, CMT pulled the video from its rotation after playing it for three days, sparking further backlash.

  Aldean released a statement about the controversy, and further addressed the controversy during a concert in Ohio on July 21, saying, “I feel like everybody’s entitled to their opinion. You can think something all you want to, it doesn’t mean it’s true.” He added, “What I am is a proud American. I’m proud to be from here. I love our country. I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this bulls–t started happening to us. I love my country, I love my family, and I will do anything to protect that, I can tell you that right now.”

  The controversy fueled attention toward the song and its video, propelling the song up the sales and streaming charts, with the song ultimately debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and to the pinnacle of the Hot Country Songs chart. Meanwhile, the video has now been viewed more than 21 million times on YouTube.

• Loretta Lynn, "The Pill" (1975)

  Several of this Country Music Hall of Famer’s songs, such as “Rated X,” challenged norms and social conventions — but perhaps none more so than 1975’s “The Pill,” which celebrated birth control and the resulting newfound sexual freedom many women experienced since “the pill” had become widely available just over a decade earlier.

  Today, the song stands as one of Lynn’s signature songs. However, upon its release, more than 60 radio stations banned the song from rotation. “The Pill” still reached No. 5 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart.

  “It’s just a wife arguin’ with her husband,” she told People in 1975. “The wife is sayin’, ‘You’ve kept me barefoot and pregnant all these years while you’ve been slippin’ around. Now you straighten out or I’ll start, now that I have the pill.’”

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