<\/p>\n
Hardy\u2019s tough to pin down. He\u2019s the Woodstock \u201999 of country hitmakers, someone who screams as many choruses as he sings, someone who is as likely to collaborate with Fred Durst as Lainey Wilson, someone Nickelback and boygenius agree on. He\u2019s headlining Madison Square Garden even though most of his commercial success comes from the Number Ones he\u2019s written for other artists like Morgan Wallen and Florida Georgia Line. He\u2019s as likely to write a hit about chugging beers as he is to write a song about how he writes songs about chugging beers. He\u2019s simultaneously the chest-thumping id of masculine country and a fun-house mirror poking fun at the whole enterprise.<\/p>\n
To get a sense of his whole deal, look no further than the half-mocking, half-earnest title of his latest album, Country! Country!.<\/em> In an era when country singers are forced to constantly redeclare their rural bona fides, Hardy has made a name for himself by tripling down on that premise with a wink (see his 2018 debut hit, \u201cRednecker\u201d). The LP has a half-dozen tunes with the \u201ccountry\u201d\u2019 in its title, including \u201cBro Country,\u201d his pour-one-out elegy to the subgenre he helped crystallize.<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n But underneath the surface, Country! Country!<\/em> is, like much of Hardy\u2019s work, surprising. There are some dark moments, including at least the full eight songs that find him contemplating his own burial or death. Those culminate in an album closer on which Hardy turns to his favorite subject: songwriting. \u201cI got all these songs about dyin\u2019,\u201d he sings, \u201cbut it\u2019s the only thing that everybody does.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other hand, the radio-friendly \u201cLuckiest Man Alive\u201d is a reminder that, among other things, Hardy is a seasoned songwriter who seems like he can churn out hits in his sleep. But if that track is infectious, too often Hardy coasts on his own ability on paint-by-numbers tunes like \u201cFavorite Country Song\u201d and \u201cCountry in Me,\u201d the latter of which sounds like a retread of Blake Shelton\u2019s \u201cGod\u2019s Country\u201d (co-written by, you guessed it, Hardy). Is it more of the same or Music Row performance art? For Hardy, part of the point is to keep you guessing.<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hardy\u2019s tough to pin down. He\u2019s the Woodstock \u201999 of country hitmakers, someone who screams as many choruses as he sings, someone who is as likely to collaborate with Fred Durst as Lainey Wilson, someone Nickelback and boygenius agree on. He\u2019s headlining Madison Square Garden even though most of his commercial success comes from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2044071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[346154,344347,328306,307957,306299,24320],"class_list":["post-2044070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-country-singers","tag-florida-georgia-line","tag-fred-durst","tag-lainey-wilson","tag-madison-square-garden","tag-morgan-wallen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Hardy-Combines-Country-and-Country-on-\u2018Country-Country.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2044070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2044071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2044070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2044070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2044070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}