Country music has its fair share of offensive songs. Sometimes, songwriters want to get under listeners’ skin. Other times, songs seem like a great idea at the time. They may even become hits. However, perspectives and norms change over time. So, some songs that were mildly controversial upon release wouldn’t make the airwaves today.
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For this list, we’re not looking at country songs that were meant to be offensive. So, artists like Wheeler Walker Jr., Johnny Rebel, and David Allen Coe won’t appear below. These songs were seemingly meant to be sweet, sexy, or fun, but would be considered off-putting by modern listeners.
1. “Indian Outlaw” by Tim McGraw
Tim McGraw is one of country music’s biggest stars but that doesn’t make this song less offensive to modern listeners. “Indian Outlaw” faced some controversy when McGraw released it as a single from Not a Moment Too Soon in 1994. Some radio stations refused to play it because they saw it as racist. Depsite thet, it peaked at No. 8 on the country chart, giving McGraw his fist hit.
It feels like the songwriters–Tommy Barnes, Jumpin’ Gene Simmons, and John Loudermilk–used a list of Native American stereotypes as a reference point for this song. Furthermore, they seemingly challenged themselves to fit as many of them into the lyrics as they could.
People were calling out the racism in “Indian Outlaw” three decades ago. Today, it likely wouldn’t reach the airwaves.
2. “Maybe I Mean Yes” by Holly Dunn
Holly Dunn wrote “Maybe I Mean Yes” with Chris Waters and Tom Shapiro and released it as a single in 1991. It peaked at No. 48 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. The song likely would have been a bigger hit, but Dunn asked radio and TV stations to pull it from rotation after she faced backlash. She also stopped performing the song live. However, she said that she stood behind the song’s original intent.
The song’s original intent is unclear. However, lyrics like When I say no, I mean maybe, or maybe I mean yes didn’t fly at the time. Many critics opined that the lyrics condoned or even attempted to normalize date rape. Yikes.
Conversations about consent have always been important. Today, though, they’re more prevalent than they were in the 1990s. As a result, a song that goes against the fact that no means no (not maybe and certainly not yes) likely wouldn’t make it to the radio.
3. “You’ve Never Been This Far Before” by Conway Twitty
Conway Twitty has some of the sexiest songs in country music history, but this one is just plain offensive. While it’s not the only track from Twitty’s deep and steamy discography that aged like milk, it might be one of the grossest. Twitty penned “You’ve Never Been This Far Before” and released it as a single from an album of the same name in 1973. The song was a huge hit at the time. It topped the country chart for three weeks and became Twitty’s only crossover hit when it peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“You’ve Never Been This Far Before” faced backlash upon release due to its overtly sexual lyrics. However, country fans are accustomed to that kind of thing now, so it’s not what makes the song offensive today. Instead, it’s the narrator’s super gross fixation on taking his partner’s virginity. Furthermore, the song ends with the narrator saying he’ll love her more for letting him deflower her. Also, the ages of the song’s characters are never explicitly stated, but it comes off as an older man seducing a younger woman, which adds to the overall ick factor.
4. “God Made Girls” by RaeLynn
RaeLynn co-wrote “God Made Girls” with Lori McKenna, Liz Rose, and Nicolle Galyon. She released it as a single in 2014, and it hasn’t aged well. Despite the all-woman writing team, the song reeks of objectification and infantilization. Despite being torched by critics, it peaked at No. 7 on the Hot Country Songs chart.
RaeLynn defended the song, saying that it was just a song about the connection between women and men. However, many country fans and critics found the song offensive and regressive.
Lyrically, the song gives several reasons why God made “girls.” Many of them boil down to being an object with which men interact. Instead of empowerment, the song informs women that they were put on earth to wear pretty skirts, flirt, cry, sit in the passenger seat, and be fragile. One can only hope that the last decade has moved the industry far enough into the present to snuff tracks like this before they hit the airwaves.
Featured Image by Dezo Hoffman/Shutterstock
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