Luke Bryan made headlines when he took to X (formerly Twitter) to serve a critic some snark. Later in the day, a country music blogger stepped into the fray, supporting the original critic. Bryan did not mince words in his responses.
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Bryan entered a brief social media spat with Ross Raihalla, a critic for The St. Paul Pioneer Press. The critic negatively reviewed Bryan’s October 14 show at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. He wondered if the “Country Girl Shake It for Me” singer’s career was on the decline. Additionally, he called his performance “listless” and “distracted.”
Bryan fired off a haughty tweet claiming that the publication had never given him a positive review. After reading Raihalla’s previous reviews, that turned out to be false. That would have been the end of the spat, but Saving Country Music weighed in.
“Luke Bryan is calling out a music critic who rightly pointed out Bryan’s career decline in a scathing review. But, if Luke Bryan had any good sense, he would be listening,” the publication tweeted along with their coverage of the original spat. That’s when the award-winning country singer got a little testier.
“You can kiss my ass too,” Bryan fired back. Moments later, Bryan lobbed another tweet. “I have never phoned in anything in my life,” he wrote. “I’ll keep this shit going as long as y’all want. I sit back and watch y’all chirp. Over it. Turn around and watch the crowd,” he added.
Less than ten minutes later, Bryan returned to the thread with more to say. “Either way. The phoned in thing got me mad,” he said. “Hell, I’m 47. Some nights my damn knees hurt. However, y’all gotta job to too [sic] do. Got some followers. Been 10 years since my last Twitter war. Peace and I love everybody,” he concluded.
Bryan wasn’t quite finished, though. However, he came back a little humbler. “Another thing, I played from 9:08 til 11:05. No encore because I ran over the building codes. 10:40 would have been phoning it in,” he explained. Bryan added that he was wrong to go after Raihalla. “I did confuse another review from another publication,” he admitted.
In parting, Bryan added, “Check Pollstar numbers if you think I’m in decline saving country dude.”
Photo by Natasha Moustache/WireImage
