Brian Kelley, ex-member of Florida Georgia Line, sets right-wing talking points to music in a ditty titled after Trump’s second-favorite phrase
Some of the best country songs have layers upon layers of meaning embedded in their lyrics. Brian Kelley’s “Make America Great Again” is not one such song.
Instead, the Florida half of Florida Georgia Line (RIP) hits listeners over the head with hyper-literal MAGA talking points in the brooding track, which dropped last week and doesn’t appear on Kelley’s latest solo album, May’s Tennessee Truth.
“Make America great again/I don’t recognize her at all/Streets are full of drugs and illegals/It’s time to finish that wall,” Kelley sings in the first verse, leaving no room for metaphor. Later on, he gets riled up over inflation, U.S. veterans being turned away from somewhere, and getting involved in foreign wars, before dropping a bomb of a non sequitur about a better country where “your word means something/and your dollar means more.”
And you couldn’t call out MAGA Bingo! without the fear of the government confiscating your guns. “Try to take our free speech and our rifles,” Kelley contends for fans that found Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” too subtle.
“Make America Great Again” arrived with an accompanying video, a dizzying, quick-cut montage of images of Kelley at the RNC in Milwaukee, Michael Jordan dunking a basketball, and soldiers firing cannons. There’s also flashes of Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, and Donald Trump — lots and lots of Trump, whom presumably Kelley will be voting for in November. (Clips of President Biden and presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris also appear while Kelley twangs, “Get us out of this nightmare.”)
But the “highlight” of the video comes when Kelley sings the line, “Dirty politics will put you on trial,” and Trump’s mugshot from his hush-money trial appears on screen. At least that’s one thing this monstrosity got right.