Maddie Marlow and Tae Dye became instant country celebrities this summer with their tune "Girl In a Country Song."
The track essentially calls out the sexist themes of several country artists with a humorous video that features the following chorus:
Bein' the girl in a country song / How in the world did it go so wrong? / Like all we're good for / Is looking good for you and your friends on the weekend / Nothing more / We used to get a little respect / Now we're lucky if we even get / To climb up in your truck, keep my mouth shut and ride along / And be the girl in a country song
The teens – who perform under the name Maddie & Tae – told Taste of Country a couple weeks ago that they'd already spoken with several male country stars about the song.
"We've met some of them and they're amazing and have great humor," Dye explains. "Some of them have listened to it and the fact that they're even listening to our song makes us want to cry because it's so exciting."
But not everybody had fun with it. Florida Georgia Line singer Brian Kelley recently had some hard feelings on the subject.
"All I'm gonna say about that is, I don't know one girl who doesn't want to be a girl in a country song," he told the Chicago Tribune. "That's all I'm gonna say to you. That's it."
The young women promptly responded to Kelley during an interview with Broadway's Electric Barnyard.
"We love them and their music, but you see, he's a dude," they stated. "He doesn't know what it's like to be a woman, or to be the girl in these songs. We never intended to upset anybody. That was definitely not our intention, and we can't really speak for anyone else. We just know that is definitely not something that we would want to do."
Asked if they were feminists, the duo responded, "I would not say that. You know, the whole thing is just us wanting to come at this from a different perspective and making sure that the girl in these songs these guys are singing about gets a voice, 'cause you very rarely ever hear from her."
Things could continue to get interesting between the two groups, especially because they're on the same label (Big Machine).
