If you listen to mainstream country, I'm going to assume that you've heard "Body Like a Back Road" by now, but here are the basics. Guy likes girl. Guy makes truly ridiculous comparisons between girl's body and objects or places. "Hips like honey" and other cringe-worthy lines that'd kill the mood instantly in most intimate scenarios.
It's not that each individual line is the worst we've ever heard from mainstream country, not even in the last 5 years. It's what this song represents in today's day and age. We like to think we're making progress in the way we treat women, but when some dude who looks like he just stepped off the modeling runway sings a song like this to massive acclaim and gets away with it, it's hard to believe we've made any progress at all. And that's what really drives this message into the ground, for me. If a normal looking dude had written and recorded this song, it wouldn't be surprising if there was a massive media firestorm condemning him and effectively ending his career. If a normal looking dude making country music were to come out and criticize this song for calling it what it is, the media would likely scoff and make allusions to the probability that he's just bitter about being rejected at some point in his life.
It's the things we allow to happen for unjustifiable reasons that sabotage any progress that might be made in our efforts to raise young men who respect women.
Sam Hunt gets away with this because he's not a normal dude. He's a traditionally good looking former athlete with some real songwriting chops (though you'd never know it by listening to this song), a pleasant voice (for the most part--he gets a little breathy, at times, but he's not the first to deal with this issue), and, despite this song, genuinely appears to be a decent human being. I don't personally dislike Sam Hunt, and I don't even hate all of his songs, though I wish they were being played on pop radio where they belong. "Make You Miss Me" is exceptionally catchy and very tangible to any person who's ever turned the other cheek on somebody who ditched them. "Take Your Time" is slightly awkward with its monologue verses, but the chorus is impeccably catchy and the instrumental arrangement is haunting. Sam Hunt is not a strictly bad artist by any means. He's just being played in the wrong format, and now he's unknowingly written and released a song that represents every way in which we don't want to treat women in today's world.
I don't honestly think Hunt realized what "Body Like a Back Road" symbolized when he and his co-writers wrote it. I think this is ignorance in full force. That's the unfortunate point, though. We still don't know what we do wrong. We still don't know how not to speak to women, how not to speak about them. One could argue that "locker room talk" is a reality of the world for both men and women, and maybe it is, but it should stay in private circles, and when it does leak out into our art, we should understand what is wrong with it and, you know, maybe not celebrate it like we're a bunch of dimwitted morons.
There are so many factors in play that caused the success of this monstrosity. Ignorance. Tolerating such ignorance for stupid reasons like a person's appearance. The lack of focus on the arts in schools (teach kids what good art is and they'll be able to identify drivel like this and let it die quickly like it should have). There's really no redemption to be had for "Body Like a Back Road." It's the "Blurred Lines" of country music, even if music fans aren't smart enough to realize it isn't a country song. Please, people, learn from this horrid mistake. Think about it this way. Would I want to be spoken to like this? Would I want any of my loved ones to be spoken to like this? Would I want my daughter to be spoken to like this? Would I want my son to speak to a woman like this?
Those answers were all no, weren't they?
