Older readers will be aware that I love country music, but every now and then an artist I like will include a song that is truly irritating, horrible, and even nasty.

Step forward Blake Shelton, who panders to the kind of right-wing ignoramus who dismisses environmental concerns whilst spouting the kind of self-delusional twaddle exemplified by the song “Green” on his album Startin’ Fires.

Sheets on the clothes line drying
Red Tail hawks a flying
A couple of deer on the timber line
And I know a lot more about cane pole fishing
then I ever will know about carbon emission
And my little corner of the world is doing just fine

I’ve got a hundred acre farm
I’ve got a john deere in my barn
I’ve got a garden in my yard, full of corn, peas and beans
I’ve got a guitar I play unplugged
I’ve got a home-grown girl I love,
And when the summer time hits, we skinny dip in the stream
I was green before green was a thing

The line that really grates (apart from the refrain, to which the response is, no, you’re not green, you twat), is the “my little corner of the world is doing just fine,” which causes the red mist to descend. Yeah, so people are getting flooded out all over, and starving in famine zones and spring doesn’t seem to exist any more, but I’m doing all right.

Fuck off.

Next exhibit, “Real Man” by Kristina Cornell, from her album It’s a Girl Thing

I ain’t looking for no one night stand
A bar fly slipping his ring off his hand
A metrosexual
Intellectual
Sensitive new aged guy

I’m looking for a real man
Looking for a rock
I can hold on to
Someone with a strong hand
And I ain’t gonna stop
‘Til I find him

Yeah, thanks for setting back the 100-year struggle for women’s equality, and the notion that men should be anything other than lumbering hairy troglodytes. Intellectual men not required? Fuck you.

Now we turn to a hideous glorification of pointless binge drinking in Lee Bryce’s “Parking Lot Party”, on his album Hard 2 Love, which also features a hideous titling substitution of the number 2 for the word to, which is indeed hard to love.

At the parking lot party
A tailgate buzz just a sipping’ on suds
Ain’t never too early
To light one up, fill up your cup
Cause there ain’t no party like the pre-party
and after the party is the after-party
At the parking lot party

First of all, just imagine the scene. You’re in a fucking car park with a crowd of sports fans or something, and you’re getting drunk before you go in, so you can get more drunk inside and then even more drunk afterwards. And then drive home? Since most human beings don’t need more than an hour to get completely shit-faced, I just can’t imagine the horror that would ensue from this level of bingeing. Vomit-strewn parking bays and a really bad headache are a certainty, but misery for anyone within earshot is also probable. Jesus wept.

There are more, but the final entry for today has to be Tim McGraw‘s “Truck Yeah”, from his recent release Two Lanes of Freedom.

Let me hear you say, Truck Yeah
Wanna get it jacked up yeah
Let’s crank it on up yeah
With a little bit of luck I can find me a girl with a Truck Yeah
We can love it on up yeah
‘Til the sun comes up yeah
And if you think this life I love is a little too country
Truck Yeah

For fuck’s sake. First of all, the notion of a truck: fuck off with that. Nobody needs one of those who isn’t an actual farmer with actual livestock. Nobody wants to hear your music either, so turn it down. And it appears to me that we’re either at a monster truck rally or at some kind of sporting event where we are, once again, drinking too much and making a nuisance of ourselves.

See, people found Brad Paisley’s “Accidental Racist” offensive for some reason, but this is the kind of stuff that gives me the rage.