You Know Exactly What These 6 Country Songs Have In Common

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

If you listen to a lot of country radio as I do, you've probably noticed that a lot of hit songs sound the same - men singing songs about trucks and girls in trucks, girls in tight jeans and trucks on dirt roads. It's known as bro country and it's not just the lyrics that sound the same. Well, if you took a bunch of those songs and smashed them together into one song, it might sound like this.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG MASH-UP)

LUKE BRYAN: (Singing) Cottonwood falling like snow in July. Set of fireflies popping like the Fourth of July, yeah. Breeze blowing in. Your hair blowing round.

BLOCK: You get the idea. These are six hit country songs by six different men mashed into one on ProTools software with some pitch and tempo shifting.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG MASH-UP)

LUKE BRYAN AND FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE: (Singing) Girl, you make my speakers go boom boom. We hanging round, singing out everything on the radio.

BLOCK: Aspiring Nashville songwriter Greg Todd posted his project on YouTube. He says it all started when he was listening to a song called "Close Your Eyes" by the group Paramlee on his car radio.

GREG TODD: The more I listen, the more I kept saying to myself this sounds awfully familiar.

BLOCK: I've heard this somewhere before.

TODD: Yeah, I've heard this somewhere before.

BLOCK: Then it clicked it. It was just like the Blake Shelton hit called "Sure Be Cool If You Did." So Greg Todd mashed the two together into one song.

TODD: I ended up sending it to a few friends. It was really just a fun little goof, actually.

BLOCK: And then it mushroomed.

TODD: And it mushroomed every day from that point forward, it seemed. I got in the car and heard another song and I kept saying, wait, is this the same as the other two? And one by one, I ended up having six songs sitting there in the ProTools session and when I play them all at the same time, it just sounded like one big band playing a very similar song.

BLOCK: And these are songs by some of the biggest names in country music, right - Blake Shelton, Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line, also, Cole Swindell, Parmalee and Chase Rice? When you hear songs like this that are so similar on the radio, does it bug you? Is it annoying to you?

TODD: I wouldn't call it annoying. You know, I'm a reasonable person. Each time I hear it, I still have to admit to myself they are catchy.

(SOUNDBITE OF MASH-UP)

FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE, SWINDELL, BRYAN AND PARMALEE: (Singing) This is how we roll. We rolling in, country on up ahead. Tipping it, spilling that homemade wine. You got me high on kisses. You can see forever when me, yeah, you know we rolling high. I got my shades on, top back...

BLOCK: Let's go through some of the similarities that you were playing with in these songs.

TODD: Well, right off the bat, the melodies and music bits I noticed were all strikingly similar. But it was only when I started really listening to the lyrics that I noticed five out of the six - I think six out of the six songs talked about either moonlight or the sun going down or the sunset. All six had to do with picking up a girl who wasn't yet their girlfriend or the love of their life or something like that. It was just more of a summer thing and almost all of them had a girl who was either in the truck or who was going to be in the truck at some point.

BLOCK: They had fallen in according to plan.

TODD: They had fallen in according to plan. So it was a hoot. I'm not going to lie. So that's when I got the idea to say, you know, maybe I can actually fool around with it and, you know, make a new lyric that makes sense.

BLOCK: Well, there is a long tradition of formula songwriting, right? I mean, wasn't it Steve Goodman and John Prine who wrote a song with the same - the classic country song had to have mama, a dead dog, a train. What am I forgetting?

TODD: And your truck is broke down. Yeah. That was the old country. They sing about slightly different things now but same idea.

BLOCK: So for you, Greg, you're an aspiring songwriter in Nashville. Do you figure well, this is selling? It's on the radio all the time. Maybe I just need to write a song about a truck and a girl and a tight pair of blue jeans.

TODD: Well, you know, you try to stay away from that but as a kind of a joke just like everyone else that's been in Nashville, you know, it's not easy getting through the gatekeepers. And I said, you know, I'll take it upon myself to write a seventh song that fits right into this mold. And I said well, I figure at the very least, they can't tell me it doesn't sound like a hit. So that's my new project so we'll see how that goes.

BLOCK: Well, best of luck with that, Greg. Greg Todd also known on YouTube as Sir Mashalot. We were talking about his mashup of six very similar country songs.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DRUNK ON YOU")

BRYAN: (Singing) You're looking so good in what's left of those blue jeans.

BLOCK: And by the way, the mashup song is on our Facebook page, NPR ATC.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG MASH-UP)

PARMALEE AND SWINDELL: (Singing) Coming on strong, I'm going to lay it on your lips, just chilling it.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.